Follow the money.

So Posey Parker came to New Zealand last week and caused quite a stir. This was either a vibrant demonstration in solidarity with trans people, or an example of anti-democratic mob rule suppressing freedom of speech, depending on who you ask. Whichever side you may take on this there are potentially more fundamental issues at play.

So let’s for a moment put aside any debate about who should use what toilet, go to which prison, and compete in which sport and look at the bigger picture.

What I struggle to understand is why a lady living in England was so upset about what’s going on in a country 18,000 k away that she felt it necessary to organise flights, security, hotels, and visas just to come down and tell us where we’re going wrong? Of course she’s entitled to her own views, but why does she insist on coming so far to share it with others, many of whom quite obviously didn’t want to hear it? We don’t generally see English citizens coming down here to lecture us on areas of public policy like housing, public transport or All Black coach selection so why trans rights?

On her journey down here Posey Parker had to fly over a whole bunch of countries where women have a far harder time of it than in New Zealand. Why didn’t she stop off at a few of those and lecture them about how they should let women drive, have free access to education, offer them equal employment opportunities, or ask families to stop killing them if they have an affair out of wedlock? Surely those topics are more important to the furtherance of women’s rights than who they get to share a toilet with? And why were Nazi groups so keen to show up and support her despite her protestations that they were nothing to do with her?

In March 2021, the European Parliament had a hearing on ‘Foreign interference on the financing of anti-choice organisations in the EU’. Evelyn Regner, co-chair of the Committee concluded that ‘foreign powers use societal questions such as abortion legislation, women’s rights, or the protection of minorities in Europe … to artificially polarise our societies to a level of unrest that destabilises our democracies’.

The foreign powers that she cited included extreme church groups in America and US$186 million from within the Russian Federation. And this was just the money that they could trace.

Without access to her funding details it seems fair to suspect that Posey Parker’s visit was neither an attempt to encourage lively and heartfelt debate on matters of public policy nor even an irrational urge to rack up air miles and act as a poorly designed soup tureen. The real object may well have been to stir up division and discord and thus help destabilise a relatively peaceful and prosperous little western country.

Whatever your views on trans rights or free speech may be, let’s try and make sure that doesn’t happen.