Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
Under the previous Labour government, gender ideology became a state-sponsored, quasi-religion in New Zealand.
Last week we learned that taxpayers had funded a charity called Fight Against Conspiracy Theories (FACT) Aotearoa, a group whose stated aim is to counter misinformation. Among their list of concerns are groups questioning gender ideology. Anyone challenging this unverifiable belief system is labelled a “conspiracy theorist” who is harming the LBGTQIA community and “Aotearoa New Zealand’s social cohesion”.
Funding of $50,000 for FACT came from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) through their Countering and Preventing Violent Extremism fund in 2023. They also received $10,000 from InternetNZ. Most of the DPMC money has not been spent and it is understood it has been returned.
FACT’s website lists five false conspiracy theories about gender ideology. All are foolish but false conspiracy theory number four is the worst. It is in effect a defence of medicalising young gender confused, gender non-conforming and/or gay people as well as being a defence of the pharmaceutical industry.
Number four asserts that critics believe that gender ideology fosters depopulation and promotes the great replacement theory. That is the idea that LBGTQIA people are replacing normal people to reduce the population and make the public more compliant to ‘them’. We are told this nonsense underpins many conspiracy theories and is fundamental in far-right ideology. As a long-time TERF, I’d like to reassure readers that I’ve never heard or read anyone making this argument.
But FACT goes further. It states that puberty blockers have been used for decades and are safe and reversible. The example they use is the use of puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty. This is true. Children displaying precocious puberty do have their puberty ‘paused’ by these drugs. However, as they age, the drugs are withdrawn and they go on to experience normal puberty.
Never before has the medical profession used puberty blockers to pause puberty followed by giving the young person cross-sex hormones, that is the hormones of the opposite sex. Research shows that almost 100 per cent of children on puberty blockers will go on to cross-sex hormones. The experimental nature and risks of this treatment were examined in the highly regarded Cass Review. The Cass criticisms led to the UK and many other nations restricting or banning the use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoric children.
FACT says young children in New Zealand are not given “cross-gender” hormones since they need to be 16 before they can be prescribed. Frankly, a 16-year-old who has had their puberty paused is even more of a child than most of their peers.
Anke Richter, a writer who created DeCult NZ, and Stephen Judd, the president of InternetNZ, are behind FACT Aotearoa. Judd is their spokesperson and a trustee. His involvement is especially concerning. InternetNZ is meant to be a not-for-profit, membership-based organization that aims to ensure a better internet for all New Zealanders. It manages the .nz domain name space and is involved in internet policy, public education, and community engagement.
But this year InternetNZ proposed changes to its constitution that the Free Speech Union (FSU) said would make the organisation “less democratic, more ideological, and primed for censorship”.
After declaring itself “systemically racist”, InternetNZ proposed that they must centre the treaty, that the internet had to be “safe” and free from “harm”, that it be co-governed with Māori, that members must adhere to a code of conduct, the number of elected members drop from nine to five and half the board should be appointed. At least a third of the board must be Māori.
The FSU called these proposed changes “undemocratic, ideological, and censorship-prone”. They have nominated two candidates to the InternetNZ Council and drafted amendments to safeguard free speech online.
Judd put out a press release in response to the FSU accusations reassuring members that their proposed changes are merely organisational governance and would not change how domain names are managed or give InternetNZ any expanded powers over domain names. Interestingly, since the FSU’s concerns were raised, Judd reported that membership of InternetNZ has tripled to more than 1,000 members.
Given Judd’s involvement with both InternetNZ and FACT Aotearoa, it’s fair to assume he is hostile to gender critical views (otherwise known as reality) and may be keen to censor them. Gender critical views could easily be cast as ‘unsafe’ and ‘harmful’ by a trans activist.
After all, anyone espousing reality is an apostate in the church of gender, aka a conspiracy theorist in the FACT world.
InternetNZ is responsible for managing nearly 750,000 domain names ending in .nz, supporting approximately $150 million in daily economic activity. Revenue raised from this work is invested back into community initiatives, with $1.2 million distributed to community organisations in the 2023–24 financial year.
As well FACT is now under scrutiny for potentially breaching the Charities Act by campaigning against NZ First in the last election.
InternetNZ’s agm is at the end of this month and voting by members has already begun.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
