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| Mobbed! As Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s (Posie Parker’s) opponents surged forward, her only protecters were a handful of burly security guards who surrounded their client and began forcing a path through what was now a howling mob. At least one video recording shows the diminutive Keen-Minshull, a terrified rag-doll, eyes dulled by the effects of shock, being heaved past individuals with faces contorted by fury and hate. |
WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED on Saturday morning, 25 March 2023, in Auckland’s Albert Park is easily described.
At 11:00am, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (a.k.a “Posie Parker”) a small (just 155 centimetres tall) bottle-blond mother of four from the United Kingdom, would have stood behind the microphone set up in the Albert Park band rotunda and delivered a speech.
To a small crowd of about 250 people, she would have detailed her objections to transgender women (i.e. persons born biological males and, in some cases, retaining their male reproductive organs) having the right to enter spaces hitherto reserved for biological women and girls; being incarcerated in biological women’s prisons; and permitted to compete against human females in sporting events intended for biological women only.
Keen-Minshull would have been followed by a line-up of New Zealand speakers (most of them biological women and feminists) concerned about the linguistic erasure of their sex from official discourse (as in the expression “pregnant persons”) and alarmed at the efforts of transgender women and their supporters to silence the public expression of their concerns.
At a distance of about 50 metres, a much larger crowd of transgender persons and their supporters, safely corralled behind sturdy barriers, and a cordon of police officers, would have kept up a noisy barrage of objections to the content of the speakers’ speeches. Above their heads, banners and placards proclaiming their support for the rights of transgender New Zealanders would have been clearly visible to the “Let Women Speak” organisers in the rotunda.
The news media would have been there in force to record the confrontation for posterity. When the meeting came to an end, roughly 90 minutes later, and the crowds began to disperse, journalists would have been seen interviewing participants from both sides of the barriers for their media employers.
Spokespersons for the Transgender community would have set forth their objections to Keen-Minshull’s claims, drawing the journalists’ attention to the lack of evidence for any widespread abuse of women and girls by transgender women in toilets, changing-rooms, women’s refuges or prisons, and pointing out how extremely hurtful such suggestions are to the members of one of society’s most fragile and vulnerable communities. The journalists’ professional commitment to fair and balanced reporting would have ensured that the views of both groups were presented to the public.
By 2:00pm, Albert Park would again have become the preserve of Aucklanders enjoying a sunny autumn afternoon.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED on the morning of Saturday, 25 March 2023, bore very little resemblance to the civilised political ideal described above.
As Keen-Minshull stepped forward to speak she was physically assaulted by a person pretending to be a supporter. This attack caused the counter-protesters, estimated at more than 2,000, to surge forward, thrusting aside the flimsy barriers erected to separate them from the much smaller crowd which had gathered to hear the speakers. They were able to do this because there was no police cordon to enforce that separation. Within seconds, the counter-protesters were pressing in on Keen-Minshull’s audience, screaming abuse, hurling projectiles, and lashing out with fists and placards.
Fearing for the safety of Keen-Minshull and her audience, one observer implored a nearby police officer, who was looking on impassively, to intervene. He refused, allegedly declaring that Keen-Minshull: ‘is in a public space. If she feels unsafe she needs to leave’.
At this point, Keen-Minshull’s only protecters were a handful of burly security guards who surrounded their client and began forcing a path through what was now a howling mob. At least one video recording shows the diminutive Keen-Minshull, a terrified rag-doll, eyes dulled by the effects of shock, being heaved past individuals with faces contorted by fury and hate.
Only when the police present realised that if they did not place Keen-Minshull under their protection, then her bodyguards would be forced to exit the melee by driving through it in their own vehicle – with all the attendant risks to the counter-protesters’ health and safety such a manoeuvre would entail. Keen-Minshull was, accordingly, bundled into a police car and driven from the scene.
Not all the scheduled speakers were so lucky. This is how Ani O’Brien, from the group Stand Up For Women, described her experience:
No sooner had Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull arrived at the Rotunda, a protestor (who had managed to get past the barrier) ran at her and threw a red substance all over her and a security guard. As she attempted to clean up, the protestors pushed over, crushed, and dismantled the barriers and swarmed around her.
At this point, I was caught in the angry crowd. I had whistles blown in my face, abuse screamed at me, and I was fearful for my own safety. This was nothing compared to what Kellie-Jay endured. She was trapped and surrounded by a mob screaming abuse and trying to get past her security guards.
Chris, there were no police in sight. Despite widely publicised threats of violence, the police were nowhere near the protest frontlines to prevent the event from devolving into chaos as it did. I had to call the police from the middle of the screaming crowd! And even then they weren’t particularly concerned that a woman was trapped in the midst of a mob determined to get to her.
Keen-Minshull’s rally was over before it had even begun – victim of the Thug’s Veto. Her right to free expression had been illegally and violently curtailed. Left in possession of the park, the elated counter-protesters took to Twitter to celebrate their historic victory over bigotry and hate.
WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE of the events of Saturday, 25 March 2023? The most urgent questions are those that will, over the coming days, be levelled at the Police. Who was in command? What intelligence did they have regarding Keen-Minshull and her increasingly vocal enemies? Why, in the face of credible threats to her person, was police protection denied to Keen-Minshull and her followers? Why, as the situation spiralled out of control, did the police officers present not intervene?
Predictably – and entirely appropriately – the Free Speech Union, has raised these issues in a letter to the new Police Minister, Ginny Andersen:
We call on you, and the Police Commissioner, to acknowledge the lack of action to defend the basic speech rights of those who turned up to the ‘Let Women Speak’ rally, and reassert that those who express unpopular or controversial views in public are entirely in their right, and deserve to be protected from threats, intimidation, and violence.
There will be considerable public scepticism, however, concerning the willingness of the Labour Government, and Party, to defend New Zealanders’ freedom of speech and assembly. There will be scepticism, also, that the Minister and her colleagues are any longer capable of perceiving the ethical issues which Saturday’s ugly demonstration laid bare.
All through the preceding week, Labour Ministers, Members of Parliament, and activist party members were telling those seeking to silence Keen-Minshull that, as far as Labour was concerned, they were doing the Lord’s work. In this they were echoed, even more vehemently, by the Greens. When the governing parties of the day publicly back a political movement, its followers may be forgiven for believing they have been given the green-light for coercion. The parliamentary Left did not balk at describing Keen-Minshull’s views as “abhorrent” and “incorrect”. Not quite in the same league as King Henry II’s “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest!” – but close.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this incident is the crucial role played by the mainstream news media in creating the preconditions for the violent suppression of free speech which ensued. Throughout the preceding week, journalists had denigrated Keen-Minshull – who describes herself as an “advocate for women” – as “an anti-trans activist” – finding her guilty, by association, of endorsing far-right, even Neo-Nazi, groups. That she, and people who shared her concerns, had a case to make was simply not acknowledged journalistically. In a synergy worthy of Putin’s Russia, the views of the Government, and the views of the mainstream media, had become interchangeable.
