Why people should be genuinely angry at Spark, 2 Degrees and Vodaphone for pledging to purge Threads of opinions they don’t like

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Why are people threatening to boycott Spark NZ?

A social media interaction between Spark NZ and a prominent transgender activist has led to threats of boycotting the company.

Over the weekend, the telco’s reply to a post from trans activist Shaneel Lal on the new social media platform Threads ruffled the feathers of some of its customers.

Lal’s post read: “Dear Threaders, Can we agree that we won’t tolerate TERFs on Threads. They’ve made the lives of trans people living hell on almost all platforms. Let’s not allow their hatred to poison this app too. Requested with love.”

To which Spark NZ replied: “Yes PLEASE, wholeheartedly co-signed” accompanied by two emojis including the transgender flag.

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This week, trans activist Shaneel Lal called for the new Threads social media platform to be purged of TERFS and for reason known only to Jesus, Spark jumped in and fistpumped the desire to purge Threads of people who disagree with Shaneel.

Punters recoiled at Spark’s bewildering desire to censor opinions they don’t like and threatened a boycott of Spark which saw Shaneel double down and demand the same position from Vodaphone and 2 Degrees, who again, bewilderingly agreed with Lal to purge Threads of opinions they don’t like.

Let’s be very, very, very clear why you should be aghast at Spark, 2 Degrees and Vodaphone for their pledge to purge Threads of opinion they don’t like.

Shaneel Lal is free to call for whatever counter productive nonsense they like, this is a liberal progressive democracy and we still have free speech, but what Vodaphone, Spark and 2 Degrees have all agreed to here is not supporting the Trans Community, they have all agreed to purging any opinions Lal deems unacceptable from the new social media app Threads.

Supporting the right for Trans people to enjoy the same agency as any fellow citizen is one thing, supporting a cancel culture purge of anyone Lal disagrees with on a brand new social media app is fucking completely another!

Some punk kid is running the social media account for these telecommunications giants and they have full heartedly  supported Lal’s call to purge a brand new social media platform for a woke bonfire.

That Spark, 2 Degrees and Vodaphone all jumped at the chance to censor people based on nothing more than a Trans activist who already has a complex history of strangling free speech off after the Posie Parker fiasco is alarming to see.

Shouldn’t there be some inquiry into how the Telecommunications Giants are privately suppressing opinions they don’t like or agree with on their networks because you are supposed to send my messages from point A to point B, you are not supposed to tell me what those messages say, I decide what my voice says, not 2 Degrees, Spark or bloody Vodaphone!

 

 

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100 COMMENTS

  1. I have one family member who was so pissed they moved everything from Spark immediately.

    To be fair, Shaneel only asked 2Degrees to commit to Transgender rights and they released the standard corporate-speak answer. Spark & OneNZ went further and picked a side.

    I’m with Spark for mobile and their comment led me to compare plans with other providers. I”ve realised I’m paying too much so will move at the end of this month.

    Lal is a bully and a troll, fuck knows why corporates want anything to do with them.

      • To be honest I don’t give a shit about the weird alphabet people if we are taking a head count.

      • How is the community repressed? You have far more rights than the older lesbians ever enjoyed as younger women and now you call them terfs. Women who fought for LGBT rights. You have got this idea in your head you can call people bigots. and remove their rights. I have never seen hate directed at women like this community you claim is repressed.

        • Well people like you want to turn back the clock. And I dont trust all these older lesbians on social issues as far as I can throw them. They are starting to have very reactionary social views, pretty much lining themselves up alongside Pentecostal Lutherian Evangalical Protestants, and Francoist Catholics.

          • I’d be happy to ‘turn back the clock’ to when there was a clear and accepted difference between a woman and some freaky dude in a dress.

          • Were those Protestants Lutherans or Pentecostals?? They can’t be both. And what even is a Lutherian? A Star Trek character?

