Full Transcript for 1/200 S2E173 - Puberty Blocker Ban
Episode here: https://www.1of200.nz/podcast/1200-s2e173-puberty-blocker-ban
Kyle:
Welcome to 1 of 200 that was a much quicker delivery than I'd intended. We are the politics and media podcast for Aotearoa. I'm joined by my co host, Simone. How are you doing?
Simone:
Kyle, I'm calling in from sunny Antarctica, which is why it's cutting out on the phone you can, turns out you can just lie on podcasts, actually, no, I'm in Auckland, but I moved house and my PC is broken. So, yeah,
Kyle:
hey, brighter futures or something, I don't know. And we're also joined by return guest friend of the podcast, Jen Shields, how you doing?
Jennifer:
Yeah, I my sleep schedule's really taking a hit this week. We're not okay, actually,
Kyle:
Yeah. So how do we even, we've had you on the podcast within the last month, I think, to talk about some of the stuff we're talking about trans healthcare today, once again, because the further right elements in the coalition government have taken further obscene actions against trans communities in New Zealand, particularly against trans children.
You know, this has been a a running method for this coalition government is to target children with really nasty policies, and just across the board, they've been getting increasingly bad. But at this point, with what is happening with the policy announced this week about puberty blockers, we're heading into some much darker territory. Jen, do you want to give us a quick summary of what the government decided to do, without listening to medical advice, talking to their ministry, maybe like effectively talking to cabinet or talking to anyone, and then just pushing it out via party political and activist groups?
Jennifer:
Yeah, we're going full UK, which is if you follow anything to do with trans health, like the worst possible country to follow the footsteps of. So yeah, this week, relatively late in the day, Wednesday afternoon, Winston first, Winston Peters, and then three hours later, Simeon Brown, the Minister of Health, announced, yeah, that they're introducing new restrictions, regulations, a ban, is what they don't want to call it, but is what it is, specifically on trans children accessing GnRH analogs, puberty blockers.
About this time last year, the Ministry of Health opened this issue up for public consultation because they were directed to by the Minister of Health to open it up to the public. Because, of course, the public needs to have their say on whether or not trans kids should deserve health care.
Kyle:
Well, everyone's a medical expert these days with AI.
Jennifer:
yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Don't you know, you can just be a programmer and self publish a book about puberty blockers and expect everyone to take you as an expert. That's the way things work these days. So, yeah, the ministry ran some consultation meetings. They very specifically did not consult directly with trans children, despite the fact that they have an obligation to under the medicines act and under the United Nations Convention on the right of the child. They told us they just didn't have time to meet with trans kids, and then spent maybe another three months meeting with doctors around the country, so they clearly had some time.
And then the next we heard of it was Wednesday morning from an anti Trans activist who had clearly been leaked to the news. And then all of a sudden, a few hours before Trans Day of Remembrance, there it was, in some of the most like horrific politicized language I have ever seen, and that, I think, is saying something like the extremes that New Zealand First and ACT have taken this to. They are basically openly preaching and calling for conversion practices instead of genuine evidence based healthcare.
Kyle:
Yeah. I think one of the things that struck me immediately alongside the like, how much of a victory lap they sounded like they were doing, I guess, like, just a lack of attempt to even make it sound ministerial, right, or like governmental, was that they've been really, really clear in the press release to show that this is a specific carve out to target trans children, and anyone using puberty blockers who wasn't trans could still do so, while claiming that it was about harm reduction, because they're untested or whatever, which like just and you have to think that's not just them being stupid that they know what the contradiction is and they are throwing that in people's faces so that their extremist supporters can crow about it and say, Look, they even know. They even know. Look, everyone else is getting what they want. They're targeting trans people, just like we want them to.
Jennifer:
I think two weeks ago, when Peters posted on his Facebook page something along the lines of, like, we're winning the war on woke, keep an eye out for more good news. So I think it's really, really clear that this decision has basically just been handed to New Zealand First to make, and we've got OIA documents from the Sport NZ trans inclusion guideline decision that shows exactly the same thing. The only piece of documentation that came out of an OIA request to the minister's office around that was an email from New Zealand First chief of Chief of Staff basically saying it's in the coalition agreement, get rid of it, and I just, I can put good money on it. The exact same thing has happened here,
Simone:
Two things. One of them is a question which was given how this has panned out, given that they have essentially lobbed softball over the plate in respect of this being discriminatory and also the kind of procedural defects in it. Do we know if there's any daylight for a legal challenge?