Certainly, the state media appeared incapable of perceiving the role it had played in the events of Saturday, 25 March. Television New Zealand’s Jack Tame even offered the violence unleashed by Keen-Minshull’s opponents as an ex-post-facto justification for denying her entry to New Zealand. In other words, allowing those threatening to exercise the Thug’s Veto to determine who should be allowed to speak in New Zealand, and who should not. Nothing could better illustrate the yawning generational gulf into which journalistic ethics has disappeared.
Over the next six months, the New Zealand electorate will discover just how effectively the parties of the Right are able to exploit the Labour-Green failure to uphold the Bill of Rights Act and the democratic polity it underpins. Chris Hipkins may soon regret that he did not step in immediately to set the political tone on Keen-Minshull. Because, whatever the reasons that set New Zealanders against one another so aggressively on Saturday, 25 March 2023, they had absolutely nothing to do with bread and butter.
This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 27 March 2023.
You may see no issue and maybe if we were all as "enlightened as you there would not be one.
ReplyDeleteIn our case, a few years ago, while out as couples one of the women in our party needed the toilet and was confronted in the toilet by a man dressed as a woman who felt it neccessary to visibly expose and adjust his still present gentalia in his lady undies when my mate's wife walked in. He had obviously been waiting for an opportunity to do this and it was his lucky day as I was able to restrain my mate from enetering the toilet and removing said genitals when his wife returned to the table.
She was not an overly sensitive woman by was visibly shaken maybe because she anticipated more direct action. Rather than risk a confrontation weleft.
That situation is one that Posie is suggesting maybe demanding that we avoid. In that I fully support her.
As for "blokes with balls" wanting to actively compete in sport against women I think most need a mental adjustment to support that.
""We were not forewarned beforehand that we would be sharing a locker room with Lia. We did not give our consent, they did not ask for our consent, but in that locker room we turned around, and there’s a 6’4" biological man dropping his pants and watching us undress, and we were exposed to male genitalia," Gaines said.
Thomas had reportedly started the process of hormone replacement therapy at the time but hadn't undergone surgery."
Like most people who act weird, the transgendered have a neurological abnormality. No different from schizophrenics or psychopaths. Only the transgendered are trendy, psychopaths are not.
ReplyDeleteThere are exactly two biological sexes and only two genders. There are a small number of people born with indeterminate genitalia, the inter-sexed. The inter-sexed are not a third sex, they simply have a physical abnormality.
About 99.7 to 99.8 percent of the population have no "confusion" over their gender. If you have a dick, you are a bloke. If you don't you are a sheila. Simple.
What happened at Albert Park was a travesty. The police deliberately sent way too few officers. The media had spent days warming up the woke to the peril posed by Posie Parker.
Your article was right on the money.
Balanced analysis, as usual. Thanks you Chris Trotter. One tragic aspect ignored by apologists minimsing the dark mood evolving in New Zealand is= how f2 recognise that most of the women attacked were women from the left, Many were lesbians. The mob was goaded by labour and Green politicians and almost universally by media, National was weak kneed, as it often the case , Labour went an identarian bender backing a mob that feminists who hve ' traditionally have supported Labour and the Greens , Thirdly, and most sad for a former journalist like myself, we have reached a watershed in the failure of \New Zealand journlists job ethically. and fairly, The vast majority of journalists and media outlets hav embarked dangerous picking of sides, GoodieS baddies, Seeking balance is deemed nnecessary - even problematic by some journaist educators .
ReplyDeleteThis is, at bottom, less a women's rights or a free speech issue, than it is confirmation that our society has devolved to the point where some people literally and unironically believe that it is possible to "transition" between genders. Putting aside the radically contradictory claims that, although gender is a mere social construct that is assigned (rather than observed) at birth, it nonetheless requires dramatic physical reconstructive surgery and a lifetime of hormone treatments in order to go from one socially constructed reality to another, the concept of "transgender" is really a pseudo-concept.
ReplyDeleteThe phenomena of transgenderism, self-identification and sexual fluidity are just aspects of the wider revolutionary project. This project sees the ideological buttressing of anything that subverts traditional values and cultures, such as globalism; open borders; transgenderism; formlessness in arts; music; architecture; and a hellish formlessness in general. The purpose is to deconstruct any vestiges of tradition in the name of ‘progress.’Tthe goal is to establish a nebulous mass humanity devoid of identity in regard to ethnos, land, and, as we see in this instance, even gender, and ironically called ‘identity politics.’ Dialectically, this push toward universal homogenisation is promoted in the name of being ‘different.’ The Left and its globalist sponsors deconstruct in order to reconstruct.
The New Left are the battering rams of the capitalist oligarchs, a solvent that aims to promote detachment and rootedness in Western society. Why? Because detachment and rootlessness allow for the unhampered movement of labour, as well as removing many of the social and moral restraints that hinder profit-making. People become interchangeable and homogeneous economic units, component parts in of a global production and consumption process.
This is why the Left are utterly useless as opponents of globalisation: when the Left attack any restrictions on immigration as ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ and ‘Fascism,’ they are following the party-line of international capitalism. Far from opposing capitalism, the many characteristically Leftist causes and social liberalism in general operate in the interests of Big Money (i.e. plutocracy); so-called ‘people’s revolts’ have served oligarchic interests since the advent of complex civilisation. The French Revolution and Bolshevism were funded by oligarchs, and in the present day, so too is BLM, trans/minority rights and open borders advocacy for instance.
This is what political realignment looks like. If you are a woman who believes in sex-based rights or a lesbian who defines themselves as same-sex attracted, you no longer have standing on the left – you are not permitted to argue for what you perceive to be your fundamental rights. If you do, you are automatically classed as a bigot. Your opinion is not permitted, not allowed, not to be uttered.
ReplyDeleteOf course Labour or the Greens will be happy to take your vote or let you campaign for them but you are essentially a third-class supporter, what is more commonly called a ‘mug’ or a ‘sucker’ or, to the more biblically inclined, a ‘Martha’. If you vote for these people, that is what you are.
It must be jarring for many New Zealand women to wake up and find that their closest political allies are people like Nicola Willis, Erica Stanford, David Farrar, and Brooke Van Velden, but that is the reality as of this week. Women have complained for decades that left wing men relegated them to making the tea. Now it’s happening again. Do they have the ovaries to jump ship or abstain this time or will they go back to serving scones?
Is anything Labour and the Greens are offering worth being a supporter of a party that endorses you being physically assaulted for expressing an opinion on your own rights? Of course, they all say that violence against women is wrong, except when it isn’t.
