An Open Letter about Green Party MPs trying to prevent advocacy for women’s rights.

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Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (aka Posie Parker) is a UK Women’s Rights Activist who provides women with a platform to speak about how their lives have been impacted by gender theory See [i] in their own words. She is being hosted in New Zealand by a group of feminist women under the banner of “Let Women Speak”.

Keen-Minshull’s campaigns have been extremely effective in raising awareness of the implementation of gender theory. She covered the United States inter-university swimming competitions in March 2022, reporting on swimming races where Lia Thomas, a trans identified man, was winning all his events in the female category. Since this event took place, FINA, swimming’s governing body, has ruled decisively that males who identify as women could not participate in women’s events. This coverage of this story is likely to have been responsible for the large majority there now is across New Zealand who believe that trans identified males should not be able to participate in Women’s Sports.

Anticipating her visit to our country, three Green Party MPs have written an ‘open letter’ to Michael Wood, Minister of Immigration. MPs Kerekere, Ghahraman and Menéndez March have called for the denial of any visa to Keen-Minshull. The Green MPs’ open letter is full of low-quality, speculative statements and misinterpretation of the views of Keen-Minshull and Let Women Speak. Amongst the ‘evidence’ the three presented was that Keen-Minshull was ‘photographed with a racist’ and had been interviewed ‘by a right wing commentator’. See [ii]

It is disappointing to learn that Golriz Ghahraman did not seek further understanding and context before co-writing the letter. Accusations of guilt by association are unfair and she had herself experienced serious unwarranted damage to her reputation due to being pictured with a client when she was a UN Human Rights lawyer before better quality journalists addressed the issue.

Despite the lurid claims in the open letter could the real reason the MPs have for opposing Keen-Minshull’s visit is her support of women’s sex-based rights?  By claiming the events are a threat to gender diverse people the three MPs are effectively saying that the events and that the women involved are therefore dangerous. This is as irresponsible and deeply disappointing as it is untrue.  Especially when what is really at issue is a political difference of view. These MPs have ignored the evidence that women’s sex-based rights they have in law are being lost.  They are ignoring the large number of lesbians and gay men, who don’t endorse gender theory, but who are also a part of the Rainbow community that they say they support. The Green Party has enthusiastically implemented gender theory in policy and law See [iii]

The Green MPs open letter also ignores the vehemence with which activists try to prevent those concerned with sex-based rights from speaking. See [iv]

The planned events as well as the increasing number of organisations in New Zealand that are dedicated to countering gender theory demonstrate that there is a real clash of interests. These groups consist in large part of left wing and former green party members, including lesbians and gay men, who are dismayed by the inflammatory stance of the Green party on this issue.

The claims that the MPs make against  Keen-Minshull and Let Women Speak risk inciting violence from her opponents who, based on the MPs letter, might well feel they were justified. This is not only irresponsible; it is abhorrent and cynical. Aren’t the Greens advocating elsewhere that incitement should be made illegal through hate speech laws? It is neither kind nor inclusive to engage in dishonest rhetoric. Ghahraman , Kerekere, Menéndez March and the Green Party really need to lift their game.

Jan Rivers is a Wellington-based independent researcher and co-author of Sex, Gender and Women’s rights and Another Unfortunate Experiment?

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[i] Gender theory – also referred to as gender ideology – prioritises gender -a feeling – over sex -biological reality in law and policy.

[ii] The allegations are so serious that a complaint to Netsafe has been commenced.

[iii] Green Party and Gender Theory

Green party member Jill Abigail wrote an article in exasperation for the Te Awa – the Green Party House Magazine after she had tried many times to engage MPs with her concerns. This led Party Co-Leader Marama Davidson to apologise for the article and the party sacrificed the long-standing editorial independence of the magazine. The Party did this on the basis that to argue for balancing women’s rights with those of transgender people was hateful and should be suppressed. 

In government, the Green Party have used their powers to implement gender theory policies.

• The Ministry for Women under Green MP Julie-Ann Genter, created a new ‘inclusive’ definition of woman so that even equal pay is calculated by the gender public servants choose i.e. by self-identification.
• Jan Logie, as the Parliamentary Under-secretary to the Minister of Justice, oversaw the removal of the sex category from almost all crime reporting on perpetrators of violence. Such crimes are now counted as “family violence”, making the female victims of domestic abuse invisible.
• At the Select Committee for the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration bill Kerekere calling a submitter’s testimony ‘transphobic’. She later posted the video the intervention, on her Facebook page with a fireball exploding obliterating the submitter.
• Greens Co-leader James Shaw made a commitment that sex data would be collected in the census. But Stats NZ has given primacy to gender and has created a definition for sex that says it can change over a lifetime making it unusable in medicine and science.
• The NZ Human Rights Commission redefined lesbian and homosexual as a same gender orientation meaning males can ‘identify as lesbian and women as gay men.  ‘Queer’ people can name their own novel sexual orientations. Hence the sexual orientation protections afforded in the Human Rights Act have been diluted.

[iv] Silencing advocates for women’s rights

Gender theory advocates frequently argue that those who don’t hold gender theory views are guilty of violence, bigotry, transphobia or hatred.  For example

• On Saturday Morning on RNZ on 14 May 2022, Kim Hill interviewed gender-critical philosopher Kathleen Stock about her book Material Girls. Stock had argued that women need spaces free from men in sport and accommodation and about the dangers of gender medicine for children. Following the interview, a complaint made to the Broadcasting Standards Authority argued that Stock’s views would encourage discrimination towards transgender people. The Broadcasting Authority found that the interview had significant value, by allowing discourse and the expression of views about an important issue affecting our society.
• Professor Stock had to resign to her position at the University of Sussex for expressing gender-critical views. After years of discrimination and harassment the final straw for the Professor was the ranks of protestors wearing masks and deploying smoke bombs who were supposedly ‘defending transgender people against hate’.
• In the UK, Tavistock Clinic whistle-blower Kirsty Entwhistle was accused of “transphobia” when she expressed  she did not have a gender identity.
• Opponents of Speak Up For Women (SUFW) prevented a meeting to speak about the impact of sex self-identification on women’s rights  at Massey University in 2019 claiming that talking about women’s sex-based rights would pose a Health & Safety risk and labelling SUFW a “hate” group. A subsequent Judicial Review found that SUFW could not, on the basis of their views, be regarded in this way.
• Overseas events that are critical of gender theory are regularly closed down by people who grab mics, rush the stage, bang windows, spit and scream to prevent women’s concerns being aired. They regularly intimidate women who attend speaking events. Their social media presence is abhorrent with rape and death threats common. Physical attacks on women on this issue go back as far as 2018.

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