Jennifer:
Yeah. So we had a meeting with some very qualified and skilled lawyers. Thursday, day after the ban all came in place, we have another meeting with them Monday. It seems like there's a few legal options available to us, so probably looks like a judicial review, and because they have gone about this through the Medicines Act, introducing regulation through secondary legislation, judicial review has a bit more teeth than it would for primary legislation, so it essentially could overturn it. And yeah, like it's such an obviously discriminatory act, and also is so obviously against the purpose of the medicines act, because the Medicines Act was never intended to be used as a tool to win the war on woke I think, yeah, I feel confident that this won't stand
Simone:
Yeah. I mean, it's nonetheless damaging in the meantime. And there are, I mean, how many kids who are trans on it? It's less than it's a little over 100 isn't it?
Jennifer:
Yeah, yeah. We're not talking about a lot, right? And we even have, like, some really good New Zealand data that shows, and I might need to cross check this, the rates of trans kids who want puberty blockers but haven't been able to access it are still incredibly high. Like our current prescribing settings are restrictive, like they're not easy to access. We see disparities in access the same way we do across lots of health care, primarily Maori, Pasifika, trans young people aren't able to access this care, if anything, it needed more resourcing, more access. Yeah, shocker,
Simone:
Yeah. One of the things that I suppose I wanted to talk about was, was that rhetoric that in the New Zealand First press release, it's been a lot stronger, and you mentioned that a little, than what the government has said, largely because, you know, the government has to be a little more anodyne, but some of the rhetoric is really concerning. One of the, I think, perhaps the most chilling one was them saying, this is the beginning of a war, right? So think of the children as kind of a rhetorical wedge, because they're sort of perceived to be morally uncomplicated beings, and also it's a god given right to have total control over the autonomy of a child and the patriarchal family unit. And that seemed to be a sort of kiwi value. I suppose they're saying this is kind of the beginning, and that they're explicitly following the UK. If you could, did you want to talk a little about what that kind of pathway has been in the United Kingdom for people who haven't been following it, the kind of stepwise approach to this use of trans people as a kind of fascist wedge in the UK and the degradation of essential human rights for us as a minority?
Jennifer:
Yeah, I mean, in some ways, like it's quite helpful to be able to look at the UK and see how this has played out over the year, and how what they might be hoping to happen here. So the UK didn't just ban puberty blockers for trans kids, they criminalized it. So if you are a parent of a trans kid and are found with this medication in your house, even if you have been prescribed it for another purpose, a genuine purpose, like people have been taken to police stations for questioning, people are having to be, like, incredibly circumspect about just trying to do the right thing for their kids. The settings over there are, like, such an absolute extreme, and again, so far and beyond the recommendations of the Cass Review. They keep coming back to the Cass Review. The Cass Report explicitly, did not recommend a ban. So unbelievably political. And what we're starting to see over there, I mean, immediately we saw some really significant deterioration in people's well being, like, we've got some really good research about the suicide risk and the total inability for some trans young people over there to engage in public life now because they no longer have access to this care.
Kyle:
So in the UK, because I like, from what I understood with the New Zealand situation, people who had access will keep access for now.
Jennifer:
yes, yeah, but the number of people in the UK who had access through the NHS was, like, incredibly tiny. Like, I think the raw numbers, potentially, I think, might have been comparable to how many kids are accessing it here, like, in the low hundreds, and that country is so much bigger, yeah.
Kyle:
and so the people who had their access taken away in the UK, so that is a like, it is reasonable to believe that that's the direction that, like, given the rhetoric being used, that New Zealand First would want to go in.
Jennifer:
Yeah, I think it's probably that, yeah. I think you're right in saying that's the direction New Zealand First would want to push. I have to remain optimistic that it won't get that bad here. Yeah, and I think that, I think if they intended to do that, probably they just would have announced it right off the bat, like, I think, unless we see, like, a really significant public support for, you know, making this ban more conservative than it already is, I don't I hope that we won't see it get much worse. I think we've seen such a strong response from the medical community in particular, not that this government is particularly keen on following the evidence or the advice of experts. But yeah, I think as we get closer to the election this year, I have to believe that at least National, if not the ministers themselves, you know, the other body within National, of the other MPs, I have to believe it will be unpalatable enough for them to want to take further, more radical action on this.
