Jan Rivers: Speech to the Inflection Point Conference. Wellington 18 May 2023

Genspect New Zealand’s spokesperson was involved in this conference in an independent capacity and spoke about the impact of gender ideology in the New Zealand public sector. Links, footnotes and expanded descriptions have been added for clarity for non-NZ readers. Other speakers’ presentations can be seen here. You can watch Jan’s talk here.

We don’t all agree

I would like to say at the outset that deciding whether to speak here today was difficult. I knew it would be controversial and that there would be protests. I don’t agree with much that some other people at this event have said and nor should I be expected to. I am a feminist, a lesbian and a socialist. I place my faith in good public policy and not in the Old Testament. There is nothing wrong with being same-sex attracted.

Often societal problems are solved well by people from very different communities. The New Zealand Bioethics Council did this, the Freedom of Information Campaign in the UK, the work around peace-making in Ireland all involved people from very different backgrounds seeing that the same problem needed to be addressed. Our other political views might be miles apart, but we share the same concerns about gender ideology. In the United States ‘hands across the aisle’ initiatives that join people with otherwise diverse views to work on common issues are well known. On balance, I decided it was important to represent a feminist and left of centre view on these issues rather than fall into the trap of refusing to engage with those I would disagree with on other issues.

I believe that people who say they are transgender are due the civil rights we all have. But we need to think very carefully about whether this includes the right to demand medical treatment for which there is no evidence. Similarly, should people’s self-assessment have to be endorsed by others? Again we need to think carefully about this. It is not an ordinary human right. By the same token I can hope that I will be assessed for what I have said, not what other people claim I have said. But I can’t demand that they do.

I value a society where people can speak freely and can listen, and can find facts and evidence to help them to make decisions.

Why I am involved in this

Gender ideology is just that – a set of opinions or beliefs often used by a dominant group to benefit themselves. And a belief that this ideology should be given primacy in law and policy. If you doubt the power of the ideology then consider the speed at which it has changed our institutions, and the strong demands for voices to be silenced. To give an idea of how quickly things are changing. In 2020 the NZ Human Rights Commission said some people had gender identities – those who said they were transgender. But in the 2023 census the government had decided that we all had to record a gender identity in place of sex whether we believe in those gender identities or not.

About a decade ago I was at an event run by the Council of Trade Unions. One young woman – giving an example of what she called a “successful direct action” – told us of her experience of carrying out a “glitter bombing” of Australian feminist Germaine Greer when she was here on a book tour. Rather than supporting Germaine as a feminist or engaging with her ideas, she and others rushed the stage and assaulted her to try to humiliate and hurt her. I’ve corresponded with someone who was present and who recognised in this a new kind of violent and intolerant activism taking root. When my friends started to say things like “you’ve got to be very careful what you say” or “you’ve said your piece now shut up” I knew there was a major issue unfolding. I have come to realise that gender ideology is a clear and present danger to our society.

In all this there are major impacts for women, whose long fight for recognition as a grouping with shared interests, is being dismantled by the tactic of substituting the established term sex for the term gender. There is an accompanying strategy of suppressing women’s voices as transphobic or anti-trans. As we have seen over the past week, expressing an informed point of view is being identified as a hostile act, in a way that we believe is a knowing attempt to shut down a range of points of view.  

Now I’ll describe what is happening in political parties, and in medicine, and describe the behaviour of some of New Zealand’s rainbow organisations. Then I’ll describe some things that need to be done.

The Labour Government

I belong to the Labour Party. But it has lost the plot on this. The Labour Party spins the line that rising concerns about sex and gender are part of ‘imported culture wars’.  That is a total lie.

It was the Labour Government that passed the self-identification legislation.  It was Labour that encoded dozens of meaningless gender definitions into that law “queering” our  language –  a technique specifically created precisely to create confusion and instability. It was Labour that oversaw the removal of language about women from their own health. It was Labour that allowed guidance on relationships and sex education to put transgender ideology foremost. It was Labour who allowed Stats New Zealand to record imagined genders in place of sex in the census. It was Labour that chilled the ability of psychotherapists to counsel gender confused children. And in the most shameful policy it is possible to countenance it was policy developed under Labour that forces foster-carers and children’s homes to deliver children in care who are already vulnerable, often traumatised, and likely to be confused about many things, including gender, to be railroaded into an “affirmation only” gender medicine treatment model.