  2. As has been clearly exposed in this latest online exchange, wokeism is a tool of the corporate oligarchy, NOT socialism as all the right-wing-nut-jobs try to insist.
    Are Spark, Vodafone etc socialist entities? Nope, they’re profit seeking corporations.
    Socialism has at it’s core, democracy….actual democracy, not the faux democracy we have now. Identity politics is NOT socialist in any sense.
    Wokeism is a manifestation of Right Wing orthodoxy: “the individual is paramount”.

      • Agree. At last we are beginning to wake up to the manipulative tactics of corporate agendas. Split societies into shards, keep them in a state of destabilization and utter psychological distress, control all and everything, from the way we think to the way we purchase and cackle at the profits.

    • We know this.
      It’s just that the political “left” has fully embraced woke religion, we know they aren’t interested in working people or class issues or universal suffrage, in fact they actively attack them.
      Labour not only embrace neoliberalism, they own it in this country having introduced it in more pure form than anywhere.
      So if you’re voting for Labour or the even more woke PMC greens, you aren’t a true left wing voter but plenty of people kid themselves.
      Its not the rights fault, it’s just that what was the left sold their souls.

    • @Jase
      Completely agree that “wokeism is a tool of the corporate oligarchy”. However it is more a marriage of convenience between corporatism and far left ideologues (whose roots are in Gramsci, Frankfurt school, Marcuse et al, one could call it Maoism with american characteristics). Economically right but culturally left.

      This marriage will last only as long as institutional investors see self interest in social engineering programs.

      It appears the identitarian churn is used to create social instability (to distract from economic fallout of collapsing globalism). In the meantime financial, corporate and governmental institutions can be adapted to serve elite interests in the post-globalised system. Once adaptation is complete, the new system (likely authoritarian) will seek stability and todays woke activists as trained agents of disruption, (similar to the Red Guard), will become an inconvenience and be removed by the very authoritarian system they helped put in place.

  3. If someone had bothered holding a referendum, flogging off the wire communications system at fire-sale prices would have had zero chance of happening — polling showed the Tories would have lost the vote by 90% to 10%! Quite a reversal from the conservative government that banned A.T. & T. from running the whole system in 1881, and nationalised it all.

    In an alternate universe — one where general strikes called by Ken Douglas had driven Roger Douglas out of office in 1986 — the way people communicate may have looked entirely different.

    The elected Postmaster General would still be running the whole wire network, including the cellular towers. The D.S.I.R., also controlled by an elected minister, would still be running all the data centres. All electronic messaging, and most likely the gateway to the international social networks, would still be via Post Office Starnet.

    Instead of all your data travelling via Vodafone – Google – Meta – TikTok etc., much of it would never even reach the Silicon Valley surveillance and censorship machine. It could still take a (now fibre optic) route via PRESTEL. – DATEL. – PACNET. – JANET. – STARNET — in other words, it would never leave the Post Office & D.S.I.R. system that is owned by you, the citizen.

    • What’s more, the country would not have been flooded with cheap exploitable Chorus contractors and subcontractors to help keep wages down with Chorus wallahs curious sort of characters from the big telcos.

  4. Oh the irony of Lal who regularly spews out violent hate filled rhetoric, signing something “requested with love.”

    • Andrew. Have a look at Slingshot, ok? They’ve panned out cheaper for me than Spark, and recently did a reduction in charge without me even asking for it. Hopefully they won’t change.

  5. The trans community have got businesses terrified of a boycott and basically they are bullying companies to agree with them…or else.
    The pendulum swung badly for Bud Light, businesses should take heed of that fiasco and either just not reply to laleel or agree their business is trans friendly/supportive and leave it at that, not blindly agree to any and all ‘conditions’ demanded.
    Trans population in any country is about 0.1% of the population.

    • Im right
      Agree but it is not the ‘trans community’, it is ‘trans activists’. They are not the same thing. Most trans people want to get on with their lives without being a political football.

      • Tui. 100 % We all want to get out with our lives without being political footballs, but ‘ divide and rule’ is the currency of the new way of doing democracy, a legacy of neoliberalism, and no business buying into it warrants our support any more than the slippery politicians do.

