I worked at the New Zealand Educational Institute, a large union for teachers and support staff.
I was investigated twice for making gender critical statements on social media and for organising with Speak Up for Women NZ. Because I cited the NZ Bill of Rights Act, in defence of my rights to political opinions and expression I was not able to be sacked. Instead my team was reviewed shortly after the second investigation and I was made redundant. The (straight, male) National Secretary decided without consulting any LGBT staff that the Institute would adopt the NZ Standards Association's standard for Rainbow Friendly workplaces. I protested and said that staff who are actually gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans should have a say in that. We were invited to make submissions on the standard. In my submission I pointed out that while the Glossary had a number of definitions of gender and trans terms there was no definition of "sex" or "lesbian". The standard is heavily influenced by gender ideology. I said I could not agree to be bound by a policy based on the standard, but that I would like to be involved in the group deciding the institutes LGBT policies. I reiterated that LGBT staff should be the ones to decide what our policies should be. I was told by the straight woman in charge of implementing the policy that I could not be part of the group. The group ended up having a lesbian who was pro gender identity, and a couple of other straight people on it including a straight man. My comments were put in moderation in 2 New Zealand Trade Union Facebook groups, along with any other gender critical people who tried to discuss gender ideology in those groups As a member and branch secretary of the New Zealand Labour Party, I was told I could not join the Rainbow Labour organising group because it was "inclusive" and I would make some members unsafe.because I had gender critical views. At a Rainbow Labour Wellington Branch meeting I attended, a transwoman announced that there had been a "TERF"problem at another branch, but it had "been fixed", and "she" had not had any further problems with that branch. At the same meeting Grant Robertson, the Deputy Prime Minister, and an out gay man, referred to a Member of Parliament as making "TERF comments" in Parliament, referring to ex-MP Sarah Dowie, a member of the opposition National Party, who asked the Minister of Statistics if his department would still collect statistics about sex in the Census. I am not a union member any more as I am now unemployed, but I am still a branch secretary in the Labour Party. ... I left the Labour Party in January 2020 when it became apparent that a member of the Trilateral Commission was going to become the leader. It wasn't a hard decision after the Neoliberal war mangers responsible for the Iraq invasion used IdPol extremism as a stick to further their politics agenda..
I left the Labour Party when the leadership candidates in early 2020 endorsed a pledge to expel people like my partner and friends from the party as "transphobic" supporters of a "hate group" (WPUK). This FB post sums up my thoughts.
"WHY DO YOU KEEP POSTING ABOUT THE ERASURE OF THE SEX BASED RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS?" A friend asked so I will answer. I do post a lot about this. Almost always I simply repost the hard work of an awesome network of feminists that I would encourage people to fund and support. I post in part because of my partner. When Debbie and I met in 1980 she was working in a Rape Crisis Centre. As students, our courting days - giving my age away there - included evenings of direct action, shall we say, on certain male-centred venues in the city. Our shared books were not just Trotsky, Serge and Luxemburg but Dworkin, Brownmiller and Rowbotham. I post in part because we have a daughter and we think the world will be less safe and less free for her if this "gender identity" revolution is nodded through. But I keep posting about this mostly because I am 58 and, hand to heart, I really can't think of anything comparable to this happening in my lifetime. In fact I am struggling to think of anything comparable in history. What i mean is I can't think of another example of such a huge REVERSAL of the hard-won rights and protections of any group of oppressed people (half the population, in this case) once those rights have been established, in many cases for some decades. (I could add: outside of a counter-revolution, which this is of course.) And I certainly can't think of a comparable reversal happening in 5 minutes flat, sweeping over the entire liberal democratic world, with almost no serious discussion, against the will of huge majorities of the populations, and *with the active support of the left*. Ideas and policies which one could not imagine being proposed at all a mere five minutes ago are becoming law, enforced by the courts and police. In the blink of an eye it has become dangerous to hold views that were near-universally held just five minutes ago. - dangerous to believe in the material reality of biological sex. - dangerous to believe in the centrality of the material reality of sex to women's oppression. - dangerous to call women 'women' - an entire lexicon is taking its place: 'uterus havers', 'chest feeders', 'vulva havers', 'pregnant people' and so on (but we never hear of 'testicle havers', do we?). - dangerous to believe in the right of same-sex attracted lesbians and gay men to BE same-sex attracted, without being pressured to have sex with people they do not desire, or being attacked as "transphobic" and "genital fetishists" and compared to the KKK when they politely make their desires known, or when they object to their boundaries being disregarded, from their dating apps to their summer camps. - (and excuse me, but if you do not understand that there is a group of men waiting in the dark web to slipstream behind the notions of 'the cotton ceiling' (i.e the claim that men-who-have-identifed-as-lesbian-women are being oppressed by lesbians who wont have sex with them) and the 'boxer ceiling' (i.e. the claim that women-who-have-identified-as-gay-men are being oppressed by gay men who wont have sex with them) then, forgive me, but you are an idiot. Go ahead and define people who demand sex from other people, but are refused it, as the *oppressed* to be supported, and the refusers as *oppressors* to be assailed and, well, just you see how you get on with *that* slippery slope, and who you meet there). - dangerous to believe (in a world still entirely saturated by predatory male violence and male sexual violence) in the need and the right of girls and women to sex-specific toilets, locker rooms, refuges, crisis centres, sports, and resources; - dangerous to say it is not fair that a 6ft 8inch 52 year old man who identifies as a women is taking a place on a women's college basketball team. - dangerous to point out that it is unsafe when a man who identifies as a women participates in women's