These issues are not imported culture wars. They are completely homegrown.

During the last government I sought meetings with Labour Party leaders on these issues. I was worried that, without political leadership, there were threats to our social cohesion. None was willing to meet. The threats made about today’s event and in Albert Park¹ last year, at drag queen story times for preschoolers in libraries and at gender clinics are evidence of the heating up of a slow motion civil war that has been two decades in the making.

The National Party

The NZ National Party appears to want to stand back on these issues. Reining in damaging gender medicine for kids in the UK has taken a decade. We have hardly even begun. Does the National Party really want to oversee a continuation of this health scandal when they already have all the evidence they need to stop it?

The operation of the public sector is at stake too. If public servants have to kowtow to this ideology how can they provide free, fair and frank advice on the issues I have mentioned? And is someone in a rainbow lanyard, who has added their pronouns to their emails, going to be trusted by the public to give them a fair hearing?²

The most important reason for caution on these issues is put forward by Helen Joyce, former finance editor of the Economist and now head of the UK Organisation Sex Matters. I’ll paraphrase what she said in an interview with Peter Boghossian in 2023

This is the worst contagion that we’ll ever have experienced by far. The people who have transitioned their own children and irrevocably harmed them have got to fight forever. They are like the Japanese soldiers who kept on fighting³ after the war had ended. Gender medicine for kids is being stopped across the world but these parents will have to believe that they did the right thing for the rest of their lives for their own sanity and for their own self-respect. We hear that the deputy director of this or that organisation has a trans child. The entire organisation or an entire friendship group gets paralysed by that one person. You can’t talk through things logically with a person who is in denial about what they have done.

Government and the public sector are aware of this issue. I suspect it is why parents who have put kids on puberty blockers, who are the strongest in arguing that other people’s children need them, have not been part of the Ministry of Health review of puberty blockers. We have seen organisations affected by such people being redirected to 180 degrees from their proper purpose. We have news services that cannot report on the scandal of gender medicine. We have health services that damage children and young people. Perpetrators of rape are recorded as women. Legislation to protect sex and sexual orientation is subverted to protect gender identities instead. 

Gender medicine

Last month the UK Cass Report was published. It describes a new way forward for children and young people presenting with gender confusion. Psychological support and evidence based approaches will become the new norm. The report described the pipeline to the gender clinics being created by the adverse conditions in schools, as well as early exposure to violent pornography, and the challenges children face in online environments.

It showed that there was no basis for the New Zealand style of gender medicine for children. In January the World Health Organization decided not to create gender medicine guidelines for young people because there was no evidence. More than half of America’s states have now come to the same conclusion. Many European Union countries have stopped gender medicine for young people and in the last few days Germany and Italy have shown they will likely be joining them.

But in New Zealand less than a day after the release of the Cass Report, the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA), the NZ arm of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) said it was not applicable here and that it was harmful. Why? PATHA said that Cass ignored 98% of  research but this is an outright lie by them that remains uncorrected. Dr Cass noted that 98% of the research was not to a high standard, but – for want of anything better – included the 60% which were of high or medium quality.  PATHA also said they advise the use of multi-disciplinary gender medicine teams even as their actual policy is to outsource gender care to GP practices.  PATHA’s own guidelines scored next to last in Dr Cass’s assessment, We should not be following an organisation that is immune to evidence, which misrepresents its own policies and produces appallingly poor guidelines. So why is PATHA being contracted by Health New Zealand to rewrite gender medicine guidelines and to train our GP’s? 

What is happening in government

I only have time to provide just a few snapshots of what else is happening in government. Much of it has involved no policy work, no risk mitigation, no public consultation, no analysis of legality. Often big changes are made without even a public announcement. Even finding the evidence is difficult.

When equal pay statistics began to be calculated by including men who identified as women it involved eight words in a 19 page document. It said “employees are included as the gender they choose”. In the following year pay inequality in the public sector reduced by the largest amount ever. Coincidence? We will never know.

