Unhinging the state

How New Zealand has abandoned science and reality in matters of sex and gender

The schisms rupturing New Zealand over sex and gender are not, as many would have us believe, about the human rights of transgender people. Transgender people’s human rights are already protected under our laws and policies¹.

The schisms are about the nature of reality. Under the cloak of inclusiveness politicians, government bureaucrats and community leaders have been captivated by the fantasy world of gender lobbyists. Lobbyists who have imported the fantasy straight from university campuses in the United States. It’s a new wave of colonisation complete with state-enforced faith, language and social norms². The enthusiasm with which the gender fantasy has been absorbed into our laws and institutions is in stark contrast to the careful, evidence-based decision making that served us so well in the early days of the pandemic. On gender and sex, New Zealand has lost the plot.

The fantasy is that biological sex either does not exist or is not important. What's important is one’s inner “gender identity”, a sort of gendered soul that is believed to exist within us all³. Under scrutiny the gendered soul bears a striking resemblance to 1950s sex stereotypes. If you like tractors and running around energetically you have a boy soul. If you are a gentle, delicate type who loves pink and to cook, you definitely have a girl soul. Once the arch-fantasy is accepted, a bunch of secondary fantasies fall out of it: that children can be born in the wrong body and we must fix them; that humans can defy all laws of nature and literally change biological sex; that lesbians can have pensises; and that outdated sex stereotypes are meaningful and true.

Lobbyists have indoctrinated or intimidated our gullible leaders into wholehearted adoption of the fantasy (across all political parties). Once you accept (or claim to accept) that biological sex does not exist or is not important, a whole lot of policies become imperative. If sex does not exist: we should let men who think they are women into female prisons; we should medicalise children who don’t conform to stereotypes; we should treat men as women from the moment they announce they feel like a women; we should allow these new “women” into single sex spaces and to take up opportunities created specifically for women and girls.

If the state believes that sex does not exist, it is justified in calling anyone who truly understands the science or has common sense, a nazi or a bigot or inherently “anti-trans”. If these science-believing heretics speak up, their words are designated misinformation or hate speech.

Below, I list nine key gender developments in New Zealand law, policy and practice that stand against science and reason. All have been implemented in the last few years. Most have been introduced without consultation or without the full repercussions being understood by New Zealanders. These developments and those of the last month illustrate a worrying direction of travel. That our democratic, tolerant, secular state is being transformed into a quasi-religious regime that punishes those who hold different beliefs.

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Gender ideology embedded in NZ policy and practice

1. StatsNZ data standard: Stats NZ has a statistical standard that says people can literally change biological sex. This is a scientific and physical impossibility. It makes a mockery of objective national data. StatsNZ have fully embraced the quasi-spiritual theory pushed by gender activists that sex is not based in material reality.⁴

2. Very high rates of puberty blocker prescription: New Zealand prescribes puberty blockers at at least ten times the rate of the UK where there is a major investigation into rushed prescription. Puberty blockers are prescribed, supposedly as a pause button, to children and young people who are uncomfortable with their sex and changing bodies. Once widely considered harmless, multiple countries have pulled back on prescribing puberty blockers. There is growing evidence that they have lasting negative impacts on health and wellbeing. There is little or no evidence that blockers improve young people’s lives. Most kids in the UK prescribed blockers have other underlying mental health issues, many are autistic and many are same sex attracted⁵.

3. Non-factual and ideological school curriculum guidance: Our school curriculum guidance (for year one onwards) on gender teaches gender theory as fact. It says both sex and gender are on a continuum and complying to stereotypes makes you more of a man or a woman. It teaches kids that everyone has a gender identity, instead of saying that a few people do. It encourages kids to disassociate with the reality of their bodies and instead work out their gender. It is regressive, damaging nonsense.⁶

4. Sport NZ’s guiding principles: Sport NZ has issued guidance to all community sports clubs that reads like a gender propaganda manifesto. Under the guise of inclusion, the feelings of transwomen are elevated above the needs, safety and dignity of biological girls and women. In sports men have a clear biological advantage over women. It is dangerous and unfair for males to play in women’s sports teams regardless of how they identify. There are additional issues of normalising males in changing rooms with girls and women. The Sports NZ guidelines throw in frightening advice to report all resistance to correct gender think to the authorities. It advises that where necessary clubs engage in re-education programmes.

5. NZ Midwifery Council's scope of practice. The revised scope of practice for all New Zealand midwives removes the word woman/wahine and mother/māmā altogether. Biological sex matters enormously in issues of pregnancy and child birth. Talking openly and clearly about what’s going on is a safety and dignity issue. The vast majority of people midwives work with understand and embrace the words for mother and woman. In addition, we have low literacy in New Zealand and we need to be mindful of those who do not have English or te reo Māori as a first language. Removing the words for mother and woman is confusing.

6. Ministry of Women’s definition of women: Around 2017, without any consultation, our Ministry of Women changed its definition of women to mean anyone who identifies as a women. The Ministry was set up in a time when we all recognised that discrimination against women was linked to our lived experience as biological girls and women. By incorporating biological males into the definition of “women” the effectiveness of the Ministry is under threat⁷.

