If you’re an academic and your college or university has issued a ringing statement in favor of political, ideological or moral positions, that might make you feel good. But in the long run it’s bad, for taking institutional positions (as opposed to personal ones) acts to chill the speech of others. – Jerry Coyne
We all need to join together, and push back against it. My own experience galvanises me, and my resolve in maintaining a system of sex-based rights.
We are united] in the face of a society that is captured by a movement that is determined to erase [biological women] as a legal class. – Katherine Deves
Our society is legislating away the reality of biological sex, redefining women to include biological men; encoding legal fictions into law.’ It is also punishing those who refuse to comply.
‘The moment we favour gender identity rights over sex-based rights, is the moment we deny the basis of human existence. Sex-based rights must have primacy. – Katherine Deves
Not one police officer, judge, politician, journalist, or medical practitioner can ever prove a male has become a female. All they can do is appropriate stereotypes and use brute force, threats, or intimidation to try and force us to accept the lie. Regardless of how captured anyone else is, I will not bow down [before this] altar of lies. Truth matters. Sex is binary – male and female. – Kirralie Smith
In Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four there were four Ministries – Love, Peace, Plenty, and Truth – which respectively promulgated hate, war, scarcity and propaganda. Our Ministry of Education, which seems determined to promulgate ignorance, would be right at home amongst them. – Michael Johnston
Should schools teach children (through the RSE curriculum or by transitioning a child) that subjective identity is real and objective reality is false? If the answer is yes, we can expect many more confused children who can’t distinguish between feelings and reality, with many more different genders, nationalities and species proliferating in schools. – Stephanie Davies-Arai
I call attention to this because I love New Zealand and its people, but deplore what they’re doing to themselves. Further, this decline is an object lesson for the U.S., as ideology is increasingly creeping into our academics, now seen as a branch of Social Justice activism. “It can’t happen to us,” you say? I’m not so sure.
I’m sad to say this, but I don’t think the academic problems of New Zealand will be fixed. They are circling the drain, but the politicians and academics don’t seem to care (except for those who dare not speak of the problem). – Jerry Coyne
My theory is if you give them enough chores to do in the morning they will make the most of their free time ’cause they know I can find them more if they say they’re bored! – Tofiga Fepulea’i
Parenting is always going to be a lot harder because generally if you’re a nice parent, your kids know you’re going to love them regardless, so you will often actually get the worst version of them at home. – Karen O’Leary
Cancel culture is relentless and cruel – and it is chilling free expression. It has nothing to do with holding the powerful to account. It is a weapon deployed by an intolerant minority to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. All this is obvious to almost anyone at this point. But the world of arts and culture has been particularly slow to catch up. – Fraser Myers
All of these women — a journalist, a psychiatrist, an artist, a politician, and a philosophy professor — have expressed the once normal and now rapidly taboo view that a woman is an adult human female and that children’s psychological and bodily integrity (and future fertility) should be protected. That these views have become ‘incendiary’ speaks to the draconian absurdity of our present cultural moment.
For too long the spurious notion of ‘inclusivity’ has obfuscated the conflict of interest between trans rights and women’s rights, with horrible repercussions for the latter. Unfortunately, it would now appear that ‘inclusivity’ has become the language of cancellation. – Petra Bueskens
The anti-free speech movement has become openly Orwellian in claiming to protect freedom by limiting freedom. It also employs using terms like disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation to obscure their effort to silence those with opposing views. Rather than use “censorship,” they refer to “content moderation.” – Jonathan Turley
Why did this incident involving Tory Whanau attract scrutiny? Because Kiwis are utterly fed up with the arrogant and entitled behaviour of elected officials and public servants. If you want to be Mayor, act like one. If you want to be a Minister, understand that words, behaviour, actions and rules matter. If you want to be a public servant, then answer to the taxpayers who fund your career. If elected officials need some guidance, then perhaps look to some of the professional values that guide the private sector.
Kiwis deserve so much better than this. – Rachel Smalley
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