Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
For the first time in living memory no one I knew was interested in the Pride Parade. It’s just up the road so attending didn’t require huge commitment but even locals I knew were meh.
My friend Peter said he’d seen enough drag queens on Segways to last a lifetime, my son groaned and said “that OTT rubbish” and a 20-something male friend actually laughed at the prospect that I might think he was interested.
So, because it was easy and also because I’m plagued by morbid curiosity, I walked the dog to the corner of our street and stood next to some excitable young women, jiggling, whooping and waving their phones. It worked. They got most of the goodies being handed out from the predictable line-up of political parties, public services and corporates desperate to be seen as gay, queer friendly. At least some people were having fun.
Honestly? Peter was right. The whole thing was screamingly dull. I could barely raise any antipathy for the idiots in Labour proudly walking down the road with a huge trans flag. That’s what happens when it feels you’re living in Pride month every day. My eyeballs need a break from glitter and rainbows and tragic men in women’s dresses. We all do.
Little did I know I was in the wrong spot. If I’d stood further up the road, I might have caught some of the only newsworthy action of the evening. A cluster of Destiny church and Man-Up blokes in black, fresh from protesting drag story hour in libraries in Te Atatū, blocked the road, chanted, performed a flash haka and were generally a vigorous display of masculine revulsion at what was coming at them. A line of police separated them from the rainbow throng.
This caught the attention of international terfs on twitter. Billboard Chris said “Young men in New Zealand are all done with the rainbow parades.” Oli London reported that it was Māori men taking a stand… “against an LGBTQI+ parade pushing gender ideology in Auckland, New Zealand”.
And guess who was outraged? The same people who ginned up the crowd at the Let Women Speak Event in Albert Park, Auckland, in March 2023. The same people who talked about displays of love and inclusion at the sight of 2000 shrieking banshees mobbing 200 women who wanted to hear Kellie-Jay Keen speak while the police looked on. The same people who didn’t say a word when an older woman was punched in the head by a young male.
Chris Hipkins even had the gall to tweet, “Real men don’t barricade women and children. Real men don’t threaten and intimidate. Real men don’t preach hate. Real men DO show respect, compassion and love. Real men are comfortable enough in who they are to celebrate the diversity of others. @Brian Tamaki you are just a boy.”
Bet that felt good to send out.
But those of us who were at the March 2023 Albert Park event haven’t forgotten.
If the police can be the thin blue line between Tamaki’s men and the Rainbow crowd, then they could have been the thin blue line between the Rainbow thugs and a few defenceless women.
As it happens, some of us who were there are waiting on a report about our complaints about the lack of police action. The Independent Police Complaints Authority reports that it should be available at the end of this month. It’s been almost two years.
The IPCA might think that after all this time that the heat has gone out of this incident but they’d be wrong. New Zealanders do not support gender ideology. All the glitter in the world can’t dress up this pig.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