7. Sex-self identification law: Straight from the playbook of US queer theory, our very own sex self-identification bill comes into force mid-year. Sex-self identification means anyone can declare a new sex at any time. Reality no longer has any weight. Almost entering the law by stealth, Sections 23-29 of the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 2021 will give legal force to those destroying single sex spaces and safeguarding for females⁸.

8. Public Service Commission’s inclusive language framework: The Public Service Commission advises all government departments to adopt an “inclusive” language framework that in fact has the opposite effect. It actively excludes diversity of opinion on gayness, on gender beliefs and on the reality of sex. In the framework, gayness is defined as same gender rather than same sex orientation. The framework uses the term cis to describe non trans people. Cis people supposedly have a gender that aligns to their biological sex. This does not acknowledge the vast majority of us who have no inner sense of gender. We just are our sex. There is absolutely no notion of having people with a variety of faiths or beliefs about sex and gender working alongside one another nor of encouraging a tolerance for different views. Rather it imposes the gender lobbyists' anti science view of sex on everyone.

9. The new homophobia in rainbow groups: Almost every rainbow group in the country has now recast same sex-attraction as same-gender attraction. This throws these groups' exclusively same-sex-attracted clients, under the bus. Clients that they are often publicly funded to serve. In the new world order, same-sex orientation is considered transphobic because it excludes, for example, lesbian identified men, from being considered as a sexual partner by lesbian women. This is a new form of homophobia, where people are once again shamed for their sexual orientation. Groups like InsideOUT (whose glossary I link to as a typical example of the new homophobia) are used as advisors in government policy and are invited to give inclusion and diversity training in workplaces and schools. Many government departments including the Ministry of Education adopt InsideOUT style glossaries nearly word for word.

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Further information

Sex, Gender and Women’s Rights, Jan Rivers and Jill Abigail, Policy Quarterly. —a 2021 detailed account of what’s happening in NZ institutions.

Stats for Gender—has good non-pushy (global) statistics.

Gender, a wider lens—a podcast by two therapists (from the US and Ireland but relevant in Aotearoa) that work with gender questioning young people and their families.

Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage, Hilton and Lundberg, Journal of Sports Medicine—on the biological advantage of males in sports.

Sex, lies and the census, by Natasha Hamilton-Hart in Open Inquiry.

Some books I like

Trans: when ideology meets reality by Helen Joyce (mathematician and former journalist at The Economist, now works for Sex Matters).

Material girls: why reality matters for feminism by Kathleen Stock (got hounded out of her job at the University of Sussex for believing in sex-based rights).

The end of the world is flat by Simon Edge, a hilarious and clever novel where Edge, with gender issues firmly in mind, imagines a world where near-genius campaigners manage to convince vast tracts of sane and powerful people that the world is indeed flat.

1. There are a bunch of “rights” some gender lobbyists are demanding. These include controlling language and what constitutes acceptable speech, males having rights to enter women only spaces by simply declaring themselves a woman, and certain medical treatments for young people. These are not human rights but demands for those identifying as transgender to have special, unusual privileges that breach long held standards around safety, dignity, common sense and medical safeguarding. It’s worth noting too, that there has been a huge shift of what is meant by transgender. It no longer refers to a tiny group of people who undertake surgical or medical interventions to appear more like the other sex. Rather the category of transgender has expanded to include anyone who chooses to identify as a different gender (of which there are now multiple). Overseas reports indicate that most trans identified people do not take hormones or have surgery.

2. Mana Wāhine Kōrero, a group of indigenous women and associates, write and talk extensively on this notion of transgender ideology as the new form of colonisation.

3. Some transgender people talk of strong feelings that they are born in the wrong body—that their gender identity does not match their biological sex. Almost everyone challenging gender ideology has a great deal of sympathy and sometimes empathy for this uncomfortable experience. Many transpeople also understand this feeling is not literal fact and that there are practical, important reasons to find ways to support and uphold the dignity of the transgender community without disregarding biological reality and women’s hard won rights.

4. You may have noticed this played out in the 2023 census. First a question was asked about one’s gender. 90% of New Zealanders would have thought this meant sex but it actually meant gender identity. There was no option to opt out of the gender identity question. Many of us have no gender identity we simple ARE our sex. On top of that, only a tiny portion of the population have any idea about any of this gender stuff anyway. Later another question was asked about sex at birth (reinforcing the idea that sex can change over a life time). With this misleading approach sex and gender data collected shouldn’t be considered valid. Good accurate data about gender identity is very important. This could have been easily achieved by adding opt-in questions for those who have a gender identity that differs from their sex.

5. Fully Informed is working up to becoming an excellent NZ focused website on this topic. Also see Bernard Lane’s article On the defensive for more data on NZ and puberty blockers.

6. Resist Gender Education is working on this issue in Aotearoa. They are gay-supportive, anti-stereotypes and sympathetic to young people identifying outside of their sex.

7. In line with the redefinition of women adopted by the Ministry for Women, a new Women’s Health Strategy is being developed. A strategy which is grounded in the physical reality of womanhood and women’s unique health needs is an excellent idea. Alas, the main purpose of the Strategy appears to be to expand the definition of womanhood so that it includes anyone who identifies as a woman. Such distortions of reality could mean funding and resources earmarked for women’s health is diverted to cover testicular cancer or fund “life-saving” cosmetic breast augmentation for males who identify as women.

8. This bill was the first cause of the much maligned Speak up for Women.