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Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
The most important, and probably the only thing, to remember about New Zealand media on the trans issue is that they are constitutionally incapable of covering it fairly.
Two reasons: first, because they are paid-up members of the gender borg. The cultural capital of believing absurdities is still high enough for the adherents to maintain this fiction. Indeed, it is essential to their view of themselves as morally superior beings. Thus, admitting they’ve made a mistake is impossible. It will surely cause a system malfunction, not to mention expulsion from their social group.
Second, they hate the current government and anything the government supports, mainstream media reflexively detests.
They are not alone. The views of media walahs are generally shared by academia and the public sector. It’s why I call them stenographers of the regime.
But as the Trans Titanic founders on the iceberg of reality, it’s almost gruesomely fascinating to see how they are coping with information that contradicts their core beliefs.
News from the gender beat in the last fortnight has been a challenge. First, the UK has indefinitely paused their puberty blocker trial, a decision which impacts events here, since our own pause on puberty blocker prescription is dependent on the results of the UK trial.
Online media outlet, The Spinoff ran a wah wah story by Alex Casey who chronicled the fears of the ‘gender diverse’ community. Even so, Casey’s story was inadvertently comical. Children who had been ‘glowing’ before in their new identities, are now coming undone because they are ‘fragile little butterflies’ and this would ‘destroy a magical part of their soul.’
These observations were made by teachers who clearly have little faith in the resilience of their pupils. Er, no, not teachers. The Spinoff calls them educators. What’s that about? Higher status? Or are they unqualified? I have no idea. But if adults like this are reinforcing young people’s deranged fantasies, it’s hardly a surprise they feel panicky and afraid.
These professional mental illness enablers say things like:
“It’s about the joy on students’ faces when we can just make the littlest changes to support their identity.”
“When we can update their name on the system, when we can change their pronouns, when we can help them communicate to their teachers who they are.”
Casey did reference Speak Up For Women (SUFW), who supported the ban, but felt the need to explain that SUFW only want biological females recognised as women and girls. Fancy. What horrible bigots.
It was of some comfort to learn that all the wobbly students and ‘educators’ hailed from Wellington, a city we all know that lost its collective mind to the left’s most insane ideas a long time ago. It is to be hoped that less progressive locales will have retained a fragile enough grip on reality to know there are only two sexes and that no one can change sex.
To bolster her rickety story, Casey talked to hand-picked medical professionals who shared the unwell anxieties of the young but, once again, it was a teacher who weighed in with the worst case scenarios of self-harm and suicide. Truly, nothing is off-limits for a believer.
Cue interview with unstable young person, in this case a young woman thrilled to finally be on testosterone. She loves her new lowered voice and calls it ‘life-saving’. Enough with the scare tactics. Someone please tell these people there is no evidence to support the risk of suicide.
At any rate, thus drugged up, she is the happiest she’s ever been in her body. This accords with the only interview I’ve ever done with a young woman on T for gender dysphoria. She reported that it felt amazing at first, a complete rush, so much energy. But she may find, as my interviewee did, that it wears off eventually. As it happened, the woman I interviewed was left with a deep voice and facial hair even when she desisted.
If the spectre of suicide and self-harm wasn’t enough to persuade the reader that protecting children is the road to perdition, Casey summoned up the culture wars and government over-reach. Big ups to her for managing to heave the entire shooting box of despicable right-wing horrors at the story in the hope that some ick must stick.
The second news item from the gender beat in the last fortnight was when the government announced it would not be proceeding with the recommendations of the Law Commission, which attempted to encode gender and gender identity into the Human Rights Act.
Independent digital current affairs outlet, Newsroom, employs perennially woke advocate Marc Daalder, so histrionics were in order. Human rights protections for transgender Kiwis not a priority – Govt shouted the headline.
A Daalder gender rights story wouldn’t be complete without input from the blue-haired, disabled Human Rights Commission rainbow rights spokesperson Prudence Walker, who is marginally less qualified for the position than your local hairdresser or butcher. At least they both have a skill. I’ve written about Prudence before and frankly I marvel she is still employed at the HRC.
An appalled reader wrote to Newsroom about the article. At first the letter wasn’t published but it has since appeared. Here are some of her comments:
Of course people who ‘identify’ as the opposite, both or no sex should be protected from discrimination in housing, goods and services. But women fought long and hard for single sex spaces and services and these are now under threat. The hard fought-for protection for same sex attracted people – gays and lesbians – are also under threat when ‘gender self ID’ overrules the category of sex. The Law Commission report is riddled with such confusion.
There has been little or no coverage of the recent UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of sex. Please do your homework, and consider all sides of this issue, including critiques from women of the ‘left’ and lesbian groups such as LAVA.
Despite such media clangers, I remain confident that the Trans Titanic is on the rocks and even a little optimistic about the dismal chroniclers. For instance Stuff actually reported the UK puberty blocker pause and implications for New Zealand in reasonably neutral prose.
As well, Radio New Zealand, the state-media outlet that had hitherto rarely covered anything about this issue, actually interviewed Dame Hilary Cass on 21 February. That I could practically taste the moral torment in the voice of interviewer, Susie Ferguson, as she slowly and deliberately framed her anguished questions to sound at once like an ally but also a probing journalist, didn’t take away from the fact that the interview wasn’t half bad.
She did, of course, say the magic words ‘assigned sex’ and wondered in painful, cautious tones about the toxicity of the debate. Dame Cass’ response was that the hardest message to get across was that there are some gender questioning young people who will never be comfortable in their natal bodies and the only way for them to be comfortable and thrive in later life is through a medical transition. This she described as a grey area and complained that social media doesn’t like grey.
So I was not surprised when Dame Cass later came out in favour of the UK puberty blocker trial and criticised the medicines regulator for blocking it. She clearly believes there is a tiny minority of gender confused children who would benefit from using puberty blockers.
Not for the first time am I reminded of George Orwell’s sentiments on the intelligentsia. He famously noted that certain ideas are so absurd that only “intelligent” people could believe them.
So, yes, she’s a hard road, sinking the gender Trans Titanic. But, honestly, she is going down.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