Thank you for a very clear unbiased review of the events on 25 March. I hope our politicians take heed of your words, this event will be a defining moment for both Labour and the Greens. Women denied access to fair mass media coverage are building networks of support as they have done in the past when their democratic rights were challenged. Politicians listen to us, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of this history, women don’t forget a wrong, it’s part of our DNA. When media moves on to the next new piece of gossip and Saturday will appear forgotten, we will be forging our bonds of mutual strength ready to have our voices heard at the voting booth.
ReplyDeleteForgot to say: your analysis of what should have happened is 100% correct, Chris.
ReplyDeleteSo Chris – blaming the press' free speech for the attacks on Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull. Have you finally realised that speech can have actual physical consequences? Would you blame this woman's inflammatory anti-trans rhetoric in which she accuses them of being paedophiles and worse for any violence towards trans people? (Particularly dangerous when at least some of the eejits who listen to people like that can't tell the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician.) Both you and the free-speech union so called, have in the past ignored the fact that speech can cause actual physical harm.
ReplyDeleteThe – mostly anecdotal as it turns out – examples of so-called trans people deliberately exposing themselves to others is pretty rare. And should be like any other crime reported to the police and the person concerned arrested and charged. It's by no means certain that all of these people are trans-anyway, given that it's a decent excuse for a criminal to dress up as a woman to try to get away with their crime.
But having said that, I would much sooner leave my children in the charge of a trans person or a drag queen than a priest/youth pastor. Statistically speaking they'd be a lot safer.
There is obviously a debate to be had here, particularly around sport, but I think that debate can be had without the likes of "Posey Parker" egging on the troops with inflammatory speech.
The police should be held to account AFAIK as they didn't do their damned job. By the same token, speakers should be prepared for heckling if they turn up in a public space. Obviously this went beyond heckling, but why hold the "rally" in a space like Albert Park where the attendance cannot be controlled and the police have a much more difficult job.
Personally I think the woman would be reasonably happy with this result. Most of these people deliberately seek out confrontation because it gets them clicks essentially. Sadly you can guarantee her YouTube channel has got a shit load more followers than it had before all this. And of course that's almost certainly way she makes her money, rather than holding rallies in a park.
The treatment meted out to this woman was a ghastly comment on the dangerous path many in this country seem to have determined on.
ReplyDeleteThe fundamental right to differ is under siege in this land perhaps as never before, and everybody is very aware of it in their discourses with others. Nor is it only about gender orientations or social or ethnic divides. It has become much deeper than that, reflecting perhaps the developing faultlines of a nation that forty years ago eschewed cooperation in favour of individualism... where my rights and thoughts are more worthy of fighting for than everyone else's.
In this kind of climate, manipulating fear to control others is now a perfectly accepted and widely employed mechanism, stretching all the way from widespread gaslighting to egregious violence resulting in death. Clearly once understood 'bullying' is slowly being scrubbed clean.
The people whoso immoderately destroyed that woman's right to speak and be heard should be ashamed of themselves. They are pointing the way to a dystopian future in this land.
Alan Rhodes
On this occasion I agree with Chris Trotter.
ReplyDeleteIn many countries in the 1930s working class organisations were obliged to form trade union defense guards to protect their right to organise, picket, or hold public meetings in the face of violent attacks by fascist gangs, and in the face of inaction by police forces, who often contained fascist-minded elements. We are still some way from that situation in New Zealand today. But it was instructive to see on Saturday a mob claiming to be acting in defence of a progressive cause behaving like those fascist gangs of the past.
The problem with Marama Davidson's part in all of this was not her comment about white cis men - that is just the stock-in trade of politicians and activists of her type - but her open endorsement of the thuggery displayed by the so-called protestors.
Thank you Chris, well said. Under "what should have happened" I would add "after all the women who wished to had spoken, there was time for an elderly cis white male (that would be me) to briefly express his support for the world athletics body decision, announced that morning by Sebastian Coe. The decision was that athletes who have experienced male puberty are ineligible to compete in the female category. The speaker would have added he favours two categories, "open", which would be exactly that, open to all, and "women", restricted to biological women".
ReplyDeleteUnder "what did happen" was that the elderly cis white male arrived late (forgot his bus pass, had to go back home to get it), to find a rabble had already overrun the rotunda. He fairly quickly realised that if he said what he thought out loud there, he would be called a "terf" and risk being "turfed". There were too few police, too disinterested, for him to expect much help from them.
I was interested to read the piece by Paul Hunt, Chief Human Rights Commissioner, in the Herald this morning (Wednesday 29 March). After declaring he was present at the Wellington "pro-trans" rally to demonstrate "support for trans friends", followed by a lot of similar woke virtue signaling verbiage, he finally cuts to the chase. "The state had a human rights responsibility to make arrangements for Keen-Minshull to speak without being assaulted, intimidated, or shouted down. That did not happen". Exactly right, Mr Chief Commisioner. What do you plan to do about it?
I agree with Brian Tamaki on almost nothing, but I think he's made one correct assessment. That is, if you're a minority with views the "woke" disapprove of, you can now only be sure of being able to exercise your right of free speech in public if you bring your own muscle, to protect your gathering. It was interesting that Tamaki reached out to Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull to suggest a joint rally. She declined, but Tamaki's supporters went by her event, anyway. I think she was absolutely correct to decline. Her whole point was that women should be able to speak freely in a public space, without any such "protection". Now it turns out they can not. That raises for women what they do have to do to be able to speak freely. Up to them, but my initial suggestion would be to start with contacting the Chief Human Rights Commissioner to ask how he plans to see his fine words put into practice.
This mess reminded me of accounts Ive read of the Nazis in the 1930s. Those thugs roamed the streets assaulting anyone who didnt agree with them.
ReplyDeleteYou will say "but the Auckland affair its nothinng as bad as the french demonstrations at the moment."
But there are two different types of demonstration. One is anti the goverment. They cant get to the actual goverment people so they start a few fires, attack the police and turn a few cars over. Then they go home having expressed their annoyance
But when the demonstration is about another section of community things get nasty and then get worse. Usually these types of demos are religious based and regularly result in injuries and deaths. This happens becuse the demonstrators can actually get their hands on the group they are angry about and things get out of control.
And they get more and more nasty if they are not stopped either by making a place like there is in London - speakers corner available, or severe measures are introduced to severly curtail or punish the rioters - of all sides.
The Auckland affair is a nasty insidious happening. It might seem a crazy suggestion but its these sorts of public riots that were involved in the early stages of things like the English civil war(s) or the French revolution.
The legacy media's near unanimous vilification of KJK (and the Speak up for Women group) and their beliefs, if they were ever explained is another nail in their coffin. Their current M.O. is to throw around accusation and insult with no attempt at balance, no opportunity to make their case for woman's rights. Most people, seeing such imbalance know they are being manipulated and lied to, that the media are full of it. Irresponsible, offensive and useless.
