Why don’t we call this push for Gender Identity Hate Speech for what it really is? The criminalisation of Rachel Stewart & Ani O’Brien
I read the terrorist’s manifesto and I don’t recall him referring to Trans Allies or gender identity, so why criminalising the misuse of pronouns is being mooted as a response to white supremacy terrorism is utterly beyond me!
It’s particularly galling because the problem wasn’t hate speech laws, the problem was that the entire Intelligence apparatus of NZ didn’t bother doing their job, which is to protect us from the next possible terror threat!
This is the list of the NZ security apparatus, many acronyms you’ve never heard of, who are supposed to keep us safe with mass surveillance powers from this very type of terrorism, and I WILL CONTINUE PRINTING THIS LIST until you start appreciating how enormous a failure this was…
- The SIS (Secret Intelligence Services)
- The GCSB (Government Communications Security Bureau)
- The NSG (National Security Group)
- The Police Intelligence Unit
- The CNSN (Cabinet National Security Committee)
- The ODESC (Officials’ Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination)
- The SIB (Security and Intelligence Board)
- The CTCC (Counter-Terrorism Coordinating Committee)
- The NICC ( National Intelligence Coordination Committee)
- The IAD (Intelligence and Assessments Directorate)
- The NRU (National Risk Unit)
- The NSPD (National Security Policy Directorate)
…the failure was with that list, that list who cost us over $100million each year to ensure this type of atrocity fuelled by extremism doesn’t rupture and cause mass loss of life!
To fucking pretend that Gender Identity Hate Speech is a response to this abomination of an intelligence failure is fucking infantile!
Why don’t we call this push for Gender Identity Hate Speech for what it really is? The criminalisation of Rachel Stewart & Ani O’Brien.
You have all seen how feral the trans debate between Gender Critical Feminists (TERFS by their enemies) and the Fourth Wave Feminist, Non Gender Binary Activist, Trans Ally Woke Stormtroopers has been online.
We’ve all seen the woke public shaming and cancel culture lynchings erupt in our social media feeds, like violent 1930s street fights as various factions attempt to mutilate the other for dominance.
The bewildering venom from this schism makes feuding Drug Cartels look tame.
I am putting money on the table that within a month of this law passing, it will be immediately seized upon by the woke to make criminal complaints against leading voices of the Gender Critical Feminist movement, people like Rachel Stewart and Ani O’Brien for old tweets they will have sent arguing their case.
Reasonable people would say I’m being hyperbolic in making that claim, to which I would reply, ‘Comrade, you’ve seen how this fight gets waged in your own social media feed, you know in your waters I am 100% right’.
This schism is so bitter, so cruel, so relentless in its defining the other as Nazis on meth, that a billion petty vendettas will immediately exploit this new hate speech law to wage final retribution on their enemies.
You’ve seen the Wellington Twitteratti in action, you know they can’t help themselves.
Now, personallyI take a position that gets me in trouble with both sides.
I’m old fashioned when it comes to this, I think the path to finding your true self is one of the most important journeys of the human experience.
I find the idea of a spectrum of gender and identity to be as uncontroversial as the range of hair colour, skin colour and eye colour.
That some men believe they are trapped in a womens body, or a woman trapped in a mans body, or people who believe they are both, or neither is not controversial to me at all and I believe it is basic courtesy to refer to an individual in the terms they wish.
The Trans community, who suffer terribly from mental health issues, deserve respect and the full protection of the law, especially when it comes to employment issues and renting rights and they need a process far less punitive than the current system to obtain basic legal paperwork to gain basic agency.
If a Trans person ever wished for whatever reason to share a cell or changing room with me, I would have no problems whatsoever with that.
HOWEVER
and this is what damns me as transphobic by some woke activists, as a heteronormative white cis male I don’t believe I have any right to demand women accept people they don’t want in their women only spaces.
That’s an issue for the sisters and aunties to determine, and I can’t in any good conscience tell women who they should and shouldn’t accept, that’s the very antithesis of fucking feminism!!!
