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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

New Zealand's Forstater case?

95 replies

TheKhakiQuail · 09/05/2025 12:39

Not sure if others have seen this already - NZ is having a court case to test whether GC beliefs are protected as political beliefs!

"In March 2021 LAVA (Lesbian Action for Visibility in Aotearoa) booked a stall at the annual Out in the City (OITC) fair in Wellington, to display a map of Wellington sites of historical, political, and social significance to lesbians.
Initially the booking was accepted, but four days before the event the organisers, Wellington Pride, emailed to say that because of the “nature” of LAVA, the booking did not fit with OITC kaupapa (principles), and there would not be a space for LAVA.
Pride claimed that LAVA was “trans-exclusionary”. The Pride Board Chair stated in an email that OITC participants should be standing side by side with “the most marginalised of the marginalised including our transgender whanau [family] and the marginalisation they face on the daily” (sic)."

"LAVA members, Hilary Oxley and Margaret Curnow, have brought a claim in the New Zealand Human Rights Review Tribunal, claiming that in inviting applications for stalls, Pride was offering a service, and that they unlawfully discriminated against LAVA on the basis of LAVA’s political opinions about trans issues and women’s rights, and because of LAVA’s views that sex and sexual orientation exclude trans women from being women, and lesbians. Pride denies that LAVA’s opinions are “political opinions”, and claims that LAVA’s support for known “anti-trans activists” such as J K Rowling and Julie Bindel is evidence of “transphobia”. Pride suggests that LAVA’s presence with our map would have made the OITC event “unsafe” for trans people, and that the map was based on an idea developed by LGB Alliance Australia, “a known anti-trans group”.
LAVA is represented by senior legal counsel Nicolette Levy KC. Ms. Levy, instructed by Franks Ogilvie lawyers of Wellington, acted for Speak Up for Women (SUFW) in 2021, securing a judgment requiring Palmerston North City Council to allow SUFW to hold a meeting to discuss the proposed self-ID amendments to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act.
Political philosopher Ramon Das of Victoria University of Wellington, has provided an expert opinion that LAVA’s views on trans issues are political opinions.
This case is important for everyone with gender critical or sex realist beliefs, because it has not been confirmed by a New Zealand Court that such opinions are a political belief protected under the Human Rights Act 1993. The debate over whether gender critical views such as LAVA's are "worthy of respect in a democratic society" has not been had yet in New Zealand.

Read more about the case and LAVA’s origins

They have a crowdfunder on their website - hard to raise funds in a country of 5 million

OP posts:
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anyolddinosaur · 30/06/2025 12:46

Last day for getting donations doubled up.

Wetoldyousaurus · 29/06/2025 11:42

Thank you to everyone on this thread and following. UK women have done so much to turn stop TRA and we hope that your example can help turn things around in other countries.

LAVAMarg · 29/06/2025 04:29

Thank you so much

minerva7 · 29/06/2025 01:17

off to donate now as promised. All the luck!

DrUptonsGardenGnome · 28/06/2025 19:21

£3000 is NZ$7000 which if matched by the donor will get LAVA to their total.

LAVAMarg · 28/06/2025 19:14

Yes the current total includes the June donor doubling up. We are amazed and delighted at how many people have donated this month. Just a couple more days to go with this amazingly generous offer

anyolddinosaur · 28/06/2025 15:52

Currently at $86057, dont know if that includes the donor's doubling up. Just a few days left for the donor doubling up the donations.

TheKhakiQuail · 19/06/2025 10:27

Thanks for the update! I checked the latest fundraising update on the website (great to see) now at $81,143 raised of $100,000 target - excellent news. Good luck next month.

OP posts:
LAVAMarg · 19/06/2025 00:30

Hi everyone, here is the link to our latest update. https://link.publicate.it/pub/179ce3314189e5

Our preparation for the first week of our Hearing beginning 21 July is going well.
Please be aware that our fundraising total is being update twice weekly on our website, so may be more than what is shown in the current update.
Once again thank you all so much for your support.

LAVA Mid June '25 update

https://link.publicate.it/pub/179ce3314189e5

LAVAMarg · 04/06/2025 00:11

Thanks for your suggestion about the LGB Foundation in the UK. We are in touch with them as well as the LGB Alliance in the US and NZ

KnottyAuty · 03/06/2025 08:40

LAVAMarg · 03/06/2025 05:35

Hi everyone, sorry I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. Been busy preparing for our Hearing. Who knew there is so much work involved in challenging the absurdities of gender ideology! I am attaching our latest update and encourage you all to donate if you can because we have a wonderfully generous donor who is going to match every June donation up to a total of $30,000! We are just so grateful to her. We also have a donation tally on the website - www.lava.nz so you can track progress. It's not automated as we aren't using one of the popular fundraising platforms but we will be updating it manually at least twice a week. See my post on 17 May for the reasons we aren't using crowdfunding. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have and I will do my best to answer them. Thanks again for your support - it means so much.Meanwhile you can read our Update here https://link.publicate.it/pub/892b23ef6daf2c

A bit more gardening done - thanks for the update and I hope it all goes well this month ready for the hearing.

Have you been in touch with the UK’s LGB Foundation? They’ve been through a court hearing and will have lots of tips

borntobequiet · 03/06/2025 08:23

Will do a little more antipodean gardening for you.

