The feminist group Speak Up For Women has analysed public submissions to Parliament on the Bill that would allow transgender people to self-identify as female without having to obtain Family Court approval.
SUFW strenuously opposes the legislation, which would enable people who were born male to alter the sex recorded on their birth certificate by simply making a declaration – a radical move that SUFW argues would have serious implications for what were previously women-only spaces such as changing rooms, hostels and women's prisons.
The select committee that originally considered the Bill introduced the contentious self-identification provision after submissions had been heard, though it was far outside the original scope of the legislation.
That shameful abuse of process was belatedly remedied when the proposal was put forward in the form of a supplementary order paper and the public finally got an opportunity to comment. SUFW has sifted through the resulting submissions and the results are revealing.
More than 6500 submissions were analysed and 73 percent were against the change. Only 25 per cent were in favour.
SUFW has had to fight tooth and nail to have its voice heard on gender self-identification. Councils barred the group from using public venues for meetings, online activists bullied Wellington City Council and Go Media into removing a prominent downtown advertising billboard (the offending text, “Woman: adult human female”, was taken straight from the Oxford Dictionary) and the powerful media group NZME, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, refused to accept the group’s advertising.
Whether NZME was intimidated by the aggressive transgender lobby or refused to sell advertising space to SUFW because it supported the Bill isn’t clear, but either way it was a flagrant abuse of free speech that before the onset of the culture wars would have been unthinkable.
The question now is whether the media will do their job and report that public submitters overwhelmingly oppose gender self-identification. Or will SUFW’s summary of the submissions be ignored, just like Curia’s opinion poll showing conclusively that New Zealanders oppose their country being named Aotearoa?
7 comments:
Karl
That a socially regressive, science denying bill like this should make into parliament with full Government support demonstrates how deeply we have fallen into the cultural abyss. At this point one has to ask if there is truly a way back, or if we have truely descended into the 9th level of Dante’s inferno without hope of return.
The same people who elected this Government, who support this dystopia are the same people who populate our mainstream media. Opposition parties are so frightened of them and their ability to recruit public opinion that their timidity renders them impotent.
All credit to the Left. They have succeeded in grasping the robes of cultural and political power, and are now proceeding to create a New Zealand, (sorry Aotearoa) in their own likeness, in their own image. We are heading into uncharted territory and I doubt the outcome will be the utopian dream they imagine.
Brendan has put it very succinctly. Weak opposition, a completely bought and cowed media. The Government is under way to dispose of our obsolete free democracy, and replace it with the communist mecca of Ayo-Teeah-Rower / New Zimbabwe.
Probably the most egregious display of bullying wokeness was the demanded and obeyed removal of the billboard stating the scientific fact "Woman: adult human female"
This denial of scientific reality demonstrates just how far we are moving into Orwell doublespeak.
Thanks Karl, good summary. SUFW appeared on my radar over the censorious Councils' de-platforming their awareness-raising public meetings..I'm in ChCh. Intrigued/irritated I attended their meeting here, hosted by the Woolston WMC, to get a better handle on things. It went without a hitch, though the Q&A was hi-jacked by a student group, a few of whom had loud opinions and positions and whom, wrongly, perceived SUFW to be committing 'violence' and spreading hatred. The aim of SUFW is simple & self-evident...women's rights are threatened by this tiny activist trans minority and its agenda, and they are batting for their 'side'. My own view is even simpler...is a birth cert official data containing biological truth or not? Of course, the arcane sexual/cultural politics here are practically beyond the ken of most folk..I'm less interested in that, a lot less, but it's good to have some idea of the practical & socio-political implications of what Brendan & Doug, above, have remarked on...and support groups who are fighting back for sense and truth. IT's astonishing that MPs like Deborah Russell & Elizabeth Kerekere state that trans- men are women in a biological sense...lunatic fringe stuff to me. But this is what is going on.
You only have to follow The Science if it supports your ideological position.
Meanwhile over at the home of the lunatic fringe, The Guardian, they are tying themselves in knots fretting about the Sarah Everard case and how women need to be protected from men at all costs, whilst at the same time vocally supporting the right of men claiming to be women to be invited into female-only spaces. It boggles the mind, but also explains why they brook no debate and employ censorship and cancellation - their position crumbles as soon as logic is applied.
I must admit to feeling a degree of schadenfreude about the trans lobby using the same sort of tactics against feminists that feminists have used for decades against people that disagree with them.
One thing is certain - the Left will always eat itself.
edit to above from me...in penultimate sentence should read 'trans-women are women in a biological sense'...
Yes, good summary. SU4W have fought courageously and will ultimately prevail. Just, I see nothing 'left' at all about this current trendy capitulation to transgender extremism. As a Marxist my whole adult life I take a materialist world view, which renders nonsense like 'born in the wrong body' inadmissable. What gives the transgender religion it's temporary power I don't know but its foreign to anything socialist in my understanding of the word.
Thank you for tacking this issue. Hopefully it will encourage other journalists to find their spine and do likewise. There are three Bills in this mix - the BDMRR Bill, the Anti-Conversion Therapy Bill and the upcoming Hate Speech Bill. Each one seeks to erode an aspect of the right young people and women now enjoy to safely and bodily integrity. To date there has been no in-depth analysis by media of any stripe of the intention of these policy moves and their likely consequences. Looking at how MP's in the relevant Select Committees have been behaving, it is clear that bullying has been used to silence any challenges.
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