Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
My brief political career came to a crashing end last weekend.
The Women’s Rights Party (WRP) polled no higher than it did in 2023, our first election, which is to say we barely registered numerically. Not surprising. I personally know about half a dozen former WRP voters who couldn’t bring themselves to select us again since they were so worried about the left bloc getting in.
But votes cast are not the only measure of success. Candidates spoke to hundreds of people, made some tremendous ads and helped raise the profile of this vital issue. Also, thanks to the encouragement of co-founder and co-leader Jill Ovens, some of us learned that we were capable of far more than we had thought.
So when the results came in I wasn’t smarting that I wasn’t going into parliament, unlike Chris Bishop, Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee. Frankly, I was relieved. What a hellscape that place must be and what a punishment to have to be there. Imagine knowing you were going to be stuck in a damp insular city populated by overpaid civil servants Who Know Better, spending your days being pursued by media wolfhounds intent on bringing you down. Honestly? I’d rather gargle razor blades.
Having said that, I went down to Wellington for the election and had a wonderful time. Not because it was one of those rare ‘Wellington on a good day’ locals bang on about (nothing says their weather is shite more than that faux jaunty claim) but because I met my people. Disagreeable Bigots. Lots of them.
In another age I was known for hosting election parties at my house because I had the biggest television and a lot of friends. Now people complain that the same television is too small and my friends, being of a left persuasion, have melted like snow in summer sun. Who knew they were religious zealots and me an apostate?
So off to Wellington I went, which is a bit batty I know. Might as well search for a conscience in a snake pit. But the HQ of Woke is also the HQ of new media, the Platform, where disagreeable bigots gather online to be informed and vent. Basically the lost souls of the current mediascape.
At first blush the people gathered at the Dockside Restaurant looked remarkably ordinary, more blokes than I was used to, mainly but not exclusively white, and many on the older side. They came from as far north as Auckland and as far south as Invercargill and they represented every strata of society. Among them was a support worker from Huntly who had taken the bus down to Wellington for the party. Also a plumber, former teacher, manager, therapist, farmer, lawyer, orthopaedic surgeon as well as people well-off enough to have their own airplane and fly to the event from the South Island.
What all these people had in common was their willingness to reject the pieties of polite society. They were stout enough and smart enough to handle truth and honesty. That’s how I knew, without asking, that they were all sex realists.
As for the hosts, Sean Plunket is as immense as his persona, Leah Panapa looked glam, Bella is small and cute, Kelly as down-to-earth as she sounds and, to my great regret, I never clocked the famous Mr Fixit, Josh.
But the person many of us were waiting for was the man at the centre of a media storm that week – Michael Laws, Platform host and New Zealand First candidate. For someone capable of stirring up such a massive national hornet’s nest, in person he is remarkably small and elfin, a little shy even, yet defiantly sporting a ridiculous mullet.
I’d spent the week listening to women, some friends, some in the media, excoriating the man for comments he’d made about a female Opportunity party candidate. He had described a type of woman familiar to me, the censorious commissar of acceptable opinion. Joan as Police Woman. But he’d thrown in a tasteless remark about how she might look after sex. Ill-advised maybe, but hardly a hanging offence.
A friend I debated this with that week was sure his wife and daughters would have been mortified by his soliloquy. I doubt that. His wife was at the party. I spoke to her briefly about it and I could tell she wasn’t in the least embarrassed by her husband. As Bella said to Sean, “He’s said a lot worse.” One daughter was a little piqued but when she observed the pile-on, she softened. I told Laws that I’d met a woman who had intended to vote ACT but she was so dismayed by the public reaction to his commentary, she ended up voting New Zealand First. He said several people had said similar things to him.
Anyone who has listened to Michael Laws narrate his eloquent editorials will know that he is erudite, thoughtful, acute but, occasionally, a bit weird about women. You can condemn him for that if you like and, by all means, feel free to give him a verbal bollocking. But what I appreciated about the women at the Platform party was that they were prepared to see the bigger picture. They took into account Laws’ extensive public service and knowledge of local and national government, the fact that he’s been a solo father to three children and his astute insights. Whatever his failings, you cannot deny that the man is an incredibly knowledgeable member of the commentariat.
Actually a generosity of spirit was what I enjoyed most about the people I met that night. For instance I met a woman who lost a job she dearly loved as a dean in a girl’s school as a result of the vaccine mandates during Covid. To this day she has never been vaccinated and she has never got her job back. This former school dean now works as a cleaner. Sean Plunket routinely refers to people like her as ‘cookers’ and, more often than not, is just plain rude to them. What was she doing here? How come she wasn’t offended by the gobby Platform host? She shrugged. “Sometimes you have to put up with the rubbish to get the good stuff. If you iron out all the wrinkles, you iron out the personality.”
Lately the world seems to have lost that kind of largesse, as individuals retreat to their political silos of choice, courtesy the internet. Maybe it’s time to retrieve the ghost of Christmases past, the kind which featured ghastly uncles and an array of idiot rellies. I grew up with Dutch uncles who were emissaries from another era and another culture altogether. They hailed from a time and place where adults, especially men, ruled the roost so they felt free to dispense advice to the younger generation on everything from work to weight to hairstyles. And none of us dared object! In public at least. Now we’re all a bit scared of our children so we keep our opinions to ourselves because, you know, they might disagree and God knows what would happen then. Estrangement is a thing.
The Dutch of today are no longer like those old Dutch uncles. I know from encounters with family and also with the half dozen Dutch people who stayed at the same Wellington bed and breakfast last weekend. To a man and woman, they were all constitutionally genial and moderate, not wanting to offend. The word that best describes them is ‘merry’.
My friend, Jane Tolerton, who operates the Booklovers B&B is equally circumspect and good-natured but then dealing with guests is her business. Also she lives in Wellington. Can you imagine sharing an opinion that didn’t meet the test of that city’s Censorious Thought Police? But she’s my friend so, of course, she is not entirely vanilla. Wisely, her heretical views are largely restricted to the 19th century.
Jane is the author of nine history books including Ettie: A Life of Ettie Rout (1992), Convent Girls (1994) and Make Her Praises Heard Afar (2017). She is currently working on a book (well, she’s fizzing with ideas and working on three books but this is the current obsession) aiming to rehabilitate the critical role of Harriet Morison and the Women’s Franchise League in the suffrage movement in this country. She argues that Kate Sheppard’s role has been wildly over-stated.
This book is due out in 2028 and will, I predict, be controversial. If nothing else, I’m hoping it will prompt us to revive the significance and forgotten details of the suffrage movement. Why New Zealand hasn’t got a museum dedicated to the women (and men) who achieved the world’s first universal female franchise, I don’t know. Maybe because New Zealand is also the country that has allowed men to become women and insists upon sex-denying care for children.
Which brings me back to my brief political career. While it’s over and out for me, the aims of the Women’s Rights Party go on.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