But I think that is probably the direction New Zealand First would really want to push it. And like their end goal here, their aim is to stop people from being transgender. We can see that in how like affiliated groups, like Family First have immediately called for, like, non affirming psychology approaches for these kids, which is, again, just another way to say a conversion practice. That's where they want to push it. They want an end to trans existence in public life.
Kyle:
Okay, that's what the minister actually said in his release as well. He was talking about psychology approaches, right? That’s illegal.
Jennifer:
Yeah, exactly. He was talking about how youth services should continue to work with the experts to provide good care. Except the question we're asking is, like, what care? Because there isn't an evidence based alternative to this intervention, like psychology only, or this watchful waiting approach is just a conversion practice.
Simone:
Yeah, and I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. But in the UK, they managed, the terf elite, managed to shut down the Tavistock gender clinic entirely. So they've shut down one of the NHS’ actual institutional ways of delivering medicine to trans people, most recently, not to have a kind of recency bias about the news, because I think the slow, kind of stepwise decline is itself notable as a trend. But the recent case of and her name escapes me, this poor woman who had slept with a cis man, and evidently his mates found out in some way that she was trans. He then claimed that he didn't have an idea and that he’d been raped by her because he didn't know that she was trans. She's been convicted. She's going to be sentenced. She will be sentenced, almost certainly, to a men's prison in the United Kingdom. So what we're talking about here with the exclusion of trans people from bathrooms, from public life, from sex life, from social life, effectively, is not just a kind of exclusion from public life itself, it is exclusion under the threat of state sanctioned rape as a tool of war.
Jennifer:
Yeah, and like we've seen the lobby groups here try to take a similar like legal approach or approach in their litigation to the UK Supreme Court case, you know, for Women Scotland versus the Supreme Court. And I think, yeah, again, we get to see the decision from the Wellington Pride case. But my feeling there is that that isn't going to be a success for the anti trans crowd. So I think we're holding some ground. And I think our like as much as we hate our current media context and how shit it is like we are nowhere near as bad as the UK media is on trans issues, just purely in terms of the amount of attention they spend on it, like hundreds and hundreds of articles every single month about trans people, trans lives that are purely sensationalized. And I think it's really important to like, recognize that context when we're talking about, like, the UK's trans health approach, the Cass Review, the Supreme Court decision, everything else is coming from a context where, for the last five years, every single day, your average Joe Bloggs on the street in the UK may have read an article in the Daily Mail about how trans people are evil, and like, coming to trans the kids and invade women's spaces, and that level of like, absolute pervasion in the general culture, I don't think we've seen here yet, which does give me some hope.
Kyle:
Yeah, I think one of the really good indicators of that is the way that they've had to make this decision, right? They've had to keep it on lockdown, not talk with, you know, pro rights groups, essentially not talk with medical professionals, like, like, essentially carve them out via, like, the government's policy work, and then leak the release to these virulent hate groups and do their victory lap over the top of everything else. They had to just wield executive power to make this happen, because they're extremists, right? They haven't been able to manufacture the public case for this in the same way as in the UK or even the US, and I think that's really obvious and really clear with the immediate pushback on it. But as you say, Jen, I think there is, like a lot, of course, optimism here, given how successful kind of pro rights groups have been around this issue, and especially with the way the public has engaged with them.
Jennifer:
Yeah, and you know, we've already seen at least some level of commitment from the opposition parties. Rainbow greens last night put out a good statement, obviously limited in how much they can do as a special interest group within a party, but they've committed to they use some not quite as strong language as I would have hoped, but they said something like that, committed or made a promise to working to a commitment to reverse this and a commitment to not using trans healthcare as a political football in next year's election negotiations. Te Pāti Māori came out with a really strong statement. Some of the Labours MPs have also come out,
Kyle:
Two labor MPs, maybe three Labour MPs
Speaker 4 18:08
Yeah, I really think Duncan Webb is on his way out. You could really take a stand for us here. Uncle dunk,
Simone
Oh the Labour irrelevancy, caucus
Kyle:
It's pretty frustrating. So labor haven't released a statement yet.
Jennifer:
I haven't seen a full statement from labor on the official channels. I've just seen individual statements from MPs.
Kyle
Yeah, not good enough honestly.