  6. I totally agree, Shaneel Lal obviously has a high opinion of his thoughts but he needs a higher standard of evidence than that before insisting that they are the only thoughts allowed.

  7. I’m now with Slingshot, who don’t seem to have bought into this shocking misogynistic scenario, and who have an onshore call centre employing New Zealanders. I found Telecom and then Spark customer service unsatisfactory , but I am told that Vodophone is worse.

    What is happening in the UK is also worse, for not just businesses who don’t buy into the powerful transgender ideology, but for private individuals who even query it publicly or in the workplace. They are losing their jobs, and even their bank accounts. Boycotting local companies who are part of the silencing of woman, and the degrading of women, and the destruction of the language pertaining to women, and the physiology of women, and the terrorising of women being socially acceptable, may be the best way of slowing down this breaking down of society which we’re now living through. This doesn’t make anybody homophobic or transphobic or anything phobic, regardless of what the extremists are claiming and using to justify indefensible physical violence.

    • I heard that too Snow. I could hardly believe it. It is so wrong and as Jase says above, this kind of identity politics is not left or right but all part of the WEF ‘Multi stakeholder governance’ which is designed to give multinationals (particularly) more power than Govts with 0% of democratic accountability. It’s very concerning and I hope NZ will stand up and say no to all of it.

      More than ever we need to stand up for our democracy, our communities and our families or we will be staring down the gun of a Wall E type future where the corporation tells you what to do and the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

      • Fantail. Someone commented about remonstrating with Kiwibank about extremist Shal being made New Zealander of the Year. In the UK, people can be in trouble for less. A clergyman had his long-standing account with the Yorkshire Building Society terminated, after he filled in one of their own LGBTQ questionnaires, provided to him by them. Didn’t go public with it until after they booted him out. Nigel Farage was dumped by establishment Coutts Bank, along with family members, for unclear reasons, and since then, others seem to have also been dumped by the banks, and these are the banks working towards a cashless society; without a bank it is impossible to live in modern society. Farage can go and live in Spain, but other people may not be in the position to do this, or want to. If a job, income, banking facility, or other, is at stake for expressing an opinion, everyone is being strangulated. Our MSM appearing gutless or inept about what they do or do not report, isn’t that surprising. The underlying scenarios of degenderising people are complex, and frightening.

        I’m old and don’t matter, but my granddaughters do, all our children do, and even what is being done with the schools Gender ID scenarios is potentially hugely damaging. Winston Peters calling this out is a positive step, but the MSM may be sidelining him. The composition of the UNO’s relevant school curriculum advisory body in Geneva looks surreal, as may be ours.

        The UK does have independent news outlets to report on what’s happening there, but this site and The Platform seem to be the only ones here.

        • Perhaps if Nigel Farage didnt cling to Biblical attitudes towards thge LGBTQ community, he wouldnt have a proplem.

          Over and over again you have called for the recriminalisation of homosexuality and the repression of trans people. You have also called for women to be banned from drinking alcohol, and for bans on dancing in public. You also belive that abiortion and sex before marriage be outlawed.

          Piss off back to the 1950’s where you belong,.

          • Me ? I call only for my dog, and for pedophiles to permanently imprisoned, and for the Ministry of Education to justify children having to gender ID, lower food prices, lower electricity prices, few rates rises, homes for the children of the poor, and ‘ Who’ll Come a Waltzing Mathilda with Me?”

            We need more dancing in the streets. I can dance, having the time of my life. Try it for yourself you silly old grump.

  8. Martyn – Today its anti trans-people speech, tomorrow its whistler blowers…crack down on those teleco’s

  9. Like governments, our educational institutions, and our workplaces, corporates are losing their mind over support for this marginal minority ideology.
    Are the PR people in charge of these companies not aware of the massive pushback, law suits and destruction of share prices that results from cuddling up to this nonsense.
    Are they yet to hear the expression go woke go broke?

    • Thanks to TDB for calling this out. Free speech is the cornerstone, has to be protected from those of totalitarian mindset who just want to control others, be it by fear, threats, abuse, violence.