ReplyDeleteOf all the negatives from Sunday, yet again the woeful state of policing in NZ came to the fore. A lacadasical approach to law enforcement, a shoulder shrugging nonchalance that retailers and victims of crime routinely experience and one that our gang members thrive upon. And although the commissioner of police certainly deserves plenty of blame for his weak leadership, he simply reflects what his government handlers want. Policing for appearances sake to ensure jails are emptied and remain that way!
ReplyDeleteHipkins total impotence with his violence prevention minister was also cringeworthy. Yes, Davidson is as thick as a bag of hammers but that and her racist diatribe infected her Prime Minister as well and he looks weak, indecisive and complicit.
This cluster on Sunday was pretty damaging to the credibility of both the police and this government. The Greens will have taken a hit too and clearly they do not want straight white mens votes anywhere near them!
The whole thing was a chilling display of the control freak lefts alternative reality that has emerged since Ardern rose to power. A blight that saw the unphotogenic Wayne Brown elected Mayor of Auckland. People in Auckland clearly lost tolerance for woke politicians so be warned Labour!
Not the kind of thing I would want in election year, especially were I Hipkins!
An interesting and informative article on a difficult and messy issue. Have you ever found yourself in a position of being 'for' some notion in principle and 'against' that same notion in practice? In some matters, the dichotomy is easy to understand, however difficult to resolve. Free speech and censorship are two such that come to mind.
ReplyDeleteTransgenderism (if I can call it that), I find to be a matter far more intractable. But if anything is likely to place me in the 'against' line, 'mobism' by the 'for' lobby is a pretty good bet. And, of course, vice versa.
Cheers,
Ion A. Dowman
I totally despair for our country. That the leaders of our two main parties make mealy mouth ambivalent statements regarding Saturday's violence provides zero confidence in either party facing up to the inexorable downward slide and divisiveness of New Zealand society.
ReplyDeleteResorting to verbal and physical violence, fabricating vicious ad hominem lies, cancellation is the new normal for expressing disagreement. And all this is aided and abetted by our main stream media. (NZ Herald today focused on the presence of four Nazis at the event whilst, in three days, haven't mention the violence that took place.)
Even the police have abrogated their responsibilities and instead have embraced the woke zeitgeist promulgated by the politicians.
I fear for where our country is heading, especially for my grandchildren. It seems there is now no turning back whereby respect and common decency are archaic and irrelevant values.
Have you finally realised that speech can have actual physical consequences?
ReplyDeleteHeh, heh, heh. GS and his endless Four legs good, two legs bad routine re his RWNJ "eejits" vs the saintly heroes of his Far Left world.
Here we go. The big April 1st celebration in the US where a Trans Radicals’ Plan ‘Day Of Vengeance, complete with "Stop Trans Genocide".
No wonder an unhinged member went for it. <a href="https://nominister.wordpress.com/2022/10/04/stochastic-terrorism-and-s-230/>Stochastic terrorism</a> and all that.
Quite possibly the most relieved people following the protests were not Posie Parker and her immediate followers for getting out the country safely, but the new Minister of Police Ginny Anderson, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, and of course the PM.
ReplyDeleteRelief that nobody, least of all the woman herself, was seriously hurt or killed in that uncontrolled mob.
Surely they couldnt argue that they could not have foreseen the rather obvious angry responses to Parker’s presence in this country, a country she was specifically and reluctantly granted entry into following Immigration Minister Michael Wood’s intervention.
Particularly when the main stream media, acting more like internet Influencers, were labelling her as having links to neo-Nazism without any balanced evidence in support of the claim.
Particularly when there was no obvious plan by Police to protect a potential riot.
I think they all got very lucky…..THIS time.
As for the mob protesters, they represent a physical manifestation of the ruthless and unaccountable cyberbully culture that so many young and not so young people across the western world now deeply live in. There is no negotiation in that space.
.... should be ashamed of themselves.
ReplyDeleteMUHAHAHAHAH.... Oh Alan (14:25). These people are suffused with triumphant joy about this. They shut down their "enemies": the lesbians who opposed the pressure to sleep with woman-with-penises and so forth, let alone the "transphobes" who object to woman being crushed by the same people - or even the woman herself who simply said that trans-woman are not woman.
I have to admit that as a RWNJ I find myself breaking out the popcorn as I watch the Bolsheviks smash the Mensheviks, but as with any Cambodian circa 1974 I see that me and mine will get caught up in this firestorm sooner or later.
Matt Taibbi, beloved by Lefties for over a decade (not now I think)...'Something Very Dramatic Has Changed’: Matt Taibbi Says Democrats Have Ditched Free Speech
ReplyDeleteMeh. Of course.
And as part of this, here's a statement by a university professor Steven Shaviro:
So here is that I think about the free speech on campus. Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal code....
A cautious thug then!
... I think it far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.
When right-wing groups invite such speakers to campus, it is precisely because they want to provoke an incident that discredits the left,...
Yes, we RWNJ's have infiltrated the Lefty Feminist and Lesbian groups in order to pull this off. You have been warned. :)
@Madame Blavatsky I wish you could stick to the point and not try to drag in all to as far as WW3. Then it would be shorter and understandable. I don't want to unravel the tangled ball that is in your mind. Could you try to organise your thoughts prior to setting them forth please?
ReplyDeleteAnd John Drinnan I feel that the whole basis for this anti-women thing is based on lesbian radical thinking. In the 70's there was division in the feminist group between what could be termed basic improvers and lesbians, who felt that they were the real feminists. Strong sentiments were espoused and there was a schism in the feminist group.
This from 2021 about a NZ vigilante attack on a male by six unnamed women, who have never been identified and charged. An encouragement for bad behaviour from women?; who want the same rights as men, or do they want more?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/300246914/six-angry-women-tvnzs-fascinating-doco-investigates-one-of-our-great-mysteries 8 March 2021
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018786413/bidge-smith-mervyn-thompson-vs-six-angry-women
history arts 6 Mar 2021
Bidge Smith: Mervyn Thompson vs. Six Angry Women
From Saturday Morning, 11:40 am on 6 March 2021
Women activists were protesting against all forms of oppression in 1984 when Auckland university lecturer and playwright Mervyn Thompson was kidnapped, beaten and chained to a tree by six women who accused him of being a rapist.
Thompson was never charged with rape, and his kidnappers have never been identified. That same year, Bidge Smith became Auckland University Students' Association Women's Rights Officer and spoke out in support of the anonymous women who carried out the attack.
She appears in the documentary Six Angry Women which premiered on TVNZ 1 Monday 8 March at 8.30pm and can be seen on TVNZ OnDemand.