Simone:
What’s perhaps concerning about the UK example, I think, is the fact that, like despite all of that reporting, the general public opinion is not as bad as you would think, but it doesn't matter. And I think that's probably one of the key differences from here, is that kind of baked in class character, kind of feudal country that never had a revolution, right, which is not true here. So in that respect, there is a lot to be optimistic about. And I really wanted to ask, I suppose, when we talk about this, as, “will it happen here? Won't it happen here?” “To what extent?” there's a kind of agentlessness to that? What, from your perspective, is a good approach if people are concerned about this, because what is happening in the UK would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, and it's not now, and it is unthinkable here, but it might not be.
Jennifer:
yeah, I think, like, we've just, like, you were saying, we've seen what's happened here, because we have a coalition government who are willing to, just like, freely wield their executive power to make these decisions, we have a government that isn't interested in that evidence base. I think the the solution to in particular issues like that, to like governments acting far beyond the agreement is just to really, really make clear that that public opinion is firmly in support of trans kids and their right to access this healthcare. So I think there's like, a fair amount of, like, classic New Zealand “She'll be right” “Let it be” attitudes we're not the best at, like having conflict based conversations with one another, but I think feels so trite to keep coming back to it. But like talking to the people around you, like, particularly for listeners who, yeah, assist, who might have family members who maybe are persuadable sitting on the fence, I think there's some really clear and really understandable, like values based, evidence based messaging we can use here, like just the simple fact that this Minister of Health has banned this medication, particularly for transgender children using the same medication and the same demographic, the same population, the same age group, banned for one based on their identity, perfectly fine for a cisgender five year old experiencing precocious puberty, for like a 16/17, year old with endometriosis, like there's no… I think people can understand that. They can see that there's no rational reason why you would need, like, either you restrict it for everyone, or you don't at all.
So I think they have kind of given this opportunity us, this opportunity to persuade large portions of the public who may have sat on the fence by making this such a clearly ideologically driven decision, and I think we have turned out broad popular support for trans causes in recent years. You look at the turnouts to the bash back protests against Destiny Church last year, the turnouts for the Posey Parker tour like the appetite is there getting people out to show that support and having those conversations with people who are on the fence and, like, just really pointing out how absolutely, like, contradictory, totally irrelevant to the evidence decision making is happening
Kyle:
In terms of, I guess that's a good opportunity to just do a quick kind of roundup of what puberty blockers are right and how they've been utilized. You mentioned a couple of other use cases there, right? And I think the government and anti trans campaigners really rely on people not knowing the details, you know, but like making these out to be some kind of horror. And as you say, they've given us the tools now to say, hey, wait a sec. These are the same thing. Why is it okay here and not here? So what are puberty blockers and when and why are they used?
Jennifer:
Yeah, so, puberty blockers, reversible puberty suppression, GNRH Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone agonists or analogs this, yeah, this set of medications, they work by stimulating a particular gland before switching it off. I'm reading from some guidelines again now, because I am not a clinician, but basically, they halt that development of you know, your secondary sex characteristics, they can halt the production or the uptake of hormones, which is why they're used in other like hormone related care, right? So endometriosis, prostate cancers, situations where suppressing that kind of hormonal response can have benefits for someone's health and well being. So they've been used for trans healthcare for like 20/25, years, and had been used here in Aotearoa for trans health for about that long, like 15 plus years. At this point, they've been used for cisgender children experiencing precocious puberty. So where puberty begins, you know, inappropriately early to use the language of the Ministry of Health, which, again, same thing, yeah, they have that benefit of being considered to be like pretty largely reversible. They are reversible when it comes to what they are intended to do, right? Like they pause puberty, you come off them, you continue puberty, or you go on to hormone therapy.
The risks that people get so up in arms about, we don't even have good evidence to show that those risks do exist. There's some indication that there's a reduction in bone density, but the solution to that, from the clinical perspective, is like so simple and mind numbingly obvious that it kind of makes these decisions so much worse, because the treatment, I guess, or the thing that supports good bone density when someone is on puberty blockers is to go for a little walk every day, like weight bearing exercise is good for bone development, and just encouraging people to do that can really address those risks. So, like, what we're talking about here is like, let trans kids have puberty blockers and get them to go for a little walk every day to keep their bones healthy, or ban the care entirely and put them at risk of significant mental health deterioration. Like, it's nonsense.
Kyle:
I didn't realize they've been used in New Zealand for 2025, years without, I imagine, anything ludicrous happening. Can you go into detail a little bit about gender dysphoria and what it means to be able to kind of put puberty on hold to stop those secondary sex characteristics eventuating?