LAVAMarg · 03/06/2025 05:35

Hi everyone, sorry I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. Been busy preparing for our Hearing. Who knew there is so much work involved in challenging the absurdities of gender ideology! I am attaching our latest update and encourage you all to donate if you can because we have a wonderfully generous donor who is going to match every June donation up to a total of $30,000! We are just so grateful to her. We also have a donation tally on the website - www.lava.nz so you can track progress. It's not automated as we aren't using one of the popular fundraising platforms but we will be updating it manually at least twice a week. See my post on 17 May for the reasons we aren't using crowdfunding. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have and I will do my best to answer them. Thanks again for your support - it means so much.Meanwhile you can read our Update here https://link.publicate.it/pub/892b23ef6daf2c

Final June 25 Email update to mailing list

https://link.publicate.it/pub/892b23ef6daf2c

SinnerBoy · 26/05/2025 00:34

Thanks for the bumps... should be home on Tuesday night.

LAVAMarg · 25/05/2025 23:56

Thank you TheKhakiQuail for your suggestions about the Australian cases. Our lawyer is all over those - she is fabulous and really on top of everything. We are just so lucky to have her. She is a top notch KC and has already won a landmark case here which determined that groups such as ours are not hate groups. It was in response to local councils refusing to let spaces to Speak up for Women, (an NZ gender critical group) for public meetings. The issue of live tweeting is going to be raised at a pre-hearing conference. All parties have to agree that it can happen so we have our fingers crossed. I will keep you updated. Thank you again for your support

Zanzara · 21/05/2025 03:38

Donated, good luck LAVA.

On a side note, sorry to see Kirsty Allsop's let herself go.

(Sorry Kirstles😊).

New Zealand's Forstater case?
TheKhakiQuail · 21/05/2025 02:39

Some of the interesting international court cases / tribunal hearings have been made available for the public to follow either through the court livestream or granting permission for tribunal tweets or others to live tweet the hearings on twitter/X. Is this allowed and likely to happen in NZ for your one @LAVAMarg ?

Also, I assume your lawyers are all over the protected belief cases such as Forstater, and I'm wondering if there is anything helpful they could use from the Australian judgments in Deeming vs Pesutto (defamation) and Re:Devin (family law) which were both unimpressed with the suggestion that women expressing GC views or the Cass report itself are Nazi adjacent. Just in case any of the expert witnesses are prone to that sort of hyperbole/slander, as was the case for Lesbian Action Group's recent hearing.

OP posts:
JanesLittleGirl · 18/05/2025 22:51

Supporterofwomensrights · 18/05/2025 22:14

The level of engagement and expertise on this board is amazing. Hope you and your team has got time to catch up on some of it. I'm sure it'll give you hope.

Edit: spelling

Edited

Seriously, bounce on this board and this board will bounce back to you

Supporterofwomensrights · 18/05/2025 22:14

The level of engagement and expertise on this board is amazing. Hope you and your team has got time to catch up on some of it. I'm sure it'll give you hope.

Edit: spelling

loveyouradvice · 17/05/2025 19:33

I've done so too .. and told them I will again once they've got their total raised and updates on their website.

Nothing is more important than reclaiming our rights

ChazsBrilliantAttitude · 17/05/2025 10:53

Donated. I am sorry you have to do this but I am glad you are.

braggingaboutbrasize · 17/05/2025 09:39

Donated - solidarity and much love

JanesLittleGirl · 17/05/2025 09:31

@LAVAMargThanks for coming on here and giving us the explanations. Much appreciated. Good luck with the funding and the case.

borntobequiet · 17/05/2025 09:17

Bumping. Good luck @LAVAMarg

LAVAMarg · 17/05/2025 04:00

Hi everyone, I am one of the plaintiffs in the NZ LAVA case which is taking Wellington Pride to the Human Rights Review Tribunal for banning our lesbian group from the Pride Fair. One of our NZ supporters told me about Mumsnet and the support here for our case. Many of you have suggested that this would be a great forum for us to spread the word and to raise money, and wondered why we didn't have a presence. To the woman who suggested it might be because we thought Mumsnet was essentially a UK group focused on parenting you are absolutely right! I had no idea how broad your interests are and am delighted to now know about you.
Another question has been "Why aren't we using a crowd funding platform to fundraise?" Well the answer is simple - we would love to but Givealittle which is NZ's main crowd fundraising platform, reserves the right to terminate any groups whose behaviour they consider to be unacceptable or whose activity they consider to be "detrimental to, or may cause harm to, any person." Given that one of the allegations Pride made when they cancelled our booking at the Fair, was that our very presence would cause harm to trans people and make them unsafe, we were not prepared to take the risk of having our Fundraiser terminated and of losing money our supporters are generously donating. We decided to use 'Stripe' for people to donate as there was uncertainty with PayPal at the time. Many people wanted to be able to avoid the 3% fee Stripe charge us, and have LAVA receive all the money they donate, so we are now also publicising our bank account number for direct donations.
We are working on having a visual showing our target and how much we have raised to date, but as it has to be manually created and updated, we haven't quite managed to do it yet! If you want to know more about us you can visit our website: www.lava.nz We publish an Update for our supporters at the beginning of every month which I will post here starting in June. You can also see the old Updates on our website.
Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have - and once again thank you all so much for you support - it means a great deal to us.

LAVA - Lesbian Action for Visibility Aotearoa

LAVA - Lesbian Action for Visibility Aotearoa. A space for same-sex attracted adult human females.

https://www.lava.nz/