The recent Kiwiblog post responding to Winston Peters’ Member’s Bill, which seeks to define "woman" and "man" in biological terms, suggests the Bill is too "simplistic" and proposes a legal framework that recognises both sex and gender. While this may appear balanced on the surface, it continues to entrench a conceptual muddle that has had tangible and regressive effects on women’s rights and protections.
Anchoring the legal definitions of "woman" and "man" in biological sex is not simplistic; it is foundational. The very notion of women’s rights, hard-won over centuries, is grounded in the recognition that female people as a class face sex-based oppression. From equal suffrage to reproductive rights, from male violence to the ‘urinary leash’, these are not abstract identity issues; they are material, embodied realities tied directly to sex.
The suggestion that laws should allow sex and gender to be defined side by side, and that lawmakers can just choose which to reference, is exactly the problem we’re already wrestling with. It virtually ensures the erosion of sex-based rights by replacing them with subjective claims of identity. In practice, this has already led to males being granted access to women-only spaces, services, and opportunities because their self-declared gender identity is given legal priority over their sex.
If we’re serious about protecting women’s rights, the law must be unambiguous: when we talk about “women”, we mean adult human females. This is especially important, in the context of healthcare, prisons, sports, or single-sex services.
Kiwiblog also states:
“I’m all for having the law allowing sporting events, facilities to restrict entry to those who are biologically women.”
But this is exactly what cannot be upheld if the law remains ambiguous on sex and gender. We cannot say on one hand that we support single-sex spaces and on the other permit self-identification to override them if someone makes a ‘good’ enough argument. The minute “woman” has two competing definitions, one rooted in sex and one in identity, women’s rights become negotiable, diluted, and, ultimately, meaningless.
The compromise suggested - defining both sex and gender and leaving it to lawmakers to decide which to invoke - ignores the power imbalance that already exists in public discourse and legislative priorities. Time and again, “gender identity” has been used to silence and shame those who insist that sex still matters. The burden has fallen on women, and especially lesbians and gender-critical feminists, to defend our right to single-sex spaces while being harassed and accused of bigotry.
There are times when the law must clearly define demographic categories like sex, for example, in order to measure discrimination, enforce equality provisions, or protect vulnerable populations. Biological sex is an observable, objective category with legal and social relevance. By contrast, “gender identity” is a subjective, internal sense of self, often rooted in personality, presentation, or social norms. To define it in law is to enshrine stereotypes or personal feelings as a legal category, akin to legislating introversion, femininity, or style preferences. That is neither necessary nor helpful. It does not protect rights; it obscures them.
We cannot solve one group’s challenges by erasing another’s rights. It is not “exclusionary” to say that sex matters. It is not hateful to define “woman” in the way that every generation of humans has understood it since the beginning of time: as adult human females.
Far from being simplistic, this clarity is what makes coherent policy, fair law, and genuine social justice possible. In a time when language is increasingly contested, we need to return to truth, not wordplay. The bill is a necessary step in that direction.
Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.
6 comments:
Absolutely agree. If you’ve got a d#ck; you’re not a chick.
>"By contrast, “gender identity” is a subjective, internal sense of self, often rooted in personality, presentation, or social norms."
Correct. This doesn't make it any less real, but it defies standarisation through legal definition.
Gender roles do need to be a bit more attention to. Many boys and young men are rather confused about exactly what masculinity entails (especially with the term 'toxic masculinity' being bandied about). Men and women are equal but different. We need to have a closer look at exactly where and how the 'different' comes into play.
In the age of the anointed, language is no longer a means of communication but a political weapon. Terms like “gender identity” have been elevated from vague psychological notions to legal and institutional imperatives — often at the expense of biological women, who now find their own spaces and protections increasingly subject to erasure in the name of inclusivity.
This debate is not primarily about compassion or civil rights, as the self-appointed moral elites insist. It is about whether subjective self-perception can — or should — override objective biological facts. The fashionable idea that one can “identify” into a sex different from one’s own is not just a personal belief; it has been weaponized into a social demand for validation, legislation, and redefinition.
Nowhere is the cost of this more evident than in the realm of women’s rights. Decades of hard-won legal protections — from Title IX to women-only shelters — are being dismantled in the name of inclusion. But as with so many progressive crusades, the question seldom asked is: “At whose expense?”
When a biological male — with all the physical advantages that entails — enters a female sports competition or occupies space in a women’s prison, the rhetoric of “rights” masks what is really happening: a transfer of privilege, not a leveling of inequality. This is not about equality under the law. It is about the redefinition of law and language to suit a new orthodoxy.
As with most ideological crusades led by the “anointed,” the real-world consequences are irrelevant to those who promote them. Drag queens and cross-dressers, once a niche subculture, have been rebranded as civil rights icons — not because the data supports such a view, but because the cultural arbiters have declared it so. We are asked to treat personal expression as an inviolable truth, and biological fact as a relic of prejudice.
But reality is not optional. And when ideological visions collide with empirical data — as they now do in women’s athletics, safety, and law — it is the ordinary people, not the elites, who pay the price. To frame this as mere “progress” is to ignore the essential principle that rights come with trade-offs. Elevating one group’s preferences should not come at the expense of another group’s protections.
The larger issue here is not about gender, but about truth. When society elevates identity above evidence, and emotion above logic, it sets itself on a path not to justice, but to confusion — and ultimately, to injustice.
Let's just stick with the science.
All mammals have two sexes. Male and female.
No-one ever suggests that cats or dogs or hedgehogs have a third "gender"
Same for humans. It is simple biology. Two sexes.
However, for example, if a man wishes to dress up in women's clothes and act like a woman, then that's his choice. But he is biologically a man. It's in the DNA !
The idea of a cross dressing hedgehog really strains the mind!!
Anon 9.25pm: about as much mindstraining as a ‘man’ can get pregnant and give birth as the gaslighting tvnz and the nz herald would have us believe
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