On The Standard there have been angry women full of rancour against Julian Assange for spoiling his record with alleged sexual misconduct as well. His efforts for transparency in political affairs were of no consequence when passing judgment on him, as a low person.
Imagine if it was all left to the experts
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZb1Mm2zFNM
The brilliant Mary Harrington:
ReplyDelete"The mob that gathered to dogpile Kellie-Jay Keen in New Zealand over the weekend is a textbook example of low liberalism. And such low-liberal mobs serve exactly the same purpose as any other swarm of hashtag ideologues. That is, they serve as authoritarian shock troops for others who benefit politically from their actions but prefer not to be tainted with their methods. The antipodean politicians and journalists who first demonised Kellie-Jay Keen as undesirable, then refused to condemn the mob who left her in fear for her life, can serenely deny any complicity with the violence unleashed upon her. But I dare say a great many of them privately think what low liberals say out loud: Keen deserved everything she got."
"But the larger point is that in a digital-first culture, there’s no stuffing the post-democratic genie back in the bottle. There’s nothing to be gained from lamenting the end of civility, or reasoned discourse, much-missed though these are. And there’s no point complaining about egregious asymmetries in how bad behaviour is punished, between the Good Crazies (who are just passionate) and the Bad Crazies (who are evil). The only way forward is to stop singing threnodies for a vanished political order, and start thinking strategically about how to survive in the one that replaced it."
https://unherd.com/2023/03/what-posie-parker-learnt-from-brexit/
The Women's Rights activists were set up by this government. There must be an impartial investigation into the Police failure to protect them. We are now approaching a fascist State in this country where the government and ideologically driven thugs work together to suppress different points of view. This "government " must be removed in October, it has forfeited any right to remain in office, or New Zealand is lost.
ReplyDeleteJust want to say Madame B, I totally agree with you and it is so worrisome that probably less than 1% of the population can see it and none of those in the Beehive (Or if they do see it, they accept that it is the price of being in politics).
ReplyDeleteTotally angry about what happened.
If you listen to the eyewitness accounts Sean Plunkett accumulated, the most sickening thing is that the police had very clearly been told to stand down. NZ women were hung out to dry.
Account after account said, we told them people needed help and they wouldn't answer us.
So think about that, you would expect a policeman to say at the very least - "We're keeping an eye on it" or something. They are not the Coldstream Guards for pity's sake. The police were not where they should be in a crowd control situation. Things are done in a certain way but in this case they stayed an estimated 50 - 100 metres away from the action. They leaned against trees, fiddled with their phones and despite multiple people asking for help they were greeted with silence. Different police officers, different members of the public doing the asking. Phoning in to Police central also met with obfuscation and delays in each case.
For me the realisation that the thing could turn pear shaped was not surprising, but the gut punch came when I realised how compromised and ideologically captured our police force has become. I'm sitting there thinking, we are living in China and we didn't even know it.
Then the PMs and other men covering it up and making light of it. "It was a great day for the rainbow community" "It was largely peaceful" It was just a bit of tomato soup" Journalists, MPs and other women lauding aggressors - I saw the case of free speech just shrivel. I saw the true face of the PMC and their progressivism and it isn't kind.
But I am glad about one thing. The sisters (and their menfolk) are waking up. Some will be even more afraid of saying anything but many more have seen the new fascists amongst us (and I dont mean, the trans lobby but more the progressives and those in Govt).
They have been shut out of even basic discourse in an overt form of misogynistic control for the last 5 years. Women do not want biologically bodied men in their spaces. It actually doesn't matter why, it's what I suspect most women around the world want and they should be able to have that. They have already fought for safe spaces and should not just have their spaces taken away from them without discussion or empathy.
The PM, MPS, Media, IPCC, HRC, Broadcasting Standards have been receiving dozens of emails about why this was wrong. Why their coverage was wrong and why they needed to do something about it. Woman havent just been writing in here and there, they have been emailing tens of people all saying the same thing. Many men have been putting keys to keyboard as well.
What went on here? Who is responsible for it and why was the Thugs Veto allowed to stand and undermine Free Speech in NZ? Will you guarantee our Women's rights?
They picked the wrong fault line to try and score points off of and have alienated what little was left of old Labour and the Greens so I hope they pay for it at the election.
Our politicians are morally bankrupt and our media is a cesspit of the compromised and ill informed. The media is still running interference for Marama and Kelly Jay has gone the way of the mammoth. But the Sisters are waiting and they are not going anywhere.
GS: "speech can have actual physical consequences"
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, Salmond Rushdie knows all about that. Even the formerly forthright Richard Dawkins has now been turned into a trembling shadow of himself.
Interview clip 1 minute 12: https://twitter.com/YasMohammedxx/status/1640629764791705600
Another unusual byproduct of this debate is the NZ Herald will barely tolerate any comment questioning Marama Davidsons role, much less as a government minister in this violent protest or her plainly wrong comment. It only reinforces what many suspect, some groups are beyond question, no matter what they say and do!
ReplyDeleteThere is a horrible clip going around of an older woman being punched about the face by an angry bearded person, hard to say what gender given the gathering, but the minister for violence prevention has been silent on the subject! Why is that?
Absolutely agree with Madame Blavatsky's comment. She has explained exactly what is happening in the western world. Aldous Huxley's 'A Brave New World' is coming closer to reality.
ReplyDeleteThe government, along with the police (and this is happening in all western countries) were absolutely complicit in the lack of police action last Saturday.
In fact a female police liaison officer who was there at Albert Park and whose number the police had, has phoned an online radio show and described that when things got out of hand and old ladies were being injured she ran to the police officer - who she has named - and asked him urgently to come and help. His reply was, "We are not here to protect you." And he looked away. She then ran to a police car with the windows down and pleaded for help. The police wound up the windows.
That proves their was a directive from the top not to intervene on behalf of women. I suspect there would have been intervention if the women's group had attacked the trans groups and their supporters and that is what the police were waiting for, but it didn't happen.
There needs to be an independent investigation into police inaction on that day.
There is clearly a political agenda.
Ive been doing a bit of research into the growth of transgenderism.
ReplyDeleteWhere did this all come from? And why is it so necessary for a gender confused (including gay) to be so agressively pushed and so on.
There seems little doubt that a change in motherhood practices going back 20 or 30 years ago. It was "my baby will play with all types of toys. Im not going to push dolls on my girls - my boys and girls will both get dolls. And my boys will not be allowed to play Cowboys and Indians".
There other influences as well. There developed in recent years that if your baby boy plays with pink dolls then hes got body disphoria.
As someone says above transgenderism is substantially a mental or psychological problem. - often caused by their mother actions.