Jennifer:
I think dysphoria can be such a nebulous concept for people who haven't experienced it to understand what it's like, and it's one of those things that is like, almost kind of only describable, or most effectively describable through like an analogy. So you've got the benefit of me teaching doctors about this. There are two that I really like to use. One is that, like, if you clasp your hands together and, like, lace your fingers through your hands, everyone does that, kind of in a natural way. Well everyone just does it kind of in the same way. But if you flip your like fingers around and just like, do it with your fingers interlaced like opposite to the way you would naturally would like, it just feels off. It doesn't feel right. If you're looking at it, there's no reason why it shouldn't feel right. You could look around at a room full of other people doing the same thing with their hands, and it would look the same. And you know, but there's that feeling of like this doesn't sit right with me, and that can be what dysphoria is like in a much more simplified way. But the other analogy I often come to because I think it is most reflective of my own experiences. Like, imagine growing up and every time you were drinking water, you were drinking salt water, and you would drink more and more of it to try and hydrate yourself. And again, you're looking around at other people drinking water and being hydrated. And one day, for the first time, you have a glass of fresh water, and there's a moment of like, oh, this is what everyone else is doing. This is the way that this is, this is what you do. It's kind of like the experience of dysphoria versus euphoria, like there's just this, like something is wrong, something doesn't feel right. The things that you're doing to try to help it just don't work, and the things that everyone else are doing just don't work. But then you find the thing that works, whether it's puberty blockers, hormone therapy, gender affirming care, even just like the social stuff, changing a name, changing your appearance, like drinking fresh water for the first time, and like just this absolute sense of relief. So for kids in particular who are going through this, you know, and especially, especially now, like it's one thing to go through changes to your body that you are even unsure about when it comes to your gender, can be a really traumatic experience. And when you're starting to experience that dysphoria, we can see in the research, like kids stop going to schools, they stop engaging with their friends, they just really the whole world shrinks. But to add on top of that, the fact that we have a medication that can stop that we have an option out there available, that has been available for so many kids to have that taken away.
Like one of the really big conversations we're having now, and it has come up a couple of times in the last couple of years because of what's happened overseas, is like tangling with whether it's worse to have never had the option of puberty blockers in the first place, like they weren't an option for me when I transitioned, but I think it's worse to have had that option available to you, and, like, for some families to have been able to say to their kids, like, there's a medication that you'll be able to take when you reach the point when you need it that could prevent that, and for that to be taken away by a government, like, I think that's 10 times worse.
Kyle:
Yeah, thank you.
Simone:
And I think, yeah, it's worth noting. We did this last time, but it is worth sort of refreshing for people that it is a holding pattern. It is in many ways, if the extent of trans healthcare for teens, and you know, younger kids of their precocious puberty is a blocker, that is a compromise position, there are kids who actually do know what they want. You know, 14, 15, 16, year olds, and they should be able to access cross sex hormones if they are informed about it, and they understand, and they know, I mean, most people won't, because, you know, you question a lot of things at that age, and that's exactly what it's for, but the inability to even get anything else, you know, puberty blockers are a compromise position in that sense, and that can't and shouldn't be the limit of what trans healthcare is across the spectrum.
Jennifer:
You're totally right. And you know, when we're talking about how this is a wedge issue, like it's kind of already happened, right? Like, puberty blockers were introduced as that compromise option for trans kids, specifically because people were getting concerned about, like, giving kids sex hormones when they need them. So it's been, like a long wedge, but like we've been here before, when we started to use this for this population, and now even this compromise position that we have worked with for so long now, they want to take that away too. Is, just makes the, I think, the scale of this political project much clearer, and this is just like the next step on that pathway.
Simone:
It's worth noting for people who are, you know, don't understand or have a sort of concern about it, to break out of, I think the mold that that to be transgender is in some way, sort of not equal with being cisgender. I think it's sort of without question for CIS sexual children to, if you are not keeping up with your peers to have medicine right? Like, at least, I don't know what it's like here, in the United States, it's fairly standard for kids in the upper class, if your young boy is not growing tall enough to just feed them, HGH, through your private doctor, this is standard. It wouldn't be in question that if you know the testes weren't descending properly, if something else wasn't going right, that there wouldn't be some kind of medical intervention for a cis sexual child. So people need to understand that transition is just a kind of another kind of puberty, you know, and for almost all of us, because we didn't have that option, we do it too late and in public, and that is really bothersome to patriarchy, because we, especially for trans femmes, demystify female puberty and show it as a social process as well as a medical process. And people really don't like that, because it breaks the naturalization of subjugation for women, right? Because you show gender to be something which is performative in the continental sense, right? It happens as you do, but the way of understanding that is that it is just a kind of flip side token, anything that you would give to a cis kid who knows what their identity is, that wants to keep up with their peers, to participate in social life, to be able to actually live life as an adolescent is something that ought to be given to kids who are trans or not denied to them because they are trans. Otherwise, it's bigotry.