  10. This is the danger of having privatized key national infrastructure, it tends to fall into the hands of people with evil intentions. Just look at Telecom (so-called ‘spark’ or whatever they’re calling it right now). No doubt there are plenty of ‘mom and pop’ investors who don’t approve of the idea that lesbians who don’t want to root blokes should not be allowed to open their mouths in public. But they don’t have the influence that the likes of Blackrock’s Larry Fink with his >5% stake and similar international investors do to have these companies push their disgusting agenda.

  11. I’m wondering, as one as does…
    Have I missed something or has The Daily Blog mentioned how Labour went to the EU and came back with a free trade agreement? A pretty big deal I’d a thought given certain global events unfolding. Or of how a one time Natzo minister, Steven Joyce, who was a tertiary education minister in previous National-led governments was caught out by RNZ who obtained records detailing dozens of invoices from Joyce Advisory Ltd to Waikato University between December 2019 and December 2022, totaling $966,000?
    It was said that over the past three years the university had been under significant financial pressure and staff had to accept salary settlements well below inflation, reduced numbers and increased workloads.
    That, right there, is National in a nutshell.
    A little more on-topic: Spark, Vodafone and 2 degrees are little fleas biting on our arses. We need a state run, free to access communications infrastructure thus fuck Spark, Vodafone and 2 degrees.
    And is it here that I mention our electricity supply infrastructure. It’s a fucking rort so lets sort that out too.
    And yes, it’s up to us. We lot. If we leave it up to them, they’ll just fuck us on every deal they can think of.
    Go neo-liberalism aye? Not.

  12. Well said Bomber. My main concern is that the more of this woke crap is pushed on us the bigger the backlash will be, and pendulum swings can have very nasty unintended consequences. This woke garbage is the opposite of the love and inclusion they pretend it is, and has pushed a lot of people to the centre right for this one issue alone. People like Lal who insist on speaking on behalf of all women with no alternative view tolerated in the name of left wing love and inclusion is a long way from the class based politics for which the Left had wide support.

  13. Girls spending all day too scared to use the unisex toilets matter more than mindless threaders.

  14. Who is the Ref for this match. The one NZ ceo said the refs were terrible , even subconsciously …… when the Warriors lost. He should come out and have a crack at the ref for this match also.

  15. “Some punk kid is running the social media account for these telecommunications giants and they have full heartedly supported Lal’s call to purge a brand new social media platform for a woke bonfire.”

    No, that is a person employed by spark with she/they pronouns, a supposed lesbian married to another non male. that person has a degree from a fancy NZ university and chances are is paid the low 6 figures.
    What is dumb is that Spark does not require a sign of for that person when they post publicly on Sparks social media.
    She/they are no punk. They are white, upper middle class, university educated and very very afraid that they might lose footing on the transtrain. https://nz.linkedin.com/in/frithjhughes

    • Gagarin “ Vodafone for Dummies.” Chap One. Assemble a thermos flask, another mug besides yourself, a good book, mittens if you can’t afford heating, knee coverings, or hop into bed. Chap Two. Hop back out and turn off the front door bell which you won’t be able to answer for the foreseeable future. Chap Three. Feed any pets likely to get hungry and bark, miaow, or die of starvation. Chap Four Devise a device to keep you awake during a long long wait. Chap Five. When you waken, don’t torture yourself wondering if they answered the phone while you were sleeping. Chap Six. Feel good about how you’re helping somebody in Mumbai or Bangalore have a job and repeat one-five.

  16. Because scientists, and biologists, and medical specialists, don’t think that thinking and twinking, and snipping and medicating changes genders, does not mean that they are opposed to abortion or to same sex-marriages. Lal is jumping to ridiculous conclusions in cataloging them in this way. Spark, 2Degree and Vodafone are no better being complicit in vilifying informed persons who don’t buy into an unproven ideology, and nor should we buy into them if they are censoring persons who think differently from the way that they are being told to think.

  17. I just want them to say that women should be able to meet and discuss their rights without violence, intimidation or harassment. That’s all.

