In a genuinely liberal democracy, a “human rights commissioner” might be expected to defend free speech without question, and no less a woman’s right to speak in public without being attacked by a baying, violent mob.
But “Aotearoa New Zealand” is not a genuinely liberal democracy. That fact has been brutally demonstrated to the world, after a vicious lynch mob screamed, spat at, and beat a group of women who tried to exercise their right to free speech.
And Paul “Rhyming Slang” Hunt, “Aotearoa New Zealand’s” human rights commissioner was right on their side.
I attended the Wellington pro-trans rally because I wanted to demonstrate support for trans friends, colleagues, and communities.
Kellie-Jay Keen is a pro-woman activist. Hunt openly admits to standing with those who oppose women’s rights.
For generations, trans people have been ignored, silenced, harassed, abused, and denied their human rights. Criticisms and attacks trigger their deep sense of vulnerability and anger.
This is the same old chestnut that trannies and their creepy enablers trot out, every time: if we don’t pander to the every screeching demand of the men in dresses, they’ll get hurty feelings. Well, so what? Contrary to the narrative, trannies aren’t being wantonly “genocided”: as the statistics show, they’re far less likely than the general population to be murdered. And if they are, it’s almost without exception because they choose dangerous lifestyles of prostitution and drug use.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s brief visit to Aotearoa New Zealand generated complex human rights issues.
No, it didn’t. It generated a very, very simple question: are women free to speak their mind in New Zealand? The trans lynch mob answered that one unambiguously with their fists and boots.
Hunt trots out even more lies and obfuscations to try and justify his untenable position.
The right to freedom of expression is a vital pillar of our democracy. We should keep in mind the late Moana Jackson’s remark, “No one’s exercise of free speech should make another feel less free.”
Neither should we forget the link between transphobia and colonisation. In response to last weekend’s events, Tina Ngata reminded us, “Transphobia was brought here on a boat.”
Maori culture was even more brutally gender-segregated than Western culture when it arrived in New Zealand. Misappropriating the old Maori word for “close friend of the same sex” doesn’t change that. All it shows is that Hunt is of the stunted, coarse type of modern mind that is unable to distinguish between philos and eros. He probably thinks Frodo and Sam were gay, too.
And you can’t have an each-way-bet, Rhyming: either free speech is free, or it isn’t. If someone’s exercise of free speech offends someone else — well, tough titties. If you want to be a voting citizen in a democracy, you have to put on your big-boy pants and deal with the fact that not everyone else is going to agree with you. Some will even call you mean names. Suck it up.
The antidote of free speech sometimes works, but sometimes it doesn’t.
Bollocks. It works, every time. Name one time free speech wasn’t an answer to someone else’s free speech. Name one time the people shouting down free speech were the good guys.
Also, many human rights are subject to justified limitations, including under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
Have you ever read New Zealand’s Bill of Rights Act, and what it says about free speech? Do you know New Zealanders’ rights?
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.
Then there’s this clanger:
In Auckland and Wellington, we saw thousands of people rejecting Keen-Minshull’s falsehood that trans people are a danger to women.
It was a hopeful show of leadership by, and solidarity with, the trans community.
NZ Herald
In fact, they demonstrated in spades Keen’s truism that trans people are a danger to women. They demonstrated it by screaming abuse at women, by expressing their wish to kill women, by assaulting women with objects, by punching women repeatedly in the head.
That is what New Zealand’s so-called “human rights commissioner” calls a “hopeful show”.
Shame on you, Paul Hunt: shame on you.