In another example the midwifery council, influenced by a small group of queer academics, has changed the official regulations that make up the scope of midwifery. Now, whānau (meaning family in Māori) – not pregnant women – are the primary recipients of midwifery services.  Only whānau can register complaints about treatment. When ultrasounds are done they are for whānau. The notion of giving rights to a group over a woman’s body, such that her autonomy is subsumed under the group, is contrary to the Code of Rights which feminists fought for through the Cartwright Inquiry and which has been in New Zealand law for more than 30 years. I daresay there are many patrician men who would like to mount a strong argument to undermine women’s autonomy. But now they don’t need to. The queer theorists have got there first.

New Zealand’s rainbow organisations

Another reason for the rapid change is that in 2020 New Zealand changed the law making every government chief executive and board responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s a good idea if the public services have people from every demographic. In practice though it has allowed multiple gender ideology organisations to grow their consultation and training businesses by contracting to the public sector. These supposedly ‘rainbow’ groups have assisted in the ideological capture of the New Zealand state by gender ideology. Rainbow Tick, Inside Out,  Rainbow Youth, PATHA and Gender Minorities Aotearoa and dozens of others are now influencing at the heart of government.

These organisations are often unaware of, and do not comply with public sector norms like evidence, due process and political neutrality. The universally positive coverage in the New Zealand media prevents this from being seen. Rainbow organisations have:

• made inappropriate demands of public servants to pressure others.  (All of the big accountancy, consulting, law and engineering firms are now members of Rainbow Tick)

• misrepresented the law to public servants

• sacked staff and called for summary sackings of individuals they dislike

• published personal information contained in OIAs

• made claims that women who want to speak about their rights are fascists

• supplied breast binders to girls and young women

• told public servants including health workers to stop using accurate language about women

• accepted money gained by stand-over tactics and intimidation. Like the proceeds from the booking company used by the conference

The research that is needed

What I hope might come from this conference is more people to help with the important work and more people speaking out. We need to collect lots more evidence.

• What is happening with gender ideology, so that when there is a call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry we can provide evidence.

• We want to capture the hundreds of examples of bullying, intimidation and discrimination that people critical of gender ideology have been subject to.

• We want record that we warned every one of New Zealand’s medical bodies about the dangers of gender medicine. There is a grave danger that when the damage of gender medicine becomes apparent there will be no legal remedy for the victims.  New Zealand has had a long history of providing few options for redress for people who are harmed. Pike River is one example but there are many others. The avenues allowing action to be taken against gender doctors are all but closed already unless there is some smart way of using the law.

• We want some people to do a critique of the quality of transgender research. Much of it is so poor it would not have made the quality to be covered in the Cass Report.

• We need people who can receive and represent the testimony of whistle blowers.

I want to finish on a positive note.  The proliferation of gender ideology is resulting in the renewal of very robust and exciting strands of feminist thinking and philosophy. New heterodox organisations like Inflection Point are forming, determined to platform views from across sectors. Thousands of people are stepping up to act courageously against the prevailing orthodoxy and to advocate the value of being able to think and discuss freely. Woman by woman, and organisation by organisation the world is waking up to the dangers of the amorphous, suffocating “kindness” of gender ideology and the nihilistic effects of cancellation and realising that decency, truth, analysis and care are much more useful.

These are serious matters, and as I said at the outset I hope (but cannot demand) that our concerns made here today are represented accurately and in good faith in the weeks and months ahead.  Thank you.

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1. Albert Park was the venue for Posie Parker’s Auckland Let Women Speak event on 25 March 2023. Counter-protestors broke through the fencing separating attendees and their opponents. Women were assaulted including Parker who had to be guided by her security marshalls from the event through an angry crowd.

2. For the sake of brevity I did not mention the National Party’s role in the implementation of gender ideolgy. Amongst other initiatives it put in place gender self-identification for passports and driver’s licences without, apparently, addressing the risks of fraudulent use. As with much else in this area there was no public consultation.

3. Others have drawn parallels between the parents and doctors who support puberty blockers with the way those behind the Oxycontin and lobotomy medical scandals who were not able to reassess the evidence for their approach and admit to the harms the treatments had caused.