A journalist contacted me today and asked for my comment on three questions. He asked:
‘Why do you really think the gender Self ID Bill has been deferred?’ I replied:
Much of the rhetoric around this issue is fear-mongering smoke and mirrors. Stripped right back, these changes don’t make a skerrick of difference to anyone other than those wishing to correct historical errors on their early-life documentation. We already do this with driver’s licences and passports and this is no different – unless you want to pretend it is, and sadly some people are doing exactly that. The idea that cisgender women will somehow lose rights is, in reality, a nonsense. Transwomen have been around since the beginning of time. We know that, in pre-European times, in Aotearoa, transwomen were respected as equals across society.
So, why has this Bill been deferred? I believe it’s due to a massive failure of governmental courage and faith, and it’s not for the first time.
I fact, the usual consultation period and range of opportunities to make submissions was made available and the time allocated was simply up. The Select Committee submission process is something we do well in Aotearoa and this government has been especially good at it. Until now.
Minister Tracey Martin
I have to say the smallish number of local ‘gender critical feminists’ are well organised and well resourced – from off-shore I suspect, and there are certainly shadowy right wing religious figures somewhere in the mix – which makes for strange bedfellows in my opinion – and UK activists are seriously active in our social media supporting the local group. I’m impressed by their capacity to generate volume superior to their numbers but that shouldn’t change anything. What’s right to do is right to do regardless of the numbers – and transwomen will, of course, never have the numbers to compete unless we include our substantial list of allies – and there are tens of thousands of those.
Despite the noise, this bill really only affects the trans community and its impact will be about the same as that which resulted from the passing of Louisa Wall’s Marriage Equality Bill – a lot of noise prior threatening rents in the fabric of society, people marrying lampposts and the sky falling in – but the reality has been nothing more than a few extra happily married people in the world. Nothing more than that.
The same happened with the passing of Homosexual Law Reform and the same will happen again here. Society will remain intact, a few people will be validated and happy and life will carry on.
I suspect Minister Martin and the cabinet caved in to the pressure from the TERFs and the trolls. They’re extremely effective I’ll give them that. Misguided, but effective. Nothing frightens politicians more than threats to their future and in this case, as always, votes count. They did when the Clark government bailed on Georgina Beyer’s Gender Identity Bill in 2006. Clark had the opportunity to create a human rights legacy for transwomen, for Georgina Beyer and for herself but she chose instead to adopt a dodgy Solicitor General‘s opinion that conflated sex and gender and walked away leaving a massive gap in what could have been our history. And Labour lost the election anyway. In my opinion, the same thing has happened here. This isn’t really about providing more opportunities for consultation, this is simply a matter of political expediency. Which is a shame because who suffers? The most vulnerable.
Georgina Beyer
He then asked ‘how has this made you feel personally?’
It’s made me feel emotions I don’t want to feel – anger, distress, fear, frustration, and more than a hint of torment. It throws me back to the feelings of betrayal I had in 2006.
Ex Prime Minister Helen Clark
I know who I am and what I am, and being told, every day, by those who oppose the Bill, that I am not that, that I am a man, that all I want to do is invade women’s spaces, that I am a danger to women and girls, and that I have no right to exist – in fact that I don’t exist – is rough enough the first time around but we’ve had months, years, of it already and extending the consultation period will make life immeasurably worse.
Identity is fragile for transpeople anyway – society, including families, are not always kind to us – and these constant vicious attacks are beyond the pale. In a country that already has shameful suicide rates, the rates in my community are truly astronomical. Delaying a decision on the bill will enable the vicious rhetoric that is leveled at us all day, every day, to continue and this could well make the situation around safety for transpeople even worse. Labour has rainbow policies that are laudable but the Prime Minister and her cabinet have backed away from them and just at a time when they could have been productively putting them into practice. It’s called putting your money where your mouth is. What transwomen need is a government that will have the courage to create the legacy I spoke of before by standing strong, supporting us, and seeing this through. As they say in football, we need a political finisher who has the guts of a Fran Wilde but I don’t see any such person in our current parliament. I thought the Prime Minister might be one, Jan Logie certainly is, but beyond her, there’s nobody. Backing off as they have done shows a sad lack of courage, a shortfall in commitment, and we cannot continue to function in an environment that constantly promises so much but actually gives us nothing, again and again and again.
Jan Logie
His final question was ‘does it make you worry for transgender folk just starting to deal with the realisation that that is who they are?’
Yes, it does. Transition is complex and there is no one pathway. It’s different for all of us. I’m over 20 years down that path but on day one I had no roadmap at all. I knew who I was and what to do about it but I was so fresh that attacks like these would have destroyed me.
We’re told that the research shows that transwomen are a danger to women and girls in bathrooms. It’s a constant theme but it’s a lie. The truth is there is no such evidence, it simply doesn’t exist. Why? Because it doesn’t happen here. Allowing freer and cheaper access to documentation change will not negatively impact any criminal statistics at all. Nowhere in the world is it an issue. Sure, we have the odd bad apple, all communities do, but there is no data that backs up these outrageous claims. I asked for proof and was given a list of 15 names. Yes, the crimes committed were horrific but the names included American Richard Speck who was not transgender and who committed his awful murders in 1966! The rest of the names were a similar stretch, many from decades ago and most coming from the UK. None were from New Zealand. The misuse of ‘research’ in this way is unforgivable.
We are constantly told by Stand Up For Women (SUFW), the small group of ‘gender critical feminists’ promoting this agenda, that cisgender men will leap to change the gender on their documentation and use this as a means to invade bathrooms and sexually assault women and girls. This is, of course, fear-mongering nonsense, because if a man wants to go into a woman’s bathroom and sexually assault someone in there he will do so anyway, he doesn’t need to change his birth certificate to do it. Unpack this and what’s missing in this frequently posited scenario is the simple fact that sexual assault is a crime regardless of whether it’s committed by a woman or a man and that these document changes won’t make a single bit of difference to this fact.
As I have said, the only effect of these changes will be to allow a small and vulnerable sector of our society to have appropriate documentation that validates them, keeps them safe, and better reflects who they are so they can fit more readily into our society, and all at a cost that everyone can afford.
dykiegirl 