Rodney Hide
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011
It’s a simple question: is a man who wants to be a woman a transvestite or an actual woman?
The gender ideology rampant in our schools, workplaces and our politics is that men who want to be a woman are actual women. Our entire parliament voted unanimously to enable birth certificates to be corrected retrospectively. Both mum and doctor were wrong in declaring baby a boy on what hitherto had been an obvious determinant.
Their mistake is to be corrected, and corrected without acknowledgement that the birth certificate has been changed.
Gender identity now has no relationship to sex. Gender is fluid and a spectrum and we each have a potentially ever-changing gender soul somewhere deep inside us telling us which of many dozen genders we are at any moment.
Our chromosomes and reproductive organs play no role in deciding whether we are a man or a woman or some other identity. We self-declare our identity to be our true selves based not on biology but our gender soul.
Let’s be clear: this is not about inclusivity or being respectful to all men and women however they choose to live their lives.
It’s not about disrespecting men who choose to dress and behave as women. They enjoy the same rights that I do. It’s just the recognition that they are biologically men, not women. We can’t pretend they are women and thereby disrespect all girls and women and destroy their sports and private safe spaces. It’s one or the other. We either accept transvestites as women and erase women, or we respect transvestites as men who choose to live as women and preserve women.
Gender ideology is the idea that there is no definition of a woman or a man. There is no biology. There is no biblical teaching. There is just you, discovering yourself, deep inside. It is about the blurring of any distinction between men and women and, indeed, the erasure of both men and women.
Gender ideology is teaching 8, 9, and 10-year-olds that the label ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ is a social construct and that they need to dig deep and open themselves up to their true self which may be that they are a girl not a boy, or vice versa, or something else entirely.
It is not healthy for young people to be told a basic reality is not true. It is not helpful to have their teachers teach a lie that is obviously a lie to many of them and their parents. It’s destructive to label a little girl who blurts out, “But a girl is a girl” a transphobe to the jeers and taunts of her classmates and teachers.
The children “coming out” at primary school are declared brave and accorded special treatment. They are encouraged to be something other than the sex they are.
Children quickly learn to conform and to keep their thoughts to themselves or to banish them as clearly wrong and their parents are old-fashioned in thinking sex is binary and that there is a difference between XX and XY.
The majority of people appear blissfully unaware of the monstrosity of the problem. Witness National Party leader Chris Luxon saying he was not going to talk about toilets and those worried about who was gaining access to hitherto girls’ and women’s only places were on another planet.
He hasn’t had daughters refusing to go to the toilet all day at school because of the boys or of being confused and alarmed at nine years old by a grown man with a beard appearing in the girls’ changing shed.
There is even a darker feature of gender ideology if that is even possible.
It is the violence exacted on anyone who disagrees. We saw that in Albert Park earlier this year at the rally Let Women Speak where women including the elderly were physically attacked while the police looked on unwilling to help. The women wanting to speak were declared nazi-adjacent by our politicians and media simply for wishing to defend women as women and their spaces. Anyone questioning gender ideology is shouted down loudly and, ultimately, violently.
There is also discipline and re-education for those who refuse to comply.
Here is one example of how deeply gender ideology is embedded in our organisations. Policy Advisor Emma Barraclough was urged by her Ministry of Transport CEO to attend a talk by the advocacy group InsideOUT. The talk at MOT was “How to Connect with the Rainbow Community”.
The flashpoint became whether Emma’s lesbian family member should accept a man who identifies as a woman as a lover. The ideology is firmly yes. These men are women. To not accept them is transphobic and, I assume, nazi-adjacent.
Here is the recorded exchange:
IO: Saying male is part of the problem. We ascribe genders and meanings to bodies that are socially constructed. It’s interesting you focused on penis. It’s part of the narrative that transwomen are a threat to cisgender women.
EB – no, she would say that she is same-sex attracted.
IO: We live and grow up with different generational understandings. That isn’t how our rangatahi [young people] would use that language. We hear from them that they identify as lesbians because they are attracted to women. It’s less about someone’s sex characteristics and more about the gender of that person.
EB: I think that gets rid of same-sex attraction. Which to her – and me – is denying homosexuality. If you are saying that a lesbian should consider having a relationship with someone that is male bodied – I accept that you disagree with that term but if you are distinguishing between gender and sex we can talk about sex characteristics – then that means that lesbians should be open to having relationships with people who are male bodied, which to me seems… [I tailed off here, somewhat lost for words]
IO: Maybe it’s based on your [relative’s] understanding and that’s her journey, her narrative. But transwomen are women so they need to be included in lesbian communities. They are women. But she can have her own preferences. That’s her prerogative. But it’s important that we shouldn’t erase transwomen from those communities because they are women.
Two weeks later Emma received a letter from her Deputy Chief Executive which, following complaint, was backed by her Chief Executive:
“At the presentation … you asked me if I would allow extra time to enable you to ask the presenter a question. I was surprised and disappointed that you chose to use that opportunity to inappropriately challenge the presenter, [Name], and the highly informative presentation she had given us.
It was concerning to me and others that you persistently used language to describe trans women such as ‘male-bodied’, even after [Name] explained that such language is inappropriate and offensive. Since the presentation I have been advised that a number of other attendees were also offended and shocked by your behaviour.”
And there you have it. To say lesbians are same-sex attracted females is inappropriate and offensive. It is wrong-think.
It is wrong-think at the Ministry of Transport, all government departments, all corporations, all universities and all schools.
Our primary school children are taught that they could be born in the wrong body but also that it is inappropriate and offensive to describe someone as male-bodied or female-bodied.
Sex is nothing. Gender is everything. And you get to choose. And every one of our 120 MPs voted to enable each and every one of us to change the sex on our birth certificate to our chosen identity.
The resulting confusion and, indeed, trauma, inflicted on pre-pubescent boys and girls is making our schools toxic. And Mr Luxon doesn’t want to talk about it. And those brave women who do speak out are violently attacked while our police look on proud of their Rainbow Tick and their inclusiveness.
See https://www.speakupforwomen.nz/post/the-day-insideout-came-to-the-ministry-of-transport