MMA and literally *breaks the skulls* of the women they fight. - dangerous to challenge the idea that we should not return to the prison cell of a Janet and John world in which boys who like pretty dolls and spangly bracelets are 'really girls', while girls who like guns and mud are 'really boys'. - dangerous to point out that a girl who isn't old enough to decide her own bedtime should not really be allowed to make the decision to have her own breasts cut off (yes, it's age 15 in Oregon) - dangerous to pursue gender critical research in our universities, or even to express gender critical views there, as a student or a lecturer, lest you be sent to Coventry, denied advancement, excluded from committees, and smeared as "transphobic". Also unprecedented is the violence, real, threatened and verbal, that has accompanied this change at every step. The rape threats. The 'kill a terf' incitement that saturates social media, with its elaborate descriptions, sometimes with photos attached, of the violence to which the 'terfs' are going to be subjected to by 'my girl dick'. The physical assaults on feminists holding public meetings. The cancellations, from JKR to Julie Bindel to Selina Todd to all the rest. The sackings. The doxing. The hanging from trees of effigies of feminists who have dared to oppose gender identity ideology. I do not post because it is unprecedented that this kind of madness has the active support of almost the entire far left Hell, the history of the far left could be told as a series of ideological manias accompanied by violence against this season's designated 'enemy'. I post because of what IS unprecedented: bar a number of brave, slandered, barely tolerated, and threatened-with-expulsoon feminists aside, the entire left has acted as nodding dog and cheer leader for all this. No, it's more than that: the left are this counter-revolution's organisers and militants. Anyone on the left opposing gender identity ideology is being driven out of "the community of the good', as David Hirsh called it, smeared as "transphobic haters", from brave women Labour MPs to brave rank and file activists. What is also unprecedented is the spineless, craven silence of men on the left who know it's all madness. They will tell you in private that they too think women's and girls rights and needs are being thrown under a bus, and they accept it is a disaster. But they will not say one word in public. They act as if they are being asked to storm Omaha Beach on D Day, for Christ's sake. After years of waiting I now say this: they are useless cowards and I have contempt for every one of them. Comrades, no more. All that. All that is why I post about it so much. 2/26/2021 The left wing has failed lesbians totally, and they are taking our votes for grantedRead Now I was a Green Party member for several years, but planned to vote Labour from now on.
I think I will be voting Conservative to shock the other parties into action until they change. The left wing has failed lesbians totally, and they are taking our votes for granted. I won’t rejoin the Labour Party until the stance on women’s rights changes. At the next election I am likely not to vote for the first time in my life.
2/26/2021 I find myself saying Hurrah for the House of Lords - at least they can't be cancelledRead Now Politically homeless - from Marxist left, to Labour Party, Green Party, Liberal Democrats - all have embraced gender ideology. I left extinction rebellion because this so called single issue campaign uniting everyone around climate change suddenly (and they are not a democratic organistion) not only declared support for people who were transgender but called anyone who opposed the ideology TERFS. I find myself saying Hurrah for the House of Lords - at least they can't be cancelled.
2/26/2021 Identity politics has come from the left but am I insane to think it’s been orchestrated from the right?Read Now I now have to distance myself from parties and organisations that I previously respected e.g. Green Party, Labour, SNP, Amnesty. I am watching ‘the left’ hand critical thinking over to the right and my heart is breaking. Identity politics has come from the left but am I insane to think it’s been orchestrated from the right? People who should be fighting for important issues are being dragged into these ridiculous arguments. I have lost hope. We’re all fucked.
I was a socialist from the age of 16 when I joined the Labour Party Young Socialists and organised the CND film to be shown in my sixth form in 1979. Saw Tony Benn talk at the age of 17 in another local school. Left the Labour Party during the Miners Strike to go to SWP. Returned to Labour when I grew up a bit more. Not really interested in the bureaucracy but the issues and campaigning, going out talking to people, leafletting, knocking on doors. Really keen on Jezza with the policies he represented. Didn't take in the gender stuff. Hit me like a rock when my early twenties daughter said she was going to inject testosterone and have a mastectomy a couple of years ago. Then the scales fell from my eyes regarding the gender shit. I am stunned beyond belief. I left the Labour Party, drove miles to spoil my ballot paper last time. Fucking idiots. A string of lost and abandoned friendships. They can all fuck off. This is my daughter and my womanhood.
2/26/2021 if we cannot stand by our lesbian sisters then we cannot call ourselves feministsRead Now I have been Labour member and trade unionist for 20 years from a long line of socialist women. I took part in marches in support of my lesbian sisters and am clinging in by my fingernails having become increasingly conerned by the treatment of Rosie Duffield and the abject failure of the party leadership to stand up for women's sex based rights. This is especially important in a world where online pornography is freely available and frankly, the cotton ceiling arguments, is the most dreadful male entitlement I have seen for a long time.I worry for young autistic and lesbian women caught up in fashionable medicalisation of complex issues as Tennessee Williams' sister was lobotimised during another era when problem women were subjected to irreversible treatments. I have found Keira Bell inspiring and Dr Jane Clare Jones' analysis insightful. Above all, if we cannot stand by our lesbian sisters then we cannot call ourselves feminists - I choose Julie Bindel, Beverly Jackson and many others holding the line against this new homphobia.
I have left the Labour Party due to their trans women are women policy. I believe that trans people should have equal rights with other humans but I do not believe that trans women are women or trans men are men - they are trans women and trans men. I have never had involvement with Stonewall as whilst I am a lesbian, I have always felt that they are essentially an entirely conservative lobbying group, aiming for hetero normative goals such as equal marriage and the military.
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