Madame Blavatsky - I think I have been unreasonably querulous about your comment. On further reading there is much to agree with. For instance:
ReplyDeleteThe purpose is to deconstruct any vestiges of tradition in the name of ‘progress.’The goal is to establish a nebulous mass humanity devoid of identity in regard to ethnos, land, and, as we see in this instance, even gender, and ironically called ‘identity politics.,,,
,,,The New Left are the battering rams of the capitalist oligarchs, a solvent that aims to promote detachment and rootedness [rootlessness?] in Western society. Why?’
Because detachment and rootlessness allow for the unhampered movement of labour, as well as removing many of the social and moral restraints that hinder profit-making. People become interchangeable and homogeneous economic units, component parts ...of a global production and consumption process...
Far from opposing capitalism, the many characteristically Leftist causes and social liberalism in general operate in the interests of Big Money (i.e. plutocracy);...
This next is very worthy of heated discussion - principally because it sounds uncomfortable. Couldn't be correct!
...‘people’s revolts’ have served oligarchic interests since the advent of complex civilisation. The French Revolution and Bolshevism were funded by oligarchs, and in the present day, so too is BLM*, trans/minority rights and open borders advocacy for instance.
*About - Black Lives Matter
https://blacklivesmatter.com › about
Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and ..
There have always been those who advocate just causes, then find spokespersons or leaders within those causes taking positions outside the original cause. A false sense of loyalty finds an apologetic approach, increasingly making excuse for that spokesperson or leader. This often leads to good people being severely compromised as to the ideals they originally held. The obvious example of this was the situation many on the left found themselves in relation to Stalin.
ReplyDeleteKeen-Minshull was sponsored for her Australasian tour by Australian right wing lobbyists. The apologist suggestion "she cannot help who turns up" is disingenuous, nor is it truthful to state "she is just pro-women". Keen-Minshull's profile has been intertwined with right-wing causes and she is expressively "anti-trans". I make these points as Stand Up For Women is a group that has issues that should be respectfully debated as to the angst of some second wave feminists and those that followed. Keen-Minshull has directed the debate towards herself and her speaking agenda.
The first thing to note is that the core argument that those that support trans and those that evolved through feminism have traditionally held is that which views gender as non-binary and people exist on a scale. It is unfortunate to hear people like Keen-Marshull dismissing trans people as 'really men'. I can understand how this helps the argument other have for 'female only spaces' as dichotomization simplifies things. However, I do not think defining others within a binary gender classification is informative.
Most anthropologists and social historians agree that throughout most of human history societies have envisaged more than two genders. This is the case in the Pacific, including NZ, where the equivalence of the fa'afafine or mahu, throughout the Pacific basin, from Southeast Asian, East Asia, Siberia, North and South America, across South Asia and the near east and parts of Africa. For those that draw direction from Biblical verse, the author of Matthew has the Jesus character specify men, women and eunuchs, and in 19:12 notes difference between congenital eunuchs and those made eunuchs. Interpreting the Old Testament, Jewish scholars compiling the Talmud identify 6 gender classifications. What we see today as inter-sex was referred to as the congenital eunuchs or hermaphrodites. It is so commonly mentioned in literature that it was a state accepted throughout pre-modern societies.
Unfortunately, at this particular moment of western social development we have based a society on the binary nature of gender. This means spatial relationships has also developed this way. 2nd wave feminists fought for the rights of women and the right to safety for women. This fight was mostly within then western view of gender, although feminism provided the basis for analysis of disempowered groups and that sexual and other boundary definitions can be challenged. Anthropologist also looked that there are those at the boundaries of identification, within the boundaries and on the boundaries. The feminist movement also had a emphasis on safety. This included spatial safety and the ability to have a voice within a society that had minimalized and restricted that voice. Safety also recognized those that had suffered abuse and the trauma.
ReplyDeletePart Two:
It is within this vortex of two groups that have been traditionally denied rights find themselves looking to safety and recognition. The societal allocation of space is something that is derived from a specific western view and male dominance. The debate regarding gendered space in pre-contact Samoa was undoubtedly evolved over thousands of years of cultural development. The understanding and acceptance of gender, gendered role and spaces is cultural. In western society the challenge of this has been largely since the 1960s for women and the 21st century for those identifying as trans. This is a narrow timeline for cultural dynamics and the psychical spaces are still largely from a time when both groups were less empowered.
As we develop as a society, this time will be looked at as a painful part of the evolution. By insisting on binary some in the feminist movement are denying the right for those to be within a scale. In an evolved community, not as many trans people will claim womanhood if other accepted options were understood and accommodated. However, as things are today we should acknowledge that spaces that many of those that are trans feel legitimize their identity are safe for them, we should also acknowledge that this is an adjustment for women who have fought hard for safe spaces. It is not unreasonable to note that women that have been abused may be traumatized if spatial arrangements are not handled with empathy.
Keen-Minshull destroys all nuance. She is used polarize and to fit into what is a largely male right-wing suppression. This unruly tourist demanded our attention and was unsubtly denigrating to vulnerable members of our community. She knew the controversy and seemed to have decided a public meeting with inadequate security and a limited sound system. Criticism of the NZ Police I think is misguided, I would hate the situation in which our state force expenditure is used on deliberately provocative action such as the Apprentice Boys parade through the Catholic suburbs of Belfast.
However, I do agree with Chris that disruption of political debate is an issue leading to this years election. I do believe that Keen-Minshull has the right to speak, but there was also a right to counter-protest. If Keen-Minshull had chosen a private venue and reasonable security she would have been able to express her views uninterrupted. That was not the agenda.
The issue is one that is evolving in NZ and has specific indigenous issues. I hope that matters can be worked through by those that have a shared history in NZ of rights based analysis. An agent provocateur should not be dominating the debate.
Same elderly cis white male Anon. as 29 March @ 14:58.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with very much that Simon O'Conner MP says. But to state facts in Parliament, and then be forced to apologize for stating the now established facts? He was correct, the Nashville school shooter was not a cis white male. That took a while to untangle, as the initial reports were of a woman shooter. (The Guardian referred to the shooter as "him". Isn't that a great advance, even mass murderers still get their preferred pronouns respected). I'm sure a conservative Christian cis white male was shocked his sort of community was the target. But I think he's still entitled to state established facts in the House. Especially in reply to a minister claiming to speak in her role as a minister.
I thought James Shaw's reaction, to the effect Simon O'Connor was using dead children to score political points was deeply, deeply hypocritical. What the hell does James Shaw think gun control advocates do? Loudly, often, and at length? They use dead children to score political points, surely.
Given the Violence directed at Posey Parker by the Trans community, perhaps the fear of biological men, identifying as women, in women's spaces is not entirely unfounded?
ReplyDeleteOne of the ladies from Speak Up For Women, Linda, had the job of liaising with the police. Twenty four hours before the event she was simply cut off, ignored, and her calls unanswered. Here's a discussion with her in which she details her interaction with police, and their subsequent inaction, 26 minutes: https://youtu.be/TJ9FqiNcV80
ReplyDeleteWhat went on? What other explanation can there be; the police were told to stand down and stand back and allow the mob lose on the ladies.
