The New Zealand government has tabled a “Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill”. In announcing the bill in Parliament, Grant Robertson claimed that it “will help protect the wellbeing of participants and the fairness of competition”.
Strangely, then, the bill completely ignores the most contentious issue around fairness and wellbeing in, not just New Zealand, but global sport. The word woman is not mentioned once in the bill. Nor is the plural, women. Or girl.
Rainbow communities, though, are mentioned four times. They also merit several explanatory clauses.
This, from a government whose leader couldn’t even explain what a woman is.
The same PM, it might be noted, stated that he was on the side of a lynch mob who attacked a Let Women Speak rally in Auckland. A rally where several women were assaulted by men.
Save Women’s Sport Australasia (SWSA) has had the decency to take the political process seriously enough to make a submission to the bill. In my view, this requires a considerable dose of unjustified optimism given that most of the submissions to the Self-Sex ID bill were against, yet the bill still passed and is about to be made law in June.
If women haven’t learned their place in New Zealand yet, they’re just not paying attention. There’s a place for women in “Aotearoa” – well behind creepy, autogynephilic, male predators wearing dresses.
Chances are the public’s views on this won’t matter either to politicians of all hues, since none have spoken up for women on this issue. Never mind that an independent Curia poll showed the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders (67 per cent) do not support males being able to self-identify into women’s sport. What’s wrong with our political parties? Doesn’t anyone want to make political capital out of this glaring injustice/gender gobble-de-gook in election year?
The bill would make it law that Maori, Pasifika, disabled, even the Privacy Commissioner and, of course, “rainbow communities” must be consulted.
But not women.
Something of an oversight since female athletes have suffered historical discrimination in terms of funding, support and status. Already Sport New Zealand has refused to survey or consult with sportswomen on the development of transgender inclusion guidelines, despite the fact that their inclusion will impact significantly on women’s safety, fairness and opportunities […]
As well, the bill appears to include clauses allowing for males who believe they are female to claim they are being discriminated against if a sporting organisation refuses them access into women’s or girls’ sport.
New Zealand will end up making itself a laughing-stock. Global sporting bodies are moving to ban male athletes from competing in women’s sport. So are more and more US states.
Men cannot become women, no matter how many drugs they consume or how much surgery they have. Or even how many people they bully into submission.
Reality will win.
Plain Sight
But not in New Zealand.
After all, this is the land whose ruling elite think that Stone Age creation myths are ‘science’, and violent, misogynist male bullies are ‘women’.
How does it feel to live in the Land of Make-Believe, BFD readers?