November 2024
Hilary Oxley - Speech at the Global Protest Against Sex Self-ID - New Zealand
I am Hilary from LAVA: Lesbian Action for Visibility in Aotearoa.
We have a case to settle with the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT) because Out In The City barred us from having a display at the Pride fair in 2021. To learn more look at LAVA.NZ .
In the past year, 445 NZ men have changed their ‘sex marker’ on their birth certificate. Not that their sex has changed! I will be referring to sex as some THING we are, a biological state, & using the word gender to refer to HOW we are, a stereotype.
I want to start with ‘passing as the opposite sex’. Unlike most men who want to pass as women, there are a lot of reasons, unrelated to voyeurism, for women to want to pass as men. Women have passed as men, through the ages:
to get the higher male wage
to support themselves and others
to be listened to and taken seriously
to do science; to write books; to climb trees
to avoid male violence
to live in same-sex relationships
Nowadays we can do some of these without passing as men. We don’t need to be either closeted or pass as men so as to live in same-sex relationships in New Zealand, though many young women-who-are-wondering if they are lesbian are being channelled - via fashionable, cult-like, illogical ideas - into a trans identity rather than being out as lesbian and proud to be a woman.
But some of the old reasons for passing are still more easily achieved if we pass as men. For example, being listened to and taken seriously. This is one of the dramatic benefits reported by women who are passing as men after taking testosterone. They remark on having their opinions sought after… now that they are mistaken for men. It's a new and extremely profound experience for these women. For them, and for all of us, it clearly exposes the misogyny we live with.
There have always been plenty of lesbians, and other women, who have survived happily and healthily while wishing they had been born male because of the privileges that would have given them.
Perversely, having your opinion asked after, being listened to and taken seriously on a day to day basis are not the male privileges that are lacking for the men who are identifying themselves as women. These men - who think they’re women or insist they’re lesbians - are taken so seriously in Rainbow circles that their point of view decides what happens to the actual lesbians who don’t include men in their safely supportive lesbian-only groups. Unlike bi-sexual and heterosexual women, lesbians have ZERO interest in engaging with men’s sexual urges, (whether these urges be considered kinks or natural urges). We certainly don’t want to be satisfying them by including them in lesbian-only, or women’s, groups or by simply referring to these privileged humans as ‘SHE’.
Germany’s new law proposes that anyone, like any of us here today, who continues to refer to a man (who-claims-to-have-a "female-gender-identity") as a man, can be fined up to €10,000.
(There could be lots of lesbians who refuse to pay and so spend time in prison together in Germany).
We, lesbians who assert that a man is a ‘He’, will not permit men into women’s or lesbian-only spaces, even though we mix with men in many other of life’s spaces, such as, mixing together at the “inclusive” Pride fairs. For example, in 2019 Lesbian Rights Alliance Aotearoa had their booking for space at the Pride fair cancelled because, like LAVA, those lesbians knew that lesbians are same-sex-attracted women. So, they consulted the Human Rights Commission but were told by the staff that anyone can be a lesbian.
This was 2019 - when many of us realised that Rainbow Advisory groups in Government departments weren’t actually representing lesbians or gays. They were, for example, following the Human Rights Commission (HRC) by saying that homosexuality is 'same GENDER, not same SEX' attraction. Plus, the HRC had redefined the word 'woman' as had other Government departments, including the Ministry for Women (MfW). In 2021 LAVA protested at MfW against their definition of woman (i.e. anyone). Our placards said:
Sex can’t be changed
Don’t trans the gay away
Protect gender non-conformity & our youth
Don’t skew data
Biology is a fact. Female is not ‘a feeling’
Protect Women’s Rights, Spaces, Safety & Statistics.
Four days later these messages were used by Wellington Pride as justification for barring LAVA’s display from the fair. So much for Free Speech! Pride claimed that LAVA was “trans-exclusionary”. They reckon that the fair participants should be “standing side by side” with “the most marginalised of the marginalised … including our transgender whanau…”.
