Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
Anyone hoping that NZ Police might have learned from mistakes made at the Posie Parker mobbing at Albert Park, Auckland, two years ago, had their hopes dashed this week.
In case you’ve memory-holed it along with all the other gender crimes New Zealand women and girls have been subjected to in recent years, here’s a recap. In February the IPCA reported that police acknowledged their findings in relation to the protest, which said:
[O]ur initial risk assessment could have been better. We also accept that our response on the day when protestors surrounded the rotunda was inadequate.
That’s a polite way of saying that the police were nowhere to be seen when 2000 enraged gender ideologues mobbed 200 gender critical women, resulting in the assault of some, including an older woman by a young male.
Their absence was a signal to those present that the NZ Police support gender ideology, an unevidenced belief system that claims humans can be born in the wrong body and that, with medication and surgery or simply by saying so, they can change sex.
Police support of this quasi-religious belief system was confirmed this week by Let Kids be Kids advocate Penny Marie who exposed the extent to which gender ideology has captured the service. The public learned that the New Zealand Police’s website hosts a document titled “Anti-Transgender Extremism”, funded by government grants, which labels critics of transgender ideology as “genocidal”, “fascist”, and “Nazi.”
The document was produced by Gender Minorities Aotearoa, a gender ideological charity receiving substantial taxpayer funding.
In the same week I finally got answers to questions I’d been asking since mid-July. The questions arose after a UK ruling which found that supporting Pride events meant the police force is not impartial. Northumbria Police was taken to court by a gender-critical lesbian who said it was wrong for officers to take part in events that promoted gender ideology.
In his ruling, the judge, Mr Justice Linden, said it was important that police forces were not perceived as taking sides in contentious social debates. He said:
The fact that the officers had publicly stated their support for transgender rights by taking part in the 2024 march would be likely to give the impression that they may not deal with the matter fairly and impartially.
Following the ruling, Northumbria Police were ordered to cease marching in Pride Parades or wearing clothing, carry flags or use accessories that express support for pro-gender LGBTQI groups.
This prompted me to ask if NZ Police would look at doing the same. We already know NZ Police have embraced the rainbow. In early 2023 they launched a dedicated Rainbow 101 online training module supported by Diversity Liaison Officers (DLO) and internal inclusion leads. Pre-2022 there were about 65 DLOs. By late 2023 that number had swelled to 140. At about the same time, the Next Genderation employee-led network, was formed to provide internal support to gender-diverse police staff and allies.
NZ Police also employs two known trans officers. Senior Sergeant Rhona Stace (male to female) serves as Senior Prevention Partnerships Advisor – Inclusion and is prominently featured in police’s Rainbow 101 training rollout. He is not alone. In 2005 Constable Sarah Lurajud transitioned from male to female while serving with the Christchurch CIB. He is reported as the only police officer in New Zealand known to have undergone a sex change during his service.
As well, NZ Police employ a female to male in the Emergency Communications Centre, Taylor Swan, who is also a Diversity Liaison Officer (DLO). DLOs volunteer to support rainbow communities.
Obviously NZ Police have made a huge commitment to be ‘rainbow’ friendly. Those of us who were at Albert Park cannot help but wonder how much this faddish shift in the zeitgeist influenced their decision to abandon women to the angry hordes that day.
So my questions to NZ Police were:
Will NZ Police recognise that supporting Pride etc means the force is not impartial, but has signed up to gender ideology, a contentious, unevidenced belief system?
Will NZ Police cease employing Diversity Liaison Officers?
Will NZ Police cease employing trans officers, given that most older trans are autogynophiles?
Will NZ Police remove all Pride colours from their vehicles?
Before my questions could be answered New Zealand Police required official confirmation from the Platform that I was a bone fide journalist. This was achieved and within minutes I had my answers. Well, answer.
“The answer to all your questions is no,” wrote Elise from the Police Media Team.
Clearly, I’d made it too easy for them, so I asked two more questions: One asking why the NZ Police supports gender ideology given that it is an unproven belief system. The second questioning whether the NZ police force could be regarded as impartial if it supports and promotes this ideology. I await their response and will post it if and when it comes.
Meanwhile in the same week top cop Jevon McSkimming is charged with possessing child sexual exploitation and bestiality material, leading the Platform’s Sean Plunket to fret on air that honourable frontline officers might be tainted by association with their deputy head honcho.
He needn’t have worried. They don’t appear to care what the public thinks.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