Here's a very good discussion with KJK after here return home. Some interesting observations on New Zealanders. 12 minutes: https://youtu.be/MJGS4bhuYhw
Madame Blavatsky said...
ReplyDelete"...although gender is a mere social construct that is assigned (rather than observed) at birth, it nonetheless requires dramatic physical reconstructive surgery and a lifetime of hormone treatments in order to go from one socially constructed reality to another, the concept of "transgender" is really a pseudo-concept."
Do you make the same judgement on ALL medical procedures where surgical intervention is required?
Anything from correcting hair-lips to breast reduction/reconstruction to separating conjoined twins to organ transplants?
Do you make the same judgement where lesbian women must employ artificial insemination to bear children?
Be careful of making such judgemental criticisms of gender-reassignment surgery. It's like a "shot gun" blast that can injure others, not just your intended target.
This was a success for the Greens’ suppression of free speech, but their hypocrisy is blatant and should not be forgotten.
ReplyDeleteGreen Party immigration spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez-March strongly opposed Keen-Minshull being allowed into Aotearoa. "Having someone like Posie coming here to spew violence, and attracting the kind of neo-Nazi crowd they had in Australia could actually risk the well-being of rainbow communities and Muslim communities as well."
However, back in 2004 they described the Immigration Service’s refusal to permit the entry of Holocaust-denier David Irving as setting “a bad precedent for free speech in this country.”
So they approve of an anti-Semite’s right to speak, but not those of a women’s rights activist. It seems, too, that they avoided directly alienating the fascists who supported her. There’s a deeply unpleasant message there, that the Greens cannot be relied upon to support Western freedoms and democratic socialism, nor to antagonise the extreme Right.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0408/S00020.htm
No good. Talk can defend itself in an open forum.
ReplyDeleteI was in the bush for 11 days and missed all this. However, having tried to catch up I am once again astonished that we seem to lack old-fashioned reporting in this country. All I found were opinionated accounts of what Posie Parker represents, in total a one-sided media that went to extreme lengths to deride her views. So, you were spot on in saying the event should have been "reported" by reporters.
ReplyDeleteAnd why can't a woman with a view speak in inflammatory terms .... men do all the time. Yes, she wants to be heard, no point in yelling at the radio or tv like I do, no one hears me. She is brave to stand up for women's rights and there are many silently thanking her for it. Why are we silent? Because look what happens if you're not.
I was horrified by what I saw and heard at Albert Park. I'm from the protest generation: that was as bad as anything I remember from those days.
ReplyDeleteI note Guerilla Surgeon's comment above. Thus spake the apologist. At the time of the egregious Charlie Hebdo shootings, I recall similar "yes, but what did you expect?" claims. They were equally challengeable.
Speech cannot ipso facto cause harm. However: incitement to violence can certainly do that. The closest we got to incitement was what was said by, for instance, Michael Wood, along with sundry hotheads from the trans rights movement. It certainly didn't come from Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull herself.
Thanks Frank.
ReplyDeleteIt comes down to the question of what gender is, as distinct from sex. Male and female sex are dimorphic, genetic, unchangeable realities, so what is gender? Masculine and feminine are probably best thought of as spirits that manifest as behaviours. Although men tend to be more masculine, women more feminine the so called gender re-assignment surgery (or changing your appearance) won't change your sex. It's a delusion.
KJK said a woman is an "adult human female" but apparently her views are "abhorrent". So what does PM Hipkins think?
Clip from interview yesterday - one minute. https://youtu.be/MpbBBeLaj4E
"Where did this all come from? And why is it so necessary for a gender confused (including gay) to be so agressively pushed and so on."
ReplyDeleteHere we go again. The old "gay/trans lifestyle" being "pushed down our throats". I suspect that the reason why – in your words it's being pushed – is because these people are tired of having to hide. Gay rights are simply human rights. I have the acquaintance of a number of gay and trans people, perhaps you should get to know someone actually ask them.
I should add; the thing that sticks in the craw (and as articulated by KJK & Co) is the use of the descriptor "woman" for and by men. Or the even more insulting and inaccurate "cervix havers" etc. for biological women. We have foolishly gone down the self ID road without due consideration for the consequences, or for the large number of submissions overwhelmingly objecting to the destruction of the axiomatic distinction between men and women. To say nothing of the appalling butchery and sterilisation of young people on the pretext of "affirmation". We don't tell someone suffering from anorexia that they're too fat.
ReplyDelete@Frank April 12:45 comment....
ReplyDeleteDo you make the same judgement on ALL medical procedures where surgical intervention is required?
The problem here is that medical procedures are being used to try and cure a mental illness, and I'm afraid that there's rather a long history of that in the West and it's pretty ugly, You raise the blade, you make the change:
n the late 19th century, the female reproductive system was thought to be the cause of a range of mental disorders afflicting women. Thousands of mostly young women had their perfectly healthy uteri and/or ovaries removed as a supposed cure for their mental distress.
In the early 1900s, surgical bacteriology was popular. This stemmed from the belief that mental illness was caused by diseased parts of the body. Between 1920 and 1930, Dr Henry Cotton, director of the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, removed over 11,000 teeth.
I had thought that with the collapse of the 20th century procedure of lobotomy we'd seen an end to such barbarity, but like most people I never imagined the Trans movement would grow to such insane proportions.
BTW, if the Trans folk think that Gender Dysphoria can be removed from the list of mental illnesses as homosexuality was, they're in for a shock because the sexual arousal od same sex attraction is a reality-based physical thing. Thinking you're trapped in the wrong body is definitely the work of the mind.
Tom, it is dangerous and ill-informed for a non-medical professional to make comment on classifying mental illness. Indeed, it is dangerous for someone to use that label towards these that may be young and vulnerable. In many professions it would be unethical to express such uninformed views.
DeleteI am someone who does not accept genetic behavouralism, but recognize many interactions that shape identity. First is that intersection people exist in society and should not be rendered invisible. Second, men and women all have varying levels of testosterone and estrogenic, this may interact with how the gendered identity is developed. Brain and identity development begins prenatal. The environment and personal experience are as strong as genetic influence.
As previously posted, over time and culture most defined people groups have accommodated multiple gender identities. This was normative and those on a gendered scale were a natural part of human society.
Really Tom, deciding those you disagree with are mentally ill is awfully Soviet of you.
Autocorrect strikes again. Intersection people should have been intersex
DeleteSpeech cannot ipso facto cause harm. However: incitement to violence can certainly do that.
ReplyDeleteAnd people like Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull have made an artform of the dogwhistle. So they can incite violence without being brought to book.
