The counter productive Pregnant People, People Against Prisons Aotearoa and the woke providing political ammunition for the Right
Groan…
Coalition directs Health NZ to stop saying ‘pregnant people’
The coalition has directed Health New Zealand to say “women” instead of “pregnant people” in its communications about health issues.
Associate Health Minister Casey Costello wrote to interim chief executive Dr Dale Bramley on 27 March, telling the agency to use “clear language”.
“Recent documents that have reached my office from the Ministry of Health have referred to women as ‘pregnant people’, ‘people with a cervix’ or ‘individuals capable of childbearing’,” she said in the letter.
“Only women and people of the female sex can get pregnant and birth a child no matter how they identify.”
…groan x 2…
Green MP fundraising for group wanting to ‘defund the police’
- Green MP Tamatha Paul has launched a fundraiser for a group wanting to “defund the police” and abolish the courts.
- Debate about defunding the police started when Paul attended discussion on “radical police abolition” in Christchurch.
- The ACT Party says the Greens haven’t been clear if they support police abolition.
…ok.
I wrote in 2022 that the direction to remove the words ‘mother’ and ‘women’ was deeply stupid and would burn the Left…
Here’s the original Scope where Woman is referenced widely and the term Mother used, here’s the proposed Scope where Women and Mother have been removed altogether.
If they are this triggered by the words ‘Woman’ and ‘Mother’ shouldn’t they be Midpersons instead of Midwifes?
Isn’t wife heteronormative?
It’s this sort of woke nonsense sold as ‘inclusivity’ that is killing the Left and we are seeing it in the current polling meltdown.
The problems is this activism is associated with the Left and even though Labour and the Greens have nothing to do with this, social media proxifcation has alienated voters thinking this is what the Left stand for now and it’s going down like a cup of cold sick.
My fear is that as the Polls drop for the Left, our activists will get crazier and crazier with the woke stuff and keep cancelling until there are no more voters left to try and win over.
All the woke are doing is handing ammunition to the right.
Please, wokesters, pull these ideological stunts AFTER the election, NOT BEFORE! Voters are sick of this dogma and it isn’t helping!
Look, you could define yourselves as rock lobsters for all I care, but do it a week AFTER the election so the backlash can’t be weaponised into another example of woke gone mad.
The identity politics activists keep wanting to buy a culture war that we on the Left will lose.
…and lo and fucking behold, we have Associate Health Minister Casey Costello playing culture war bullshit games.
Look.
Of course when dealing with a pregnant non-binary, queer or Trans them/they, Midwives should use ‘pregnant people’, because we live in a liberal progressive democracy where everyone is included – HOWEVER removing ‘pregnant woman’ altogether is NOT inclusive, it makes many biological women feel alienated AND it’s confusing to people from other cultures when we start playing the gender bender biology dogma game.
The tiny, tiny, tiny number of pregnant non-binary, queer or Trans them/theys vs the vast, vast, vast majority of biological pregnant women = what exactly?
‘Pregnant People’ was dumb over reach by the wokies and so is this desire to lean into People Against Prisons Aotearoa.
Firstly, great shirt – love it –
…but again, we are giving the Right culture war ammunition by including People Against Prisons Aotearoa because if you think the Rights attack on People Against Prisons Aotearoa is bad now, wait until ACT Party researchers note that who leads People Against Prisons Aotearoa and the terrible, terrible, terrible things they have to say.
People Against Prisons Aotearoa is first and foremost a Trans rights organisation that grew out of Trans prisoner rights, the abolition of prisons stuff is crazy and ‘defund the police’ is counter productive.
We need a new mental heath first responder infrastructure, not a defund the police policy.
The Police are a blunt force trauma to mental health call outs…
Taser use on mentally ill people doubles: ‘It just beggars belief’
Mental health advocates have slammed the high use of tasers on people in crisis as a damning indictment on a health system which has left police as the default emergency responder.
New research shows more than half of people tasered by police are mentally ill, in distress or suicidal.
The report, commissioned by police as part of a wider investigation into bias within the ranks, found:
- Taser use during mental health calls-out had doubled since 2017
- 54 percent of people tasered between July and December 2022 were in mental distress, mentally unwell or suicidal
- People in mental health residences or in-patient units were tasered on four occasions
- Data on the mental state of those tasered was poor, with written reports often failing to mention mental distress that was evident from body camera footage
- Some police were using a taser as a “compliance” tool
- People clearly experiencing distress were deemed “non-compliant” (rather than unwell or unable to follow instructions)
- Police were unwilling to approach individuals they perceived to be unwell, seeing them as “unpredictable”.
…Police should not be the ones sent in to deal with people having a mental health episode, we need specially trained ‘First responder mental health teams’ who have the resources and skill set to de-escalate a situation and get a person the help they need.
Real wrap around social services provided after the call out.
A genuine attempt to heal and help people rather than criminalise them.
You know, solutions rather than counter productive damage.
The problem is that the entire mental health industry is horrifically underfunded and we have dumped them onto the Police, when the Police don’t have the skill set to deal with them.
We need our Police actually countering crime, not wasting their time on mental health call outs which they are more likely to exacerbate than help.
To do this requires enormous investment and a whole new branch of emergency response and with a Government focused on a $2.9b tax break for the richest landlords alongside $14billion in unfordable tax cuts, there is no way of that happening.
The system is now in collapse and the way National have manufactured a cost crisis in Health by purposely underfunding health means things are doomed to become more oppressive for the poorest and most vulnerable.
The safety net has become a noose, but ‘defund the police’ doesn’t encapsulate any of that argument.
So.
Can the woke please go back to sleep and stop alienating people from the Left?
We get it Wokies, your self created identity is more important than the common ground between us, but all you are doing is handing culture war ammunition to our political enemies.
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A policeman i know hates having to attend “domestics”.
He joined the force to get baddies, not to look after saddies.
“People with a cervix” would exclude my wife (if that word is still allowed), she having had a hysterectomy.
But she my woman!
It is hard to parody this bumbling self-parody.
Mate, I think you’re overstating the case a bit. I don’t think PAPA is any more ‘woke’ than you are. While the likes of Rakete were certainly initially more motivated by the trans stuff, it’s an organization with a pretty broad remit and one which is pretty close to what you’re suggesting as the common sense position (actually having real mental health services like we did before de-institutionalization).