Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
It’s been a Helen Joyce couple of weeks in New Zealand – and we’re all the better for it.
I am a former member of MSM (mainstream media). At my age I’d probably be a former member anyway, but I gave up on it before my expiry date came round. I gave up on it about five years ago when I saw that every MSM outlet refused to acknowledge what I’d divined was the biggest story of the year, if not the decade, and that was the medicating and mutilating of young people in pursuit of an impossible quest, that of becoming the other sex.
The odd thing about being a journalist is that you often feel thrilled and horrified at the same time. In 2020 I was thrilled I’d met women from outside New Zealand who had educated me about transactivism and gender ideology.
Actually I was both thrilled and alarmed since I instinctively realised, as a former dutiful daughter of the left, that blowing the lid off this story would also blow my leftist cred. Nevertheless I was thrilled I had this story to myself – and horrified because who wouldn’t be when you realise what this ideology means for women and their protected spaces, let alone the medicating of young people?
It seemed to me it was only a matter of time before the story was broken by MSM, even if it was only done in dribs and drabs. So I wasted no time in putting together a detailed pitch in October 2020 to the NZ Listener, a reputable weekly news and arts magazine going back 86 years. The story essentially focused on the medicalisation of children identifying as trans ahead of an important legal decision in Britain scheduled for December. That was the Keira Bell case.
Even though the research on this issue was in its embryonic phase, everything the Cass report highlighted was already signalled back then. So I thought my pitch was both pertinent and timely.
Happily the editor, then Pamela Stirling, readily agreed. I met with her and the chief sub in November to discuss the story, which was growing like Topsy. They encouraged me to write as much as I liked. They would cut, they said. I just want you to know, this almost never happens. Usually you get a strict word limit.
So it’s fair to say I was encouraged by their response.
The editor, chief sub and I had another meeting in early January and they were as supportive as ever. We did have to whisper since we met in the open plan Listener office and I think there was a trans staff member or a staffer with a trans child. I forget. But in any case it was obvious from our hushed conversation that this was a contentious issue.
By late January I submitted three stories (word count over 8000). One explaining what gender ideology was, one on the issue of children and puberty blockers and another on Professor Michael Biggs, a New Zealander who was a whistleblower for the Keira Bell/Tavistock case.
When the stories failed to appear straight away I emailed updated versions, since things were changing fast. The editor was never short of an explanation about why the stories weren’t appearing – other competing stories, a short week, she was away, etc.
In April, about four months after I’d submitted the stories, I got an email from the editor to say I’d be paid for my ‘important work’. Here’s what else she said:
We want to use as much as we can within the context of a slightly wider overall cover feature where Donna Chisholm (a staffer) is also interviewing some endocrinologists and other health professionals. We just want to make it safe for you, and us, to go ahead by beefing up the health context a bit.
I immediately expressed concern and was told:
We are running your piece – it’s important work. But we want to accompany it with an interview by Donna Chisholm with health experts, as she often does for us, to expand on the risks. We are aware that we need to present all of this in a usual Listener context of a social issue/health story so that it gets the full recognition it deserves as an important issue.
Confused by the conflicting explanations (my work would either be used within a larger story or accompanied by interviews), I emailed seeking clarity. I urged the editor not to worry about my safety.
Funnily enough in a phone call to me earlier she’d expressed concerns about Chisholm’s viewpoint since Twitter revealed her to be woke.
Eight months after my pitch, the story finally appeared but not as I’d written it. Less than 400 words of the original 8000 appeared. My name was listed at the bottom as a contributor to the main piece. The published story was essentially a distorted defence of medicalising children. Neither the Biggs story nor the primer story on gender ideology appeared. To their credit, what did remain was a breakout story about a de-transititioner.
In many respects I wasn’t entirely surprised given the previous communications I’d had with them and also the fact that they hadn’t, as is usual, sent me a draft of the laid-out piece for me to check. Still, I cried.
I was upset that such a big important story, agreed by the editor that it was big and important, had been torpedoed. Obviously if the Listener was too scared to run it, other media wouldn’t touch it. My reputation had been scorched as a result. The word was out among friends in RNZ and elsewhere that I was a Terf. That was when that was still a slur and not a badge of pride.
I’ll never know exactly why the editor bailed when she’d been so supportive from the get-go and it was clear to me that she understood the issues. But I later learned that a friend of hers, another journo, was transing her child and eventually appeared in a Sunday TV doco featuring her daughter taking puberty blockers (stunning and brave).
I’m sure you’ve all found that so often, when there’s an unexplained refusal to accept reality, there is a personal connection somewhere not far away. People readily sacrifice reality for relationships. I get it. I’ve lost many friends since I pursued this issue.
I often wonder what might have happened had that story run virgo intacta and had the media done its job and exposed the mental illness that is trans, but I have to stop myself. It does nothing for my peace of mind and doesn’t change anything.
Since then I’ve dedicated myself to attempting to sound the alarm about this pernicious ideology and also the suppression of free speech which accompanies it and other issues which are ‘no-go zones.’
At first I had a few stories published in MSM, after much hustling and pitching, but I eventually grew tired of that and this year, birthed my own media Tamagotchi – this substack.
In a way I’m almost grateful for this issue since it well and truly propelled me out of MSM, and opened my eyes to other media no-go zones (race, climate change, immigration). I’ve talked with Maree Buske about this, about how trans is your ticket out of the Matrix.
Weirdly, after all this time, little has shifted in MSM, despite tanking audience/reader numbers. Those in the media don’t seem to realise why it’s happening and are unwilling to talk to anyone like me who could tell them.
It’s unfortunate that this issue has been coded as right-wing, but then, to many people in the media, so is free speech.
I remember talking to non-woke American philosopher Peter Boghossian about what to do about captured universities. His view was that changing from within was too hard and unlikely to succeed. Best to abandon them. Start again he said.
I feel the same way about the media. I’m waiting with indecent glee for the whole shooting box to collapse. And for new media to arise from the ashes.
Just a word on my Tamagotchi aka Substack. I do my best to adhere to journalistic standards, fact-checking, etc, although I really really miss subs.
But a couple of months ago I fell foul of Netsafe, a publicly funded NGO to promote safe and responsible use of online technology. They cited a complaint about a column I had written which apparently came under the Harmful Digital Communications Act. The column features people who have promoted gender ideology in NZ and the complainant is, I gather, a serial complainer. I had apparently misgendered a man who has a legal certificate to say he’s a female. I argued that I’d accurately sexed him.
In any event, Netsafe encouraged me to remove the offending text, which I did since I was going away the following week and didn’t want a trail of litigious emails following me.
Obviously I’m back now so I’ve put the text back up with an explanation of what happened. The FSU are in my corner, bless them. Go and read it and follow what may well turn out to be a tedious saga.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
