July 2024
Newsletter
Law Commission recommends HRA changes
The Law Commission is a taxpayer-funded independent body that reviews and makes recommendations to the government for law changes. Previous Minister of Justice, Kiri Allen, asked the Law Commission to review the protected characteristics in the Human Rights Act (HRA) after a Bill to add “gender identity” to the protections was introduced by Elizabeth Kerekere. (This Bill is currently in hiatus.)
The Commission published an Issues Paper on the topic on 27 June, with the recommendation that “transgender, non-binary, and people who have an innate variation of sex characteristics” should have specific protection from discrimination included in the HRA. The lengthy Issues Paper discusses various options for new wording and alterations to different sections of the Act, and the Commission is seeking public submissions on the proposals until 5 September.
We have identified many flaws in the Issues Paper:
It uses the language of gender ideology throughout (sex assigned at birth, cisgender, gender-affirming surgery etc)
It claims that binary sex is a matter of opinion (2.8)
It implies that it is reasonable to think hormone therapy or gender surgery changes a person’s sex. (2.7)
Its definition of transgender includes anyone who says they are: “A person does not need to be diagnosed with [gender dysphoria] to be transgender.” (2.30)
It is not able to clearly define “gender identity” or “gender expression”. (2.12)
It admits that many “variations of sex characteristics” (also called intersex or DSD) are invisible to others (2.26), yet still includes this phrase in the proposed new wording.
It has strayed from looking at protections from discrimination into questions about language (misgendering and deadnaming) and single-sex spaces.
It consulted only with people who hold gender identity beliefs, including Gender Minorities Aotearoa which recently published a document, Anti-Transgender Extremisim, that compares criticism of gender ideology with fascism.
It has not fully considered the needs and rights of all students and their families in a school setting.
Get ready to submit
RGE, along with some other groups critical of gender ideology will be meeting with the Law Commission on 6 August for preliminary feedback and a chance to ask questions. Following this meeting, we will publish a substack report about the Law Commission’s responses to the issues we raised with them. We suggest you delay making a submission until we have posted this report.
In the meantime, the sections of the Issues Paper that relate most to education are Chapters 12 , 13, 16, and 17. Chapters 6 to 8 provide background information about the HRA.
Two Open Letters to Sign
Both Speak Up for Women and the Free Speech Union are seeking signatures for open letters to the Minister of Justice.
SUFW calls on the Minister to “reject all advice to include any amendments to the Human Rights Act 1993 that would undermine the fundamental meaning of Sex in law.” Please sign the Open Letter here.
The FSU says “Misgendering isn’t a crime! If the Law Commission is considering whether ‘deadnaming’, ‘misgendering’, and ‘outing’ should fall afoul of the law, they’re looking at censoring legitimate speech.” You can sign their letter to Paul Goldsmith here.
Guidelines to schools endorsed by two emeritus professors
In May, we launched our Independent NZ Guidelines on Sex and Gender in Schools. This fully-referenced, comprehensive guide provides information, resources, and a roadmap for the development of a New Zealand-wide respectful school climate on sex and gender issues, in alignment with international best practice. The Guide has now been endorsed by two NZ Emeritus Professors:
Sue Middleton, PhD (Emeritus Professor), Faculty of Education, University of Waikato.
RGE’s Independent Guidelines challenge the evidence base of the ‘sex, gender and identity’ component of the Ministry of Education’s 2020 Guidelines for Relationships and Sexuality Education. Referencing recent research and the UK’s Cass Report, RGE reject the Ministry’s endorsement of an ‘affirmation’ model, which is often a pathway to lifelong medicalisation. A school should create space for students to hold options open. And it “should project the attitude that there is no right or wrong way to be a boy or a girl.”
Emeritus Professor David Gerrard, CNZM OBE MB ChB(Otago) FACSEP FFSEM(Hon), University of Otago Medical School
As a retired academic physician, but more importantly as a parent and grandparent, I add my strong endorsement to the opinions of the group, Resist Gender Education. Today, more than ever, our shared responsibility to nurture young minds and bodies must be informed by evidence-based, scientific fact.
The Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) Guide as currently taught in the school curriculum contains inaccurate misinformation with incontrovertible potential for harm to young consumers. This is no place to peddle subjective, confusing ideology.
I respectfully urge Ministers to be guided by objectivity in matters of gender education in an urgent review of the existing RSE Guide.
Whack-a-mole
Misinformation and downright lies about suicide statistics continue to be spread in an effort to maintain the practice of hormonal disruption in children. The latest claim, made by the Good Law Project, a UK trans advocacy group, is that there has been a huge spike in suicides in teenagers since the Cass report prompted a halt in the routine prescribing of puberty blockers.
A review by Louis Appleby, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manchester, has found “the data do not support the claim” and the way the issue has been discussed in media is “insensitive, distressing, and dangerous.” He further stated, “There is a need to move away from the perception that puberty blocking drugs are the main marker of non-judgemental acceptance in this area of health care.”
Professor Appleby analysed data from NHS England on suicides of patients at the Tavistock clinic, based on an audit at the trust.
Covering the period between 2018-19 and 2023-24, he found there were 12 suicides - five in the three years leading up to 2020-21 and seven in the three years afterwards.
"This is essentially no difference," Prof Appleby says in his report, "taking account of expected fluctuations in small numbers, and would not reach statistical significance."
He adds: "In the under 18s specifically, there were 3 suicides before and 3 after 2020-21."
The patients who died were at different points in the care system, including post-discharge, suggesting no consistent link to any one aspect of care, Prof Appleby noted.
Cass has not recanted
Another widespread false claim is the one that says Dr Cass has “walked back a number of her recommendations.” This is based on an article from the Kite Trust (an LGBTQ group) where they misreported comments made in a meeting with Dr Cass.
In the FAQS attached to the Final Report, Dr Cass describes the meeting and its aftermath: “Dr Cass responded to a number of questions that young people and their families had raised with the organisations. Following the meeting the Kite Trust (which is a small, locally focused youth organisation) produced a myth buster to support their youth workers responding to questions from the young people they support. The Kite Trust sent this through to the Review team (on 17 April) but did not state the intention to publish. The myth buster was published on their website the day after the meeting (18 April) before the Review had reviewed its contents and the Review did not sign off the document. Sadly, this was quickly picked up on social media and was used to attack the credibility of the Review and the integrity of the Kite Trust.”
The Review has issued its own FAQs to clarify its position.
The review did not ban the use of puberty blockers. (Therefore cannot ‘walk-back a ban’ - Ed.)
It found that not enough is known about the longer-term impacts of puberty blockers for children and young people with gender incongruence to know whether they are safe or not, nor which children might benefit from their use.
It supports a clinical trial in which puberty blockers will be available for children with gender incongruence/dysphoria where there is clinical agreement that the individual may benefit from taking them.
Using puberty blockers to suppress premature puberty is different to stopping the normal surge of hormones that occur in puberty. Pubertal hormones are needed for psychological, psychosexual and brain development, and there is not yet enough information on the risks of stopping the influence of pubertal hormones at this critical life stage.
Over the past few years, the most common age that young people have been receiving puberty blockers in England has been 15 when most young people are already well advanced in their puberty. The new services will be looking at the best approaches to support young people through this period when they are still making decisions about longer-term options.
Social transition secrets in California
On 15 July California passed a law - the so-called ‘Safety Act,’ AB1955 - that prevents schools from having policies to inform parents if their child wants to adopt a new identity at school. Immediately, a lawsuit was filed against AB1955 on the grounds that it undermines several established rights:
With multiple stages of litigation, it will probably be more than a year before there is a definitive outcome to the case.
New on our website
An Index to our Substack articles makes it easy to find the information you seek.
In the Letter Templates, there is a new draft letter for querying the content of lessons provided by Life Education Trust (Harold the Giraffe).
The Rising Tide of Transgender Identity - What's Going On? This excellent video from Genspect explains the causes and effects of the transgender phenomenon, in less than eleven minutes.
