Kate Sheppard didn’t fight for this

A small victory in New Zealand, by Katrina Biggs

Kate Sheppard, considered the second most influential New Zealander of all time, campaigned long and hard for women to have a voice in public affairs. Against fierce opposition from both men and women, she and her fellow campaigners finally won that right. New Zealand became a world leader when it granted women the right to vote on 19 September 1893.

On 24 May 2021, nearly one hundred and twenty-eight years later, when the right for women to have a voice in public affairs should be well entrenched, a group of women were shut out of a public space for wanting to hold a talk about the contentious sex self-ID bill.

Christchurch, the home of Kate Sheppard in New Zealand, has a magnificent new central library which was built after the earthquake of 2011 destroyed the old one. And it was this magnificent new venue that went back to the old tried and true women-silencing ways when Speak Up For Women (SUFW) booked one of their rooms to hold a talk about the sex self-ID bill, and how aspects of it will affect women and girls. However, any questioning of the sex self-ID bill makes its supporters foam atfoam at the mouth, and true to form the library received threats and vitriol about them hosting us. They caved and cancelled.

How did we come to this? It most definitely isn’t what Kate Sheppard fought for.

So what did SUFW do when we were cancelled not only from Christchurch Central Library, but all Christchurch libraries, a week from the date of our talk? We re-booked the talk at a working men’s club (now modernised into a social club for all). The delicious irony of it didn’t escape us. However, support and solidarity can come from surprising quarters and for various reasons. Once the new venue was made known, the club received nasty phone calls and messages via their Facebook page about Speak Up For Women, and threats of disruptive protest.

Here’s where the club, unlike the library, showed their spine. They stood strong against the bullies. The manager did some research on the internet about the parties involved, and clearly saw that SUFW’s opponents were by far the worse of the two groups, and decided not to cave into them.

On the night of the talk he stayed on alongside the duty manager to safeguard the event. He kept the protesters out, until he checked with SUFW whether we were happy to let them in. We said yes as long as they behaved, as a peaceful protest is everyone’s right. And they did, due to the fact I suspect that they were left in no doubt that eviction would be quick and non-negotiable if they got disruptive or violent. At the end of the talk on the proposed sex-self law, they asked the usual questions and cast the usual ‘transphobic’ aspersions, but SUFW’s speaker stayed in absolute command of the talk the whole time. There was some ‘impassioned’ engagement after the talk between them and some members of the audience, but only one incident where a young woman swore at the speaker. Unfortunately for her the manager of the club was right there and heard it, and true to his word, she was evicted immediately.

In the big scheme of things this was a tiny event. SUFW has little money for promotion. There were maybe fifty people in the audience and a dozen protesters, half of whom were very young. But it was the first one here in New Zealand about the sex self-ID bill in a series of talks on a shoestring budget around the country by SUFW, so just the fact that it went ahead was a victory for women and free speech.

A few hours prior to the talk, a handful of us gathered in protest our cancellation outside the Christchurch Central Library. Unlike the propensity to violence of those who oppose us, no one had to admonish us to behave. Although it was small, because we had to keep our plans quiet, it was still very much noticed - and very much a first for the library.

In the words of Kate Sheppard: “We are tired of having a sphere doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is “unwomanly”. Just like in the days when Kate Sheppard was campaigning for women to have the right to a public voice, today’s ‘progressives’ resort to the same regressive tactics to try and keep unwomanly women – i.e. non-compliant women - in their doled out sphere.

When has that ever gone well? We either talk this sex self-ID bill through, or we fight.

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At the time of writing this, talks by Speak Up For Women NZ have also been cancelled by Dunedin and Auckland libraries. New venues have been obtained, and the talks will go ahead. Nelson City Council, however, voted to allow SUFW’s talk on 9 June to proceed in a council-owned hall against the wishes of two councillors, one of whom has made it know he intends to join local pride and youth rainbow groups in protest outside the venue on the night. The Nelson branch of the TRA-captured National Council for Women (the organisation Kate Sheppard founded) have also stated they will protest SUFW’s talk. Security has had to be hired at SUFW’s cost. The only upside to this is that mainstream NZ media may finally start reporting on the contentious sex self-ID bill in relation to the protests, and start bringing it to the attention of the population in general.

Here is a petition to save women’s sport in Australia and New Zealand.

BONUS EXTRA: here’s Kellie-Jay’s special on the situation in New Zealand.