"True enough, Salmond Rushdie knows all about that. Even the formerly forthright Richard Dawkins has now been turned into a trembling shadow of himself."
Yes indeed David. That's one reason why our refuse to buy any more of Cat Stevens/Yussuf Islam's music. Everyone who ventures into the cesspit that is public life these days receives abuse and death threats, including our Prime Minister. Didn't notice you getting particularly upset about her though. A lot of you people claim that she "deserved it". Although to be fair that's on the even deeper cesspit of MSN news. And yet you continue to support people being able to do this? At least in so far as they can manage to dog whistle it?
What is keeping men out of the fight for women’s rights?
ReplyDeleteA poignant but lovely essay from Dane Giraud:
"Watching the recent violence in Albert Park after women’s rights advocate Kellie Jay Keen-Minshull’s visit, hearing the incitement from politicians against women, and seeing the repugnant display of a young man slugging an elderly Lesbian woman in the head, got me thinking about my father. At first, I didn’t understand why but now feel it is because I owe him much more than I had previously realized.
That weekend had left me wondering if society was reverting to the 60’s South Auckland village, or if we never fully grew out of it: in the events aftermath, a similar cabal of denial has emerged.
What is clear is, rather than feeling any compulsion to defend women, many men, and from unexpected quarters, still actively seek to abuse them, either verbally or, as we have seen, physically. Attaching to a moral crusade is wonderful cover for that.
But it wouldn’t have fooled my father.
And it doesn’t fool me."
https://plainsight.nz/what-is-keeping-men-out-of-the-fight-for-womens-rights/
I am sure Michael Wood would say Trump is guilty of incitement on Jan 6, 2019.
ReplyDeleteI am also sure he would say he was not guilty of incitement for what happened to the women and and what could have happened to the women. Some could have died.
@David George 1/4 7.57?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the report from the person from Standing up for Women. They know that they are not the only gender doing so but it will be comforting that there are males out there who believe in the importance of holding onto our basic beliefs that form our good interactive relationships, our vital living society in its enjoyable segments.
Same elderly cis white male anon. as 29 March at 14:58. If you are kind enough to indulge me again, Chris, I would like to comment on the continuing disgrace that passes for main stream media coverage, particularly on Radio NZ.
ReplyDeleteThe Radio NZ Mediawatch segment entitled "Media Mismatch on an 'out-of-control-mob'" on April 2 was a new low. It discounted the mostly harrowing stories of women who were there in Albert Park, as told to Sean Plunket on The Platform. The New Zealand Herald reporters on the ground spoken to by Mediawatch, with weasel words like "from where I was standing" and "as far as I know" saw only rainbows and unicorns, a celebration of peace, joy, love and inclusion.
No mention of some of the established facts. A tomato based assault occurred. The perpetrator boasted they had done it on social media. The perpetrator has now been charged with assault, but has entered a "not guilty" plea. The Chief Human Rights Commissioner has admitted a human right to free speech was denied those wishing to use it.
I think some wishful thinking has been on display since. Stuff editorialized along the lines of: this was a fleeting event, overseas "culture war" issues will not affect the upcoming election here, move along, nothing to see here. Translation to plain English: "we've scored a massive own goal, this is going to hurt our side, let's just pretend it didn't happen".
Media Watch today (Easter Sunday, April 9) had much hand wringing over the continuing decline of trust in main stream media. Colin Peacock (who was also filling in for the still absent Jim Mora) led the on air hand wringing about trust in main stream media declining further in the last year, for the fourth year in a row. Why has this dreadful state of affairs happened? What can be done?
I have some suggestions for Colin on how Radio NZ might address the slide. Avoid letting a minister of the Crown give a speech on Radio NZ premises that sounds like she's giving directions to Radio NZ to favour her family, her politics, and her race. If such a speech does occur, cover it straight away, don't say nothing until other media cover it first. That really looks bad, and like you're hiding something. Don't have presenters say things like "'gender critical' women have some valid points" and then never follow up by actually letting any 'gender critical' women discuss those valid points on air with you. And let Jim Mora back on air, without leaving an impression he has to pass "rainbow tick training" first.
To update Groucho Marx, it's no longer "who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" It's now "who you gonna believe now, the totally one sided media captured by the hopelessly "woke", or media like The Platform, which allows voices now banned by the "woke" back on air?" I favour Sean Plunket and The Platform now, rather than Radio NZ, myself.
I'm not convinced about that The Barron.
ReplyDeleteAside from the very rare intersex examples (actual physical development abnormalities) the initial assessment of gender dysphoria should be to look for psychological issues. Our recent laws to require "affirmation" are proving to be creating permanent problems for the young people caught up in this unfortunate experiment. The use of the puberty blocking drug (the same drug used to treat sexual predators) is having devastating and permenant consequences - yet bizarrely, as one Newshub article suggests, "some New Zealand doctors are willing to offer puberty blockers to teenagers within ten minutes of meeting them."
Here's a recent essay by a NZ psychologist: https://plainsight.nz/young-new-zealanders-are-being-rushed-into-medical-gender-transition/
Excerpt:
"Rushed medical transitions can have tragic consequences for vulnerable young people. One example is the story of Zahra Cooper, as told by the New Zealand Herald in a compelling video documentary. Zahra is a young New Zealand woman who “after searching the internet and watching YouTube videos about transgender people… realised she felt… like she was trapped in the wrong body”. She was assessed by a psychiatrist, who failed to detect her autism spectrum disorder. Her psychiatrist diagnosed her with gender dysphoria (a clinical term for profound discomfort with your biological sex).
Zahra started taking testosterone to treat her gender dysphoria. Instead of improving, her mood worsened significantly. Her endocrinologist failed to follow up on her progress, and she attempted suicide twice. She realised that gender transition had worsened her mental health. She decided to stop taking testosterone, and her distress abated. She was, however, left with a permanently deepened voice. The damage her course of testosterone may have caused to her long-term health is unknown. She is still often mistaken for a man, which she understandably finds frustrating and distressing."
Tom had referred "mental illness', I think I accepted psychological development within a culture. The example you give is one which shows caution in medicalisation. Multiple gender identity has been a naturalised part of many, if not most, societies in history without medicalisation. It should be noted many cultures have inhaled religious roles for those that would be seen as gender non-conformist.
DeletePoint taken TB.
ReplyDeleteThe "gender identity" you refer to is quite different to what is being foisted on us today though, the Samoan fa’afafine, for example, don't insist on being called fafine. They are men that are overtly feminine.
The use of "woman" for what are biological men is offensive to the feminists and others; perhaps without them truly understanding the pathological implications of what they fight.
Woman is not just a word, something that you can just casually change meaning. It is (or was?) axiomatic, imbued with deep spiritual, cultural and biological significance. Does "woman and children first" apply to the trans as well?