Kyle:
I mean, it's worse than that, right like and especially with the way the UK is going. And I would even describe this current policy in the way it specifically targets trans children. I want to be really clear about that. It's genocidal. It is saying, here is a community of people that we don't want to exist because from what like I've read just this week, is that the direct result of this is going to be increased suicidality like that is that is going to be one of the immediate impacts of taking this health care away from a specific community.
Jennifer:
And I've seen so many people mention the fact and speak for the fact that, like they've announced this the day before Trans Day of Remembrance,
Kyle:
it's just fucking evil have
Jennifer:
Yeah, by doing so, it will directly contribute to there being more names on the list we read this time next year. Like, it's people think we're like exaggerating, or being like dramatic when we talk about, like, it's such a classic terf talking point to say that, like, the trans people are always threatening suicide. But like, we we see it. I have seen it firsthand, personally in the families that I work with, like we had one whanau come to a little vigil that we organized here in Ōtautahi on Thursday evening. And it's a family I've supported for a few years now, and their young person is really just now at the stage where they need this, this medication, and this parent was telling us about how, like, just horrible the experience is going to be to find out, like, figure out how to explain to This child that this care is being taken away from whanau Māori, the tangata whenua, this government is like, you know, not only taking this discriminatory genocidal action against trans children in particular, like it's also an absolute breach of Te Tiriti rights in terms of the protection of tikanga Māori, around gender identity, in particular in takatāpui identities, but like, yeah, the harm this has already caused to trans children is significant, and that harm will only magnify more and more the longer this restriction stays in place.
Kyle:
What is the so you said, like hoping for kind of legal action here. How quick do these things work? So the minister has, like really disingenuously tied this ban to the reporting or the study ongoing in the UK, which is about six years away. And as some medical professionals have pointed out, is not even to provide the evidence that the Minister is claiming that it does. It wouldn't, they couldn't even make a decision based on what that study does. It is clearly a misuse and at best, a cynical and bad faith utilization, relying on people's lack of knowledge about what the studies are, right? And what kind of medical evidence is. How quickly could a legal challenge overturn this? Especially because that's the other thing, right? There's no lead in time for this. It like kicks in at the end of the year.
Jennifer:
Yeah.So technically, what is meant to happen now is that the government is meant to publish the draft regulation, and then that is meant to be open for consultation through the regulation Review Committee, all before it goes into effect on the 19th of December. So very compressed timeframe. I feel like there's a good chance the government is going to point to the consultation they ran over summer last year, and say that that was the consultation, so they don't need to do it again, which would be very easy when they haven't said that yet. Yeah, but we haven't heard anything about the regulation, what it will look like. Whehaven't seen it. Haven't heard anything. So who knows? The lawyers we're talking to reckon six months timeline for a high court judicial review because of the urgency relating to it. So, yeah, really cautious not to promise anything to our communities, but like, I think it's safe to say legal action will be taken, and we're hoping for a hearing in March, because it is secondary legislation, it could be set aside or quashed. Of course, the minister could then take another step to pass primary legislation through the house, but that's a lot more work, a lot more scrutiny. The closer we get to that election period, I think that the less National in particular, is really going to want to stake their claim on this. I think we can make it messy and a real pain in the ass for them.
Kyle:
And the idea would be that following that it's just fully reversed, like when you say it's quashed, it like just gets removed from the legislation.
Jennifer:
Yeah, I guess in theory, they could potentially somehow find a way to draft and introduce some non discriminatory regulation around this.
Kyle:
not at this point, surely!
Jennifer:
I don't think they have enough awareness or understanding to be able to do so, because to do so would require actually engaging with the experts, which New Zealand First won't let them do.
Kyle:
yeah, and I guess the other point there is that the reason for this is to be discriminatory like this is, you know, they are anti trans extremists who are representing their anti trans electorate, and they want to be able to, like, stick the boot in. And if they're not able to do that, then what's the point in the legislation in the first place for them? Right?
Jennifer:
Yeah, the cruelty is the point. And I am sure that's why they announced it when they did as well.
