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Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
Is this the year New Zealand women will have to take legal action to define sex and thus their rights?
Irish women’s rights activist Helen Joyce recommended slaying the genderborg carefully and methodically, in particular employing legal action and polls, when she visited New Zealand last year. Not as exciting as taking a flamethrower to the TRAs and their arguments, but way more effective. Even if we both agreed that privately we often felt like taking the flamethrower option.
So far it’s working for the Brits. Most notably, last year the UK Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, the terms sex, man, and woman refer to biological sex rather than acquired gender identity (e.g., a transgender woman). That landmark decision on the interpretation of sex in UK equality law was won by For Women Scotland.
Their win and the legal precedent it set was referenced in the decision this year at the Employment Tribunal when seven nurses succeeded in a harassment and indirect sex discrimination claim against their NHS Trust after it required them to share a female changing room with a transgender woman (biological male). The tribunal found that forcing biological women to share facilities with someone born male violated their dignity and amounted to unlawful harassment and discrimination.
In New Zealand we have no similar breach of women’s spaces by a male to draw on but Substacker Katrina Biggs of A B’Old Woman has been on the case of her local council, the Christchurch City Council, that allows men in women’s spaces if they identify as trans. For example, men who identify as being a woman, are welcome in female-only sessions, such as “Women’s Wednesdays” at Te Pou Toetoe: Linwood Pool.
Biggs points out that Employment NZ says workplaces “should” allow it while the Human Rights Commission does not advocate excluding transgender people from gendered spaces solely on the basis of gender identity – rather it emphasises protection against discrimination for all, including trans people. But even they say the law could be clearer.
There is currently no publicly compiled national register of councils with explicit ‘gender identity‑based access’ rules for women‑only spaces. Councils like Auckland operate under general human rights frameworks without specific written policies, but this framework permits people to use the facilities matching their gender identity.
Biggs is convinced legal action to clarify women’s sex-based rights is necessary, given the ideological capture of our institutions.
The Women’s Right’s Party NZ (WRP) says that Employment New Zealand, in its ‘Discrimination Against Transgender People’, incorrectly states that transgender people are protected under the HRA (Human Rights Act) from unlawful discrimination on the grounds of gender identity in the workplace.
The WRP points out that there are 13 protected grounds of discrimination under the HRA. ‘Gender’ or ‘gender identity’ are not one of these. On the other hand, ‘sex’ is a prohibited ground of discrimination in the HRA.
They say that sex-based rights for women guaranteed in the HRA must be respected in policies and practices, such as the right to single-sex spaces. The WRP calls on the government to make it clear in the HRA that such rights also apply in employment.
One group who have already embarked on legal action to defend their right to hold sex realist views is Lesbian Action for Visibility Aotearoa (LAVA). This small group of activists have taken the Wellington Pride Festival to the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT), alleging unlawful discrimination under the Human Rights Act 1993.
In 2021 LAVA applied for a stall space at Wellington Pride’s “Out in the City” event to display a map of Wellington sites important to lesbian history. Wellington Pride later cancelled the stall booking, saying LAVA’s views on sex and gender identity (particularly that “female is not a feeling” and related positions) would make transgender attendees feel unsafe at the event.
The tribunal must decide whether LAVA’s views count as a protected “political opinion” under the Human Rights Act – because discrimination on the basis of political opinion is prohibited. And if so, whether denying LAVA a stall was unlawful discrimination.
The case was filed following failed mediation with the Human Rights Commission. It proceeded to a full hearing before the HRRT in Wellington last year. LAVA awaits their final judgment.
Legal action is costly and time-consuming but to draw a line under this madness, it may be required. Otherwise all the TRAS allies in our institutions will continue to support the poor, vulnerable fetishists who wear womanhood as a costume.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