    Seems a bit hard though. Because then that’s a tacit admission that there has been violence, intimidation and harassment. Quite a lot of it. And then it leads to the awkward question: where is this coming from, who’s supporting it, who’s promoting it?

    And we all know who.

  18. Well said Martyn. I’m glad someone is speaking out about the behaviour of the telecoms.

  19. It is one thing to be Rainbow Tick, it was needed back in the day. It is another thing to target customers for political opinion. Political opinion is human rights protected in New Zealand law and someone needs to tell the telco’s . If they or the Human rights Commission actually care is another issue.

    • Delia. With your lovely Grandmother’s name. I believe that a Human Rights Commissioner went to Wellington to protest against K-JK’s campaign to Let Women Speak, but she’d been rushed out of the country to protect her from more of the mob violence from the transgender folk celebrating pure trans joy at Albert Park in Auckland, and the HRC presumably missed out on shutting biological women up, then.

      • Thank you for your lovely compliment on my family name. We know the Human Rights Chief Commissioner does not think women have rights.

        • Delia. How did he get that job? I’m chary of ageing men in young men’s clothing anyway, but he should have maintained a position of strict neutrality when it came to transgendered people v biological women, and it appears that he didn’t. Whoever put him in his position needs to clarify his job description to him, or rewrite it altogether.

          • Andrew Little put him in his position.

            Paul Hunt was a signatory of the Yogyakarta Principles, which puts forward alleged human rights of gender IDed people – drawn up by a self selected bunch of mainly men with a transman or 2. It has no international standing, has never been ratified by the UN, but govts like NZ treat it as if it has international standing.

            On of the other signatories for the Yogyakarta Principles no longer supports it because they never considered the impact of women

            And Mr Little”s twin sister used to work for Rainbow Tick, which doesn’t necessarily mean he was influenced by his sister. NZ is a place of 2 degrees of separation.

            • Karolyn-IS Thank you. Briefly, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with listening to a sister, but the YPrinciples stuff is of concern, but not surprising. The public service has a fair share of persons with dodgy or misleading creds, never checked on, usually accepted at face value, and by people who need to look in a mirror themselves.

              Hunt, though, has a hell of a nerve publicly pontificating about taking homelessness to the UNO as a Human Rights issue, when he appears reluctant to accept that biological New Zealand women have a right to freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and that this is a human rights issue specifically enshrined in the New Zealand Bill of Rights 1990, Part 11 s 14, which he should be upholding.

            • Karolyn-IS PS. Apropos of my previous comment. The Commissioner of Police, and the Minister of Police, and the Minister of Women, whoever that is, could also be well advised to have a look at the New Zealand Bill of Rights 1990.

            • Im guessing you think that NZ should follow the priciples of the Bible, Koran and Talmud and put transgender people to death.

  20. Agreed Martyn. Full marks to you for speaking out about this.

    We’re customers of 2 Degrees. They’ll be getting a serve from us about it.

  21. Unfortunately with all these big companies, including the bank I work for. The “social media team” are e all a bunch of darlings and the CEO loves them. It’s all about the “likes”, so they’re sort of autonomous, and do what they like. Also we are captured by the “Pride mafia” they have their own way of ensuring that we all comply. I’ve had complaints about people in my team, because some snowflakes get upset that someone in my team did something they didn’t like.

    We are now at the stage where we censor what we say about what we do at the weekend!!!

  22. In a ‘me’ culture that at its base lacks ethical concern for others’ being and rights – it shows we have reached the Shadow Age where pretence, self-delusion and momentary impulses replace self-control and attempt at wisdom. This is more than communism to concern us with but what Marx and Engels considered and wrote paints the major picture.
    To seat that wisdom I remembered something from Marx. – ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ introduction:
    A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
    …The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society…. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.

    All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind…

    From New Yorker. Comment on 1848 manifesto:
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/karl-marx-yesterday-and-today
    The new modes of production, communication, and distribution had also created enormous wealth. But there was a problem. The wealth was not equally distributed. Ten per cent of the population possessed virtually all of the property; the other ninety per cent owned nothing. As cities and towns industrialized, as wealth became more concentrated, and as the rich got richer, the middle class began sinking to the level of the working class.

