Tag Archive for: Left Politics

On peeing, pronouns and politics

A recent debate on The Standard about trans rights touched on a range of  issues – dead naming, the use of preferred pronouns, the actual incidence of sex self-ID related harm to women since the passing of legislation, access to toilets, and so on. If this was a 1960s British comedy, it would be titled Carry On Up The Cul-de-sac.
The issue of female-only facilities such as public lavatories1 changing rooms, domestic violence and rape crisis centres, hospital wards and prisons has to be placed in both an historical and a contemporary context.

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The Rise and Fall of Transgenderism

If you allow yourself to be distracted, diverted and divided by any single issue at this horrifyingly dangerous point in history, you are complicit in a looming catastrophe.

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Fact or Fantasy?

In an interview in March this year, in response to a question from Ash Sakar about whether the housing of trans prisoners in the female estate puts women prisoners at risk of assault, Professor Judith Butler said that until people identify how much at risk female prisoners are from guards and from other women prisoners, we should not even be asking the question.

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Fair pay for exploited women

Employers and business owners, who wish to extract maximum profits by paying their lowest ranked and most precariously employed workers a pittance, are the people most likely to welcome the new right wing coalition government’s repealing of NZ’s Fair Pay Agreement. Unsurprisingly, given the long history of women being an exploited sex-class, there tends to be a disproportionally high percentage of women in such low paid positions. 

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Feminism is for all women, not just the privileged few (NZ election) Pt 3

NZ Labour, Te Pāti Māori, The Opportunities Party and the Women’s Rights Party all have some policies that will benefit women, especially those on low incomes. I would prefer any of them to form a government compared with National, ACT and NZ First.
But, which one could I vote for?

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Feminism is for all women, not just the privileged few (NZ election) Pt 2

The NZ Green Party have some very good policies for women and low-income people, particularly ones that will help a fair number of women struggling to pay essential bills.  However, they have significant silences, confusions, and/or contradictions in their policies and plans that will have a negative impact on females.

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WLA submission to the Safer Online Practices and Media Platforms Consultation

This is the WLA submission to the NZ government, Safer Online Practices and Media Platforms Consultation. The government was asking for feedback on their proposal, which is to be made into a Bill in 2024.

They are proposing to have a government appointed regulator to set codes of practice for social media and the NZ media. But, who will be watching the watchers?

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The Ideological Grift That Keeps Giving

In anticipation of real men throwing real punches, trans rights activists who had called for mass protest against Let Women Speak, promptly bottled out

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AN IDEOLOGICAL DRAG RACE: Part Three

The embryonic coalition between the religious right and the secular ultra-right, and women angry about being silenced over what they perceive to be a range of threats to sex-based rights and to children’s safety, has focussed on the phenomenon of drag queen story hour.

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AN IDEOLOGICAL DRAG RACE: Part Two

Gender identity as an issue and a movement was created and marketed in the first world. In that context, a leader of women opposed to gender identity, who “channels her inner Monroe” while surfing a wave of anger on social media, is unsurprising.

I don’t know if Kelly-Jae Keen believes in her brand, but I do know that many of the women who support her are well-intentioned and genuine in their beliefs and concerns.

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