Scared and depressed at the situation in NZ

1. In NZ heaps of community sports are played in a modified way (with rules that minimise contact etc) mixed sex - touch rugby, indoor football, casual netball. It’s the competitive sports that are single sex. If you are trans why would you not join a mixed sex team?

In mixed community sports in the UK the rules are altered to be competitive for women. I used to play mixed tag rugby and there was:

• a minimum number of female players on the pitch at all times
• double points if a try was scored by a woman

Even with that, there was still a tendency for the men to just pass to each other and ignore the women. Some male players also used physical strength advantage to intimate women. For example, it's a foul for an attacking player to run right into a defender, but if a big guy runs straight at a woman it's either move or get wiped out.

I don't think a trans woman would playing on a mixed team would solve any problems: do they count as a female player (unfair to opponents and to women who may be subbed off for another guy) or as a male player (distressing as not affirming gender identity).

I also think that amateur community sports need more safeguards than professional sports. Explicit fairness is more important at a high level because the stakes are much higher (medals, national team selection etc). However, people playing amateur sports have lower fitness levels and poorer technique, so there may already be a higher risk of injury, just because players may not be so aware of how to play in a way that keeps themselves and other players safe. (I'm not totally sure about this but anecdotally I've seen some life altering injuries in very amateur roller derby and several sprains and fractures in casual tag rugby. Incidentally, I would never ever play roller derby because the gung-ho attitude to injury in the people I know who play is terrifying.) It worries me a lot that the focus in sports is on fairness in elite sports, with safety in community sport compromised because it's seen as less important.

I am a NZer. I am a cis female. I support the right of people who identify with a gender to live a life as that gender. I may disagree profoundly with that women's group but support their right to meet and discuss whatever they want to discuss. They are entitled to their views without being pilloried for it although personally I do find the focus of many such groups on public conveniences quite peculiar. I support people who actually identify as a gender using the conveniences of that gender. The thing is that I mean people who actually identify as that gender. I know people who are XX who would cause outrage if they used a ladies because they look, sound and dress like men. Not surprisingly they don't actually do that because they have sensitivity eg they may go to the gym already in gym clothes and shower at home. Some random man who wanders into a ladies changing room is not the same thing.

Despite my views, I do have real reservations about sports though. I can't quite see how it is fair for somebody who was XY and went through puberty as XY with the height, bone structure and muscle development that entailed competing against XX women in rugby for instance. The XX women are liable to be flattened in a tackle.

And another posters comment:

'the surrogate can either terminate or keep the baby as she wishes'

What a difference a word makes. Reading that phrase with the word 'surrogate' replaced with 'Woman' makes me realise why the other side is so desperate to erase the word woman.

Whoops. Here's the link to a recent thread about a case is surrogacy gone wrong that hit the newspapers in NZ.

Surrogacy ends in abortion and ends a friendship www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4239144-Surrogacy-ends-in-abortion-and-ends-a-friendship

A post from me on that thread.

"Under New Zealand law, there are no legal protections for parents having a baby by surrogate or for the surrogate herself. The surrogate is considered the legal parent and the biological parents must adopt the child after birth to make the relationship legal. This means that under NZ law, the surrogate can either terminate or keep the baby as she wishes. It also means that the biological parents can change their minds and abandon the surrogate with the baby.
Given the lack of protections for either party, some legal experts say our laws are "not fit for purpose". Labour MP Tāmati Coffey, who, with his partner Tim Smith, welcomed their son Tūtānekai by surrogate in 2019, currently has a members' bill in ballot calling for modern laws for modern families. It includes reform of birth certificates, providing a way
to enforce surrogacy arrangements and creating a register of potential surrogates."

They talk about enforceable contracts, which are indeed the case in the commercial USA. Whatever happened to "her body, her choice" which proponents of surrogacy often trot out as a reason why women cannot/should not be prevented from having a surrogate prefix they wish. And yet they would force a woman who realises this is a mistake early in the pregnancy to carry in and complete the deal? And if the commissioning parents change their minds and abandon the baby (as happens from time to time with several well documented cases I have seen) ?Well it would obviously be a terrible outcome but it's probably better that other arrangements are made for the baby than that it is sent home with reluctant parents who don't want it and won't love it.