    Soon, in fact, there would be just two types of people in the world: the people who owned property and the people who sold their labor to them. As ideologies disappeared which had once made inequality appear natural and ordained, it was inevitable that workers everywhere would see the system for what it was, and would rise up and overthrow it. The writer who made this prediction was, of course, Karl Marx, and the pamphlet was “The Communist Manifesto.” He is not wrong yet.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/04/the-return-of-marxism

  23. I would like to add discrimination on the basis of political thought or association and / or sex is illegal.

  24. Yes interesting Bomber. Loved this last night on TWG – absolutely hit the nail on the head. Sent your vid off to the CEO of One (and will also do spark) and said I think you should listen, This is what many NZers are thinking round about now.

    I also asked them if neutrality ‘around’ communications was part of their License terms? Hope it is. In a different life I worked at ComCom (Not in Telco’s) and know enough to know sometimes these terms are in there. Hope it is so as it may motivate them to pull their heads in and stop their political interference.

    • I’m older person. I remember NZ government banning swear words or other unsuitable ones from their communication channels. People would be taken to Court to be judged, but problem! Could not legally convey the words being dismissed over government communications – not by post, not by telephone! Carrier pigeons are the means for the future. Can people start breeding and studying how to look after and train these birds please. Also for the physical, set up a string of Clacks across certain valleys etc. (Terry Pratchett).

      • Grey Warbler. It’s not so long since Marama made it into the UK media for her earnest wee effort to expand our vocabulary with her c..t advocacy. Carrier pigeons may indeed be a safer option, but they could be culturally offensive, people might eat them, and they can pooh carelessly. Can be very noisy if too many gather together in one place, but they do have a much more romantic appeal than these thought police jerks in the comms companies. Could also flog off their pooh as manure, which is more than one would ever want to do with Spark and co’s smelly emissions. They make much cuter pets too…

  25. Let’s just get basic. We pay corporates for products and services. Not opinions. Gotta commend Shaneel for winding them up his way, long time since Ive seen a corporate so effectively bullied. That said f**k him too, can’t stand bullies either.

    • Nick J. 100% “ We pay for.products and services. Not opinions.” Correct. If we don’t like the opinions which they, via we their customers, pay somebody to produce, then it’s better to dump them rather having them try to control the way which we think. Who on earth do they think they are? Medieval priests ? God? Nope.

  26. I thought I’d give Threads a go. The first post that came up was Lal’s hateful antagonism. I felt sick, like oh no, not another platform for this radioactive toxic waste. Deleted account . Gone by lunchtime. Who needs it, honestly.

  27. Why dont you lot all admit that you hate homosexualty and transgenderism and want it all banned, lile it was before 1986. Then we can ban anything that goes against the Bible, the Koran and Talmud.

    Anyway, no one is complaining about both OneNZ and Spark refusing to service a certain type of customer, ie those who fail a credit check and have to go without an internet connection.

    • you might want to rethink that comment of yours. Discrimination on the basis of political speech is illegal. Discriminating on the basis of sex is discrimination.
      Failing a credit check however is legal, but i suggest that you write a strongly worded letter to the current lot in government demanding that this be also considered ‘discrimination’.

    • Given how many Lefties are here do you really want to try and tag them as haters of homosexuality? Look that the next comment by “Jack” about all his support for such causes – but not Trans.

      Aside from long being one of the most unhinged Far Leftists on the NZ Blog scene (used to love your stuff on Kiwiblog, hilarious), you also appear to be permanently stuck in the 1970’s when NZ truly was a socially conservative nation. But even then it was changing.

    • They should all be nationalized, with limited compensation to domestic investors, and then we wouldn’t have to deal with these crooked fake utilities and their dodgy little deals with the bastards at the credit reporting agencies.

    • LGB kids 2023: “You’re perfect, just as you are. But wait! If you take puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and lop some bits off yourself, you’ll be just that bit more perfect.”