Kyle:
There's no way they didn't know. Yeah, I there's often, and you'll see this in New Zealand media here and there, but oh no, no, they're just like, they don't know what they're doing. They're just incompetent, and that's why they do these things. We're well past this stage, at that moment, and that we should be treating that we've even with that level of good faith, like “they just don't know”, “oh, they're just, they're just bad”, right? Like, yeah, we're a little far beyond that, folks.
Jennifer:
We last had a meeting with Matt Doocey, Associate Minister for Rainbow health and mental health. I want to say September, October. And we were asking about this. We're asking about the Ministry of Health's consultation report and cabinet papers, and they had been sent directly to Simeon Brown. Matt Doocey said that he hadn't seen it, didn't know what was in it. Wouldn't be told anything about it, like,shocker, shocker.
Kyle:
So is he lying, or are they just keeping it tight?
Jennifer:
I think he I make the point now where I think they are treating the rainbow health portfolio as a bit of a punishment like I think he's a useful idiot for them
Kyle:
Far out. But what are the what are the next steps? What are you going to be doing, and what some of the orgs you're involved in going to be doing for the next few weeks, I guess, as the community deals with the fallout of this decision being announced from on high, clearly targeting the trans community and the people who love them, and kind of trying to start to build a case, or what have you.
Jennifer:
So, because the ban comes into effect on the 19th of December, and because any young person who has already been prescribed these medications will be able to continue to use them, there's already been a huge effort in terms of organizing and clinicians and prescribers putting up their hand to make sure that gaps in service, because there are parts of the country that just do not have access to this care at all at the moment, making sure that gaps in service, that administrative delays, that wait lists don't impact someone's ability to access those care before the 19th so people are working to get as many young people through these processes. You know, not rushing anything, purely rushing the admin systems, the bits that we end up languishing on wait lists for years.
Kyle:
We all know healthcare in this country is fucked.
Jennifer:
Right? So people are really working hard to make sure that as many young people who need this care can access this care through the proper pathways before the 19th to limit as much of that damage as we possibly can. When the regulation, the draft regulation, is published, we'll be taking a look, and potentially, who knows, there will be an opportunity for you know, to feed into that, but they will also give us information about what the options are in terms of alternative ways of accessing support.
And then, yeah, it probably will be a couple of months over summer of working to pull together this legal case, but we have, yeah, some really qualified experts who've put their hands up to help take this on. Yeah, and it's been really incredible to see how quick the response has been from medical bodies in particular, also civil society organizations, you know, the Human Rights Commission, the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Australasian College of Physicians. Everyone is coming out against this ban. So there'll be some work amongst our organizations about like a professional response to this as well. But the, yeah, the vibe in the medical community in particular is absolute fury and outrage and a commitment to doing everything they can to help as many people as they can and to make sure that this ban doesn't last.
Kyle:
Yeah, I think that's really important. They thank you for, like, giving us that rundown of how people had responded, right? Because it's important to know that, like by and large, even some quite conservative medical bodies on the side of the trans community, and that's just due to the outrageous activities by the coalition government and really gives the lie to any of the like silent majority or whatever talking points. It’s really good to hear how quickly people go up and decide, okay, what are all the things we can do right now? How can people get involved in that? What should people be looking out for in terms of helping, volunteering, helping with funding? You know, you mentioned, just have some conversations with people as well. But if people feel like, hey, actually, this is something I want to not just show my support for, and not just have those small conversations with, but like, get really involved in, because it's, I think it's really important.
Jennifer:
I think getting in touch with the local rainbow community org, we're all really well connected, so they will be able to feed everything in. Probably there will be some more actions, more opportunities for some direct action. Looks like, I suspect there'll be a number of protests around the country on the 19th itself. Almost certainly there'll be a fundraiser for the costs associated with the legal challenge, but potentially also some costs to help people access care. So keeping an eye out for those through PATHA and through, you know, rainbow community networks and organizations and, yeah, where people are working through this weekend, we're putting together a bit of like a resource hub and coordination guide.
If there are any clinicians out there listening, Gender Minorities Aotearoa has an excellent database of affirming providers that you can add yourself to. They've said this morning that they've had, yeah, already this week, like so many more hits on that database than they usually get. So people are using it and looking at it to find ways to access support, if you're a mental health provider, reaching out to community organizations to offer that support too. You know, we know that mental health support isn't an alternative to this care, but people are going to need that support too. And yeah, I think particularly if you live in an electorate with a National MP really bugging them about it. If you live in an electorate with a Laboue MP bugging them about it too, like I really want to see a commitment, an explicit commitment, from them that they will commit to reversing this decision as soon as they come into power, if only to give our communities that reassurance that post election, this won't stand.