Rachel and Ani and many other feminists and women have legitimate arguments and concerns as women, as feminists and as citizens that you can’t simply criminalise!
This debate cuts to the very heart of identity and how we perceive ourselves, it requires so much more love and respect than it has attracted and based on the toxic manner it has been waged, I have no doubt it’s petty enough to hunt down women like Ani & Rachel for a wave of vendettas once it passes.
Politically there is real danger here for Labour.
The Prime Minister is emotionally welded to the Christchurch atrocity because she waded so deep through the trauma and raw pain in its aftermath.
She almost had to have her arm popped out of its socket to finally cancel the Christchurch memorial this year and only because the eruption of Covid might have tuned the memorial into a super spreader event, and I think even Mohammed would roll his eyes over the irony of that.
Jacinda wouldn’t be human if she hadn’t been imprinted deeply by that grief and horror, which unfortunately means she will burn any and all political capital in forcing these hate speech laws through, which is inane because this happened from a cascade failure of the intelligence services – blasphemy laws and gender identity hate speech isn’t a solution to a cascade intelligence failure!
Watching the Woke allow the entire NZ Intelligence apparatus off the hook for their total failure with the Christchurch terror attacks by demanding hate speech laws is one of the great intellectual failures of 2020.
This is how ACT break 10% by June next year.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
Well said, Martyn.
I use to be a supporter of the idea of hate speech laws for things such as racism, which is still way too common in our society. But I’m now really starting to see how it is a superficial and poor response to deeper problems.
And the gender eg shows how it can be too easily used when an ideology captures those in power – probably done with good intentions.
I am really pleased to see you saying something that so far has been a bit lacking from many transactivists: ie. making trans people feel welcome and safe in male spaces. If males are a threat to transwomen in male spaces, then it is surely up to men to make male spaces safer. It seems unfair that women have to give up are hard won rights, spaces and services because of male violence, threats and/or prejudices.
We certainly need better intelligence services – they are far too biased in who they target while not looking hard enough at the real threats to the public.
As a gender critical feminist I agree with your analysis – most of us do want to find a way through the culture wars that will benefit all sides:
an end to discrimination against, and abuse of, all gender non-conforming people, along with b support from appropriate public health and social services; plus maintenance of the hard-won sex-based rights, protections and services for women and girls. Good law makers should be able to make that happen.
Excellent.
Sorry. I’m lost. Ive always thought of myself as a feminist. But what the F is a gender critical feminist?
Gender critical is basically all feminists, or should be. But some feminists have jumped on board the genderist bandwagon. I will try to explain using an understanding of biology and science (which genderists seem to be denying). GC feminist do not accept a lot of the genderist ideology.
Genderism is aiming to replace sex (biological, as recorded at birth) with gender (which they define in ever confusing, and expanding ways).
This is creeping into our laws and state services, largely under the radar, without any widespread public discussion. Stats NZ now collects stats for the gender pay gap on self IDed gender, not biological/birth sex.
Genderists tend to say sex is a social construction, and gender is an innate thing, which people somehow feel, or know deep within themselves. They say sex is (somehow randomly) assigned male or female at birth, and may not align with an individual’s innate sense of gender (ie for some it means they’ve been born in the wrong body).
At first self IDed transgender was a replacement for the earlier idea of transsexual – being transessexual involved medically and transitioning to something close to the opposite of an individual’s birth sex.
The self ID agenda now is about everyone self IDing their gender, with or without any intention of medical or surgical transition. So any male can self ID as a woman, and they are arguing for playing in women’s sports, having access to women’s refuges, etc.
The labels for gender are ever increasing. Now gender labels, as well as including transman (female who IDs and possibly medically transitions to man) can now include non-binary (neither male nor female), genderfluid (can change daily), transvestite (cross-dressing Eddie Izard now IDs as a woman and a lesbian), or agender (no gender)…. some organisations list 100 gender labels, or more.
While genderists claim sex is a spectrum, and/or a social construction, they tend to define being trans in terms of implied sex-based stereotypes. On all this, they say it’s not up for debate – not surprising as it’s so muddled and confusing.