      I’m not the one telling LGB kids, in 2023, that there is something wrong with them. A disgusting, reprehensible and utterly anti-progressive position to take.

      I’m not the one telling women, in 2023, that they cannot organise and meet to discuss their rights. A disgusting, reprehensible and utterly anti-progressive position to take.

      Millsy, I’m confiscating your progressive card.

      • @That_guy
        Millsy is not progressive but a right-wing bot that caricatures what the right think the left sound like.

        Modern trans activism (distinct from trans people, most of whom want to get on with life and not be a political football) is extremely anti-progressive.
        – Misogynistic (erasure of women and removal of normative safeguards against predatory men),
        – Homophobic (gay people are same sex, not same gender attracted. Gay and autistic children can be ushered down a path towards medicalisation and sterilisation in ways Iranian theocrats would approve.
        – Transphobic as it conflates narcissists seeking the aesthetic of fashionable queerness with actual transexuals.
        – Anti-science in that it seeks to erase the categories of sex for the ‘liberation’ of transgressing ‘gender boundaries’. While simultaneously reintroducing traditional gender roles (A girl with stereotypically male behaviour is not a tomboy but trans-male).

        • Tui. Then perhaps the move to destroy the scientific tradition and replace it with ‘Maori science ‘ is part of this bigger and global scenario of ultimately degenderising ( the lower echelons of ) the social populace. Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere lambasted “ colonialists” for destroying what she claimed were Maori gender or sexual diversity roles she said existed before Pakeha came to repress them. This has since been refuted by others, and she jumped waka and quietened, I think. It was a startling priority for a novice environmental politician, but she also appeared stroppy towards a young biological male presenting at Select Committee, which may have been a reflection of Green leader Davidson’s antagonism towards those dubbed ‘white cis-gender males’ and constantly demonised by her; whether she really knows what she’s doing here is another matter, but perhaps we don’t. I think Davidson was an advisor to the Race Relations Commissioner who seems to support canceling women’s voices himself, with Davidson gunning for the males, and Kerekere doing historical Pakeha. They’ve all been played, or may be worse than one may have thought that they were. Regardless, this is a nasty and unnecessary social divisiveness being manufactured here.

          • That is the same sort of rhetoric that the government of Uganda and other African nations used when criminalizing being LGBT. Apparently homosexuality wasn’t a thing in Africa before the Europeans came and they need to stamp it out again. Yet again , another Christian who thinks that some dead carpenters gives them the right to tell people what they can and cannot do.

            • You don’t know how lucky you are. Nobody here is particularly transphobic or homophobic, you’re barking up the wrong tree. We know what is was like before homosexuality became legalised mainstream, and it could be grim. Have some vitamins or something, get a hobby.

  28. As far as I’m concerned I am boycotting all of the companies that are rainbow tick approved until pride means LGB.
    I have marched in the streets to support homosexual law reform, women’s rights and financially supported Rape Crisis for decades. I will not stand by and see women’s rights, privileges and spaces denigrated and obliterated, the language and status of women discarded for this bunch of delusional imposters.
    I closed my Kiwibank account and withdrawn from the PSA who were shockingly in the front row shouting and screaming at Posie Parker without the backing of the membership.

    • You do realize being transgender is about bodily autonomy, and that any attempt to repress transgenders are an attack on basic human rights.

      • Expunging the human, biological, social, political, sporting and free speech rights of women by men is not only a breach of their human rights it is deeply misogynistic and discriminatory.
        Add to that the violent threats, derogatory language and physical violence perpetrated against women by men, you dont have a leg to stand on mentioning human rights.

  29. BUD LIGHT
    An entirely appropriate response which hit them in the pocket
    Do the same to any corporate which wants to limit your rights

  30. Keep your head on a swivel Martyn. Won’t be too much longer before these ‘purifiers’ run out of all their easily conquerable targets in the centre and on the right and return to their normal hobby of purging leftists not blinkered and blinded into the exact correct Dogma of the day.

