MEDIA RELEASE: July 11th, Wellington, New Zealand
Speak Up For Women is as surprised as most New Zealanders to discover that two of the major telco providers in New Zealand don’t want the majority of New Zealanders as customers.
To back up a bit, on Saturday, 24 hours before Sarah Jane Parker, an ex convict who served 30 years for attempted murder, kidnap and torture is telling the madding crowd at London Trans Pride that “If you see a TERF, punch her in the fucking face”, our favourite theybie is asking his pals on Threads (Meta’s answer to Twitter apparently) to back him in not tolerating TERFs. He is rewarded with a response from a bright young thing at Spark, NZ’s oldest telco.
One New Zealand took the opportunity to respond too, perhaps they should consider a rebrand to “One-but-not-you” NZ?
“TERF” stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist”, but is widely applied by “transgender” enthusiasts to anyone who speaks up for science and sex-based rights. It’s intended as a slur and is often accompanied by efforts to damage a person’s reputation, and sexist abuse and threats. Think witch and bitch and you’re on the right track.
The belief that “trans women” are literally women no different to your gran and your mum is a luxury belief popular with the professional-managerial, political, media and graduate classes, but the truth is, you’re probably a TERF.
If you think that trans-identifying people should be free from discrimination in the workplace, but you don’t want your 15 year old daughter competing against a male in football, congratulations, you’re a TERF.
If you think that trans-identifying people should be free from discrimination in housing but you don’t want your eight year old daughter sharing a changing room with an adult male, you’re a TERF.
And if you’re worried about hormone use in young people or if you don’t really think people can actually change sex, you’re a TERF too.
Pointing and shouting “look, look over there and not at the less savoury aspects of our corporate behaviour!”, the corporate world has also jumped on board, busily rainbow-washing and Pride-monthing all year long (having been conspicuously silent when there were still actual civil rights battles underway for gay people).
But this undisputed-truth claim – that men who identify as women should be treated as women in all respects - is not shared by the wider population.
Yes, these pesky TERFs and plebs stubbornly continue to believe sexual dimorphism in humans is real, the result of millions of years of evolution and in some instances should be taken into account for reasons of safety and dignity.
This impasse between the commoners and our thought-reforming overlords means there must be “no debate” and the “TERFs” need to be kept out of the public square. The corporates and opinion-havers boost each other's fealty-signalling to differentiate themselves from the workaday dummies. And Spark and Lal have just provided a masterclass.
Whether this was a savvy business move remains to be seen, but there are even more important matters at stake.
Speak Up For Women implores Spark, One, and other corporates to consider whether we really want to create a country in which people are denied services, abused and unpersoned because of a political viewpoint. We also invite Lal and other gender enthusiasts to consider if the authoritarian boot they currently hope to kick the TERFs with was on some other foot, they would still be in favour of powerful people and corporations being enabled to exclude citizens from accessing the digital public square.
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