Gender critical feminists say, as feminists have always, that sex is biological, and set at conception; that it cannot be changed, though some secondary sex characteristics can be changed. We say, biology is not destiny in terms of social roles. We say gender is the social construction of gender roles and expectations, and based in sex-stereotypes.
We are against sex stereotyping. i.e. A boy liking to wear dresses, make-up and dance is absolutely fine, and it does not make them a girl. Ditto for tomboy girls playing with trucks, etc. Increasing numbers of such boys and girls are now IDing as trans.
So, genderists ask everyone to list their pronouns etc. The mainstream media is so on-board with this they are not enabling any discussion of it.
For GC feminist, this is a male-led, US created neoliberal movement, funded by wealthy people with interests in Big Pharma and Big Tech (see Jennifer Bileck’s research).
Sorry for the long explanation – but it is a big area of debate that is flying under a lot of the mainstream radar.
You cannot regulate to create tolerance, it will only create the opposite.
Empowering one minority over another is a spiral downwards with no end.
Well said! I would however just correct a couple of points – fourth wave feminism is second wave feminism revived – i.e. gender critical feminism. Whereas, Third Wave/Choice/Liberal feminism is not. Plus gender critical feminists do believe in the gender spectrum, but don’t believe sex is a spectrum. There are only two sexes, although there can be a spectrum of secondary sex characteristics that develop.
Second wave and first wave feminists rejected gender, believing the roles imposed on women and men to be restrictive. The sex you are born as shouldn’t slot you into a narrow role in society, it does not determine your potential in life, it should not determine what rights you have or what access you are allowed to education and participation in public life, it does not determine who you are. In the past gender constructs and stereotypes were used to limit women to domestic life and child rearing with little rights beyond that while men took the public sphere.
The claim is now it’s ‘intersectional’ feminism, but that is a farce as it’s about intersecting with anything other than being female. Intersectionality was supposed to be about the intersection for Black women, caught in between sexism and racism, not about propping up every lame duck with a claim and definitely not white men, the most safe demography of all and an oppressor class claiming the oppression of women.
There is no spectrum of sex, there are only two developmental pathways and only one sex is capable of giving birth, the other not. It’s that simple, some people might be born with endocrine or other conditions which affect them but that doesn’t change that fact. We have the right to recognition under law, but not the right to demand we be seen in a particular way. The concept of internal gender identities is completely unproven, no male or female can know what it’s like growing up in the body of the opposite sex nor truly know their lives. Being female and a woman or a male and a man isn’t an identity these people do not have the right to take the identity of people they are not and take over their sex-class.
Well said! I would however just correct a couple of points – fourth wave feminism is second wave feminism revived – i.e. gender critical feminism. Whereas, Third Wave/Choice/Liberal feminism is not. Plus gender critical feminists do believe in the gender spectrum, but don’t believe sex is a spectrum. There are only two sexes, although there can be a spectrum of secondary sex characteristics that develop.
Ask about hate speech crime in the UK, just google it and see how it has been used against people, even the autistic. One guy got taken to court for wrong think, the very words of the guy who arrested him. His wrong think, saying in a text you cannot change your sex. A judge dismissed it, but it is the fear factor operating to silence people.
Everyone that voted for “Jacinda” owns this. You reap what you sow.,
Thanks Martyn. You have captured it. As you say “… I think the path to finding your true self is one of the most important journeys of the human experience.”
And if that path leads you to the belief that a gender identity in the form understood by the NZ Human Rights Commission and Stats NZ – is a self-referential, circular defintion that defies logic then will that disbelief be protected? It is what I believe as do many feminists and others. It seems that merely holding that view and expressing it could make us into law-breakers. Trans people can believe what they like about the nature of gender identity, just as Catholics and Flat Earthers can about their beliefs. Making others believe it is a curb on freedom of belief.
It is ironic that the government is considering this legislation that cuts across the freedom of belief provisions in the Bill of Rights Act when – at the same time – The Bill of Rights Act is being amended to provide a legal remedy if the government legislates against the BORA.