Table of Contents
Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
Western Springs College in Auckland was woke before woke was even a thing.
I know because both my children went there. The inner city school draws its students from the uber liberal enclaves of Grey Lynn, Ponsonby and Westmere and it has long prided itself on its embrace of all things progressive.
Then it was where the children of journalists, television producers, musicians, teachers and social workers went to school, because we were still in an era where such folk could afford to live in this part of town. Now I expect you’ve got to be something in software, marketing or finance to pay the eye-watering mortgages these suburbs currently command.
It’s been 13 years since my youngest was there but I still remember WSC displaying its cool cred by not having a uniform and allowing teens to dress up however they liked – emo, goth or even as Elvis Presley if that was their thing. Cosplay, larping, whatever – go for it. As well, there was a feminist club (started by a male student), a Māori immersion unit and a marae. The school has always been big on fostering creativity and the arts.
So far, so achingly good.
Imagine my dismay then when I saw on Resist Gender Education’s Substack a copy of a message to WSC teachers suggesting that a “gentle kōrero” may be needed to bring students into line with its new policy of letting students choose their sports sex category. Trans students were allowed to compete under M or F at school athletics day.
“It is their choice,” says the message but they must let their whānau teacher know. It acknowledges that if they qualify for outside the school competition, it comes under an external body which requires them to compete under their birth gender.
Apart from the tiresome Manglish rearing its patronising head (predictably the school has a Māori moniker – Ngā Puna o Waiōrea – which is bound to eventually replace its current Anglo name), I am appalled by this directive for so many reasons.
Logic first and foremost. Since no human can change sex and it is impossible to be born in the wrong body, this ruling makes no sense. WSC is allowing feelings to trump facts. It is affirming a delusion which might not matter if it didn’t impinge on other students, namely girls.
WSC is discriminating against its female students by failing to protect their rights under the Human Rights Act. Section 49 of the Human Rights Act states that exclusion of an individual from any sporting event is permitted where “strength, stamina, or physique of competitors is relevant”.
But desperate to be seen as inclusive, WSC is suffering from what Save Women’s Sports Australasia’s Ro Edge calls “the inclusion delusion”. When you include males in sports, you exclude females. There is plenty of evidence to show that male physical advantage is present right from birth. We also know that many of the teens who identify as trans are often gay if left to go through puberty naturally. Some are autistic.
In an interview on the Platform this week, Edge described the WSC suggestion of a “gentle kōrero” with students as gaslighting any girl who might have concerns. This suggests that if she does express any misgivings, she will be regarded as a bigot.
Edge said stats show there is already a dramatic drop-off in teen girls’ participation in sport so anything that puts them off should be resisted. Last year she learned about two girls attending a school in rural Waikato who had been selected to go to the inter-school athletics competition for the first time. But in the meantime a boy identifying as a girl had a faster time so one of the girls had to stay back. A year later the two girls asked the principal whether this policy would alter. On being told nothing had changed, they simply stayed home on school athletic’s day.
On WSC’s website it boasts that last year the college had its first mixed gender netball team. Big whoop.
But Edge said clearly there are teachers at WSC unhappy with this directive since a private message to teachers has gone viral.
My attempts to interview the principal about this policy have not succeeded but I’m hoping parental concern will prompt him to front up.
Finally I’m appalled that a school that once prided itself on being ahead of the curve, or at least cresting the wave with all the right-on causes, is so out-of-touch that it is championing a cause that has long since lost legitimacy. The tide is well and truly out on trans. Someone tell them before their progressive credentials are totally trashed.
It’s the old horseshoe theory of politics in action, you know the one put about by a French philosopher. Of course. This theory describes how far-left and far-right political extremes often resemble each other more than either does the moderate centre, with the spectrum bending like the ends of a horseshoe coming close together (rather than being opposites on a straight line).
WSC has gone so far left it now might as well be far right – so deeply and thoroughly misogynistic, homophobic and authoritarian are the tenets of trans-activism. I’m sure that wasn’t their intention but it is the outcome.
All is not lost though. If they really want to be in the vanguard of all that is holy and kind, course correction is simple. Ditch trans-activism. Stick to advocating for gay teens and girls. Do this and they can’t go wrong.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