  31. Vodaphone has been manipulative for the last 20 years, versus dear Toyota’s honesty. If I were to ask tomorrow for them to reduce my charges they would and then slowly they’d creep up. I was at Stats NZ for a year or so, remember when you contact a bureaucracy behind the Wizard of Oz facade is an office filled with not very bright low-level lumps.

    Now the worst phone service is 2 Degrees — they literally have a warning not to abuse their hopeless phone bank. The first bird who responded was laughing at one of her friend’s jokes for 6 seconds and then warned me not to interrupt her during her irrelevant advice. Next guy had a difficult accent — 40 minutes to find how to pay for my bill.

  32. Re comments on the ‘trans community’. Please bear in mind it is ‘trans activists’ causing this.

    Woke use the minorities they claim to speak for as both human shield and battering ram. In the same way LGB people are in decline at pride marches and increasingly distancing themselves from T activists, trans people also need to be distinguished from T activists.

    It is not the trans community or trans identity that is the problem, it is woke Queer Theory ideologues and their enablers that span all identity groups.

    • Tui
      I think you’re on safe ground here at TDB. It’s patently clear that this Lal character is not an official spokesperson for the trans people, but merely a self-appointed militant bully who is now even ‘threatening’ corporations with so called ‘trans action’.
      He/She knows exactly how these woke companies react to this stuff and got exactly what he/she wanted. What One/2D/Spark should have done is tell him/her to fuck off and cancelled his/hers phone and data accounts for making veiled threats. That would have got raptures of applause from the public.

      • That sort or rhetoric belongs in Uganda, not NZ. Perhaps if you hate non-staight/cis ppeople so much, then you should move there.

        Anyway, people like Lal have been bullied and harrassed by people like you for centuries, Then you cry when the boot is on the other foot. I bet you read the bible every day, and seethe about how those sodomites have too many rights.

        • If trans activists claim to want to be women so much then how about stop acting like the violent toxic male bullies they are and start respecting and protecting women.
          They wont because they actually hate, detest and resent women for being the authentic indisputable biological reality real women are not an unconvincing cheap and hideous mockery.

          • Its the evangalicals that dont respect and protect women, They are the ones who want to control their love, sex and reproductive lives, they want them to be just mothers and wives, and not scientists and doctors.

            The father who beats his daughter up for kissing a boy is way worse than some trans person who wants to live their lives.

    • Then it is time for the ‘real’ Trans Community to stand up and uphold the rights of others. Women have a right to political speech, affiliation and representation, and women participating in political speech around issues that affect them does not make them ‘Terf’ a slur intended to shut down debate.
      Women – human females of all ages.

  33. Its obvious to me Millsy knows nothing of the her/history I lived, but is in fact a parrot. Message for Millsey. Firstly: Trans weren’t part of either Gay Lib or women’s lib despite the attempt to rewrite her/history. I know I was there.
    Secondly: With Homosexual law reform and civil union, equal opportunity for women we got our rights years ago.
    Thirdly: Trans rights are nothing to do with bodily autonomy. If you wish to mutilate your body in the name of mental health issues, narcissism and fetishes in the case of Male to Female trans who claim to be lesbian, help yourselves. just don’t expect the public to pay for it.
    Fourthly: Leave the kids alone. They come through their issues on their own.
    Finally: expect the backlash to be bad because idiots like you have put LGB rights back at least 30 years.We’re all sick of the garbage and people like you are the problem. Whiny little grievance gibberers.
    Go and get on with enjoying the opportunities you’re lucky to have..

    • Cleary obvious you have turned your back on the LGBTQ commumity and lined up with the Bible bashers.
      “Fourthly: Leave the kids alone. They come through their issues on their own.”
      Really, what is honestly wrong with telling kids that LGBTQ’s exist and there is nothing wrong with it. Clearly obvious that you you think that gays should be kept away from kids. What about families with a gay/trans memeber, do we get Oranga Tamariki round to take them. They have enough to deal with already?

      I was born in 1980, but when growing up, I knew about gay people, and I knew that some women ‘used to be men’. More people probably disgreed with it then, but there wasnt such a big thing about it. People just got on with their lives.

      Perhaps you need to mind your own business.

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