Are they, our transgender whanau, “the most marginalised of the marginalised”? They are marginalised, but who else is being marginalised by the very group that opposes marginalisation? Discriminating against lesbians, by banning us for asserting we are same-sex attracted, is marginalising us from our own similarly marginalised and repressed people.
Nowadays, trans identified people are supported by extremely mainstream businesses.
For just one astounding example: since 2016, Barclays Bank has been one of the loudest corporate supporters of Mermaids, the organisation where younger trans-identified-people who have been drawn into the fashionable & illogical cult are pushed through medical ‘transition’. Barclays Bank is not marginal! (Google 2015, Barclays Bank, Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew). That was when that same bank decided to withdraw funding from Mumsnet, a sex realist women’s group.
Even in past decades, more locally here in Wellington, the males who identify as trans have continually had supportive socialising and income earning connections with legitimate businesses. They have had safe places to meet - unlike ‘women-who-are-wondering’ and lesbians, for whom it’s now difficult to find specifically lesbian groups for support, emotional safety, and for socialising. We, and the use of the word 'lesbian', are being ostracised and marginalised by the LGBTQ decision-makers who won’t allow lesbian-only groups.
Pride also said we should be “standing side by side”. This is, of course, exactly what we had done together, over the past 35 years, at these lesbian and gay fairs (as they used to be called). We have been publicly side by side, as broadly inclusive and diverse examples of rainbow communities, feeling relatively safe even while not agreeing with each other entirely. Now, they are discriminating against, banning, and excluding staunch lesbians from a mixed, supposedly inclusive, group.
Who is it that’s NOT standing side by side?
In my opinion - the non-binary girls, trans-identified women, and liberal women who are involved in LGBTQ+ circles, who are influenced by the dominating males (as is usual in straight cultures), and who want to welcome males into womanhood, should:
stop fearing and dissing (disrespecting) staunch lesbians
stop fearing and dissing women who speak up for women
stop fearing and dissing people who differentiate between females and males - when it matters
Remember:
we are not the ones who commonly rape both women and men
we are not the ones sharing our images around to more males to satisfy themselves by abusing us, women
we are not the ones endorsing a fetish via voyeurism when intruding on our lesbian spaces, whether those spaces be in person, online, or in their own minds
So, after LAVA was barred from the fair by Wellington Pride, in an effort to inspire newer lesbians, we displayed our banned map of local lesbian herstory outside the fair that we had been barred from. A noisy counter-protest formed, and surrounded us, chanting “pack your shit and go” in our faces - which felt unsafe - and displayed signs bearing slogans such as “Fuck TERF Cunts”, which is threateningly aggressive, insulting and misogynistic. It was scary, felt unsafe, noisy, stressful, and a VERY sad day.
If we say we sometimes want the safety of lesbian-ONLY groups for coming out and connecting – as is normal for groups that have issues in common – this has been interpreted as us saying that trans identified men, specifically, are unsafe. Yet, Pride said LAVA’s presence at the mixed, diverse fair would make trans people feel “unsafe”. Who knows whether they were referring to physical safety, or emotional safety. But physical safety is an issue.
What we do know: trans-identifying males are over-represented in New Zealand prisons.
In New Zealand about 14% of trans-identifying males, from around New Zealand, are housed in a female Corrections facility. Similarly, about 14% of sentenced offenders (who are trans-identifying males) are on remand or sentenced for sexual assault. That’s imprisonment at twice the ratio of men, generally. The data clearly shows that males, however they identify, sexually offend at rates much more than female rates. But for trans-identified males it’s more like 28 times more than women.
So, men identifying as trans does NOT change their male tendency for sexual assault and other violent behaviour. These are the particular men that women are told they should be comfortable sharing spaces with!
So, because of their prioritising trans issues (which does not account for our safety, and it marginalises and does not stand side-by-side with us) we were barred from the fair. We made a complaint to the HRC about being discriminated against simply because we assert that lesbians are exclusively same-sex-attracted women. This has led on to a complaint with the Human Rights Review Tribunal – where human rights are reviewed - and we are currently preparing for the hearing early next year.
Please support our case at LAVA.NZ .
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