Simone:
I have a last question. These are all defensive actions being described, which is positive and very good work by a lot of these orgs and by the individuals in them. The New Zealand First press release, the language of it is “you and I both know this war is far from over”. Defensive actions are okay. They're always a kind of holding pattern, a lot like puberty blockers. In respect of offensive actions, by which I mean expansion and liberation of rights. What is the approach that you see for that? Because especially hearing that the Labour response, even on the defensive, has been quite limp. We can talk about it electorally, but non electorally as well. What do you perceive to be a kind of long term approach to liberation and to prevent these kind of insane far right people from from being able to gain power, because it seems like a lot of the routes are through liberal institutions, which I don't believe will always either exist or be helpful to us or for us.
Jennifer:
Yeah, I think, and Emmy Rākete brought this up, in an episode of the Gender Agenda that has just come out this week specifically about, like, liberation and direct action, and, yeah, histories of activism and what we do moving forward. And one thing she brings up that I really agree with, or maybe it was Will Hansen, talking about their community's histories of direct action and liberation work, and how important these coalitions were for it. And I think with this issue in particular, we're talking about reproductive health care, we know that the politicians who are engaged in this work on the other side are also virulently against abortion access, everything like that.
So I think I agree with you. I think the long term thinking is outside of these, like liberal institutions, and really taking, like a transformative and liberatory approach, and that requires some more proactive thinking and action that goes beyond the defensive. And I think the core underlying value, from my perspective, at least, is like full self determination and bodily autonomy, right? Like we, our communities have worked within these medical systems because they have been the only way to access the care that we need. But like long term and so many other people have brought this up, like cis people access gender affirming health care all the time, or gender affirming care in lots of different ways all the time, and then these restrictions aren't in place for those people. I don't know what the action itself looks like. I am firmly in this responsive mode at the moment, but I am really, really, genuinely eager to kick out of defensive and into proactive action. And I yeah, I’m really excited to, yeah, work with more people beyond electoralism and beyond the institutions to kind of make this change. They're on the streets as well.
Kyle:
Fantastic. Hey. Thank you so much for joining us today. Jen, I know it's been a hell of a week.
Jennifer:
Yeah, it's gonna be a hell of a summer.
Kyle:
Let's try and yeah, we'll do what we can and I'm sure everyone out there will be and it sounds like everyone is ready to go. So that's really heartening.
If you do want to get involved, Jen’s just given a really great list of ways to do that. I'll link to your blue sky profile as well. People can find a lot more through there too.
Yeah, thanks again, and thanks for coming to report with us on the podcast whenever the community gets
Simone:
Whenever we get fucked is that right, Kyle?
Jennifer:
You're the outlet for my frustrations.
Kyle:
Hey, look happy to be so thanks as well.
To my co host, Simone. Where can people find you?
Simone:
Thanks, Kyle. I mean, before I say that, I will say before we were just talking about, you know, talking to the cis people in your life. And I want to say, if you're a trans Femme and you're straight, take one for the team. Open your grinder settings to straight men and educate them. You get a dick pack. Blam, have you heard of the Cass Report? Also, mine is bigger. That's all it takes.
Kyle:
Incredible, offensive, strategy as you were talking about.
Simone:
That's strategy. That's the strategy. That's the interpersonal strategy. You can find me. Well, you know, a penguin just walked by. It's a sunny minus 30 here in Antarctica. Take a trip here. You won't regret it. It's beautiful real estate. I hear they're opening up drilling and, you know, I think this is a great, great space for Harcourts and Ray White in the future.
Kyle:
Fantastic whole new ad campaign for Ray White and Antarctica, I imagine. Thanks everyone for listening as well. Really appreciate our audience, and especially when you show up for some of the harder episodes. I know a lot of people have said to me, Hey, I found out about this particular movement or this organization and got involved after listening to the podcast.
So let's keep that, let's keep that rolling. Like, share, subscribe, another way that you can help to educate people and say, Hey, I've had this great podcast, but had an expert on to talk about some of these issues and unpick some of the bad faith rhetoric coming out of the anti trans extremists and the government. So use these resources. We'll catch you again in the midweek with another episode, and we'll see you then.