Hand in hand with the self ID/gender recognition and sports comes a consultation on your surrogacy laws. Which, from what I've seen, looks as if it will go exactly the same way as ours. Ie remove rights and protections for women and babies in favour of producing a breeder class of woman to supply babies for those that can afford it.

Thank you, I have signed the petition.

Thanks for alerting us to the petition @SunnyintheSun. I have signed.

The cis bit maybe added to the vehemence of the voting!

Not available in my regon

Have you seen this today? I am massively heartened by the response to this poll! Kiwis love their sport and fairness does not equal inclusion at the cost of women. www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows/2021/06/question-of-the-day-should-trans-women-athletes-compete-in-the-same-category-as-cis-women.html

Just read the Newshub link about the letter from 41 Olympians. Towards the end, the gumball at Sport NZ saying, Oh our priority is being inclusive. Everyone wants to be included. Focus less on winning.

Somehow I'm picturing him as a WALL-E type blob who's never participated in any competitive sport. He obviously knows exactly nothing about them.

And that's who's coming up with this garbage.

Fellow kiwi. Yup, it's depressing alright. NZ is so behind the 8-ball with this stuff. Not helped by an inept media pushing an unscientific and anti-intellectual agenda. Was once a big fan of National Radio but turned off forever a month or so ago when I heard Kim Hill call women questioning gender idealogy 'terfs'. Am hopeful about what is happening in the UK however and we need to cling to hope wherever we can find it. NZ will no doubt follow the UK ... in about five years time (and we think we're progressive HA!). Don't give up the fight. The law has not been passed yet, and the letter signed by 41 of some of our biggest sports stars calling for further review of NZ sport policy makes me hopeful (am off to buy some ribbons). www.newshub.co.nz/home/sport/2021/06/kiwi-marathon-great-allison-roe-concerned-about-future-of-women-s-sport-as-transgender-debate-grows.html

Great news about the letter by the athletes in New Zealand

Sympathy, OP. I am in Canada and so depressed about it that I have almost been squashed into a complete poo of inaction. I managed to rouse myself the other day to write a supportive email to my local library which has been under fire from the Pride organisation for having a supposedly transphobic book.

I don't know what it is about the former colonies, but we all seem to be deep in this shit.

Is Diversity Works NZ the equivalent of Stonewall UK?

Another Kiwi here. For the last few months my sister Illyria47 and I have emailed and written to everyone in the government and the opposition who hold portfolios relevant to Sex Self ID, Conversion therapy, Hate speech, NZ Statistics, Corrections and Police (crime stats) asking them to fully explain where they stand with regard to the need to protect women's rights around these issues. The responses have not been encouraging from government ministers, with the Minister for Women and Internal Affairs Jan Tinetti refusing to say whether women's right to sex segregated spaces will still be protected if Self ID is passed without any safeguards.

Goodness knows with all the links and material we sent to opposition MPs they could attack the government strongly on these issues, but I do wonder if they will when the time comes to debate the bills. New Zealand seriously needs an advocate like Senator Claire Chandler of Tasmania but just at the moment I cannot see anyone on either side of the house who would be willing to step up to the plate.

Just recently we have emailed our Mayor condemning his action in cancelling a SUFW meeting due to take place in our city later this month. No response as yet. We emailed our two local MPs, Labour and National, with our concerns over the mayor's action, but again, no response.

At least Judith Collins, the Leader of the Opposition, stood up for free speech. Not a peep out of the PM, unless I missed it somehow.
What heartens us is seeing all the women on sites like Broadsheet NZ, SUFW, WomensLiberationAoteatoa, and any number of women, and men, who express their support for women's rights on their facebooks and twitter feeds. It's encouraging not to feel alone.

The media are picking up on transgendered males in sport, mainly due to persistent pressure from women, but NZ Sport seems unconcerned about any fairness issues to date. Another email to send.

Just have to keep up the pressure with letters, emails etc., and hope that they eventually bear fruit. It has been inspiring to see how persistence and courage on the part of women in the UK and around the world is making a difference at last.

I’m a Kiwi, and likewise concerned.

Very heartened by this, though...

www.google.com/amp/s/www.newshub.co.nz/home/sport/2021/06/former-olympians-challenge-sport-nz-draft-guidelines-on-transgender-athletes-want-more-consultation.amp.html