Speaker 1: Gilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The battle
Speaker 2: over gender and definitions is building steam in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: New Zealand First has introduced a member's bill that would
Speaker 2: ensure the biological definition of a man and woman are
Speaker 2: defined in law. It comes after a landmark ruling in
Speaker 2: the United Kingdom where Supreme Court judges unanimously ruled a
Speaker 2: woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law. The
Speaker 2: court sided with a women's rights campaign group that argued
Speaker 2: sex based protections should only apply to people that were
Speaker 2: born female. Judge Lord Hodge said the ruling should not
Speaker 2: be seen as a triumph of one side over the
Speaker 2: other and stressed that the law still it gives protection
Speaker 2: against discrimination to transgender people, but it was largely seen
Speaker 2: as a victory by campaigners, while trans rights activists have
Speaker 2: called the ruling a huge blow to some of the
Speaker 2: most marginalized people in our community. To discuss this issue
Speaker 2: today on the Front Page, we're joined by University of
Speaker 2: Waikato Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, Katrina Rowan. So.
Speaker 2: First off, Katrina, it has been a fixation. I suppose
Speaker 2: of anti woke activists for a while now to get
Speaker 2: people to define what a woman is. But what are
Speaker 2: some of the definitions that you've seen?
Speaker 3: Oh, definitions that I've seen are much more diverse, I
Speaker 3: think than could possibly be legislated. So I think the
Speaker 3: initiative to define what a woman is is being driven
Speaker 3: by the belief that there are just two sexes and
Speaker 3: two genders, whereas I'm much more used to seeing in
Speaker 3: my work in gender studies, to seeing the idea that
Speaker 3: we can define our genders much more broadly, that there
Speaker 3: are many genders, and that gender expression is something that
Speaker 3: can be explored throughout one's lifetime. It doesn't have to
Speaker 3: fit into a fixed category at all, that might change
Speaker 3: over the course of time.
Speaker 2: Where is this desire to define a man and define
Speaker 2: a woman come from? Do you think?
Speaker 3: I think in some instances it comes from curiosity and
Speaker 3: from a desire to understand, which is fair enough. And
Speaker 3: then for some instances it comes more from a fear
Speaker 3: or a dislike of the unknown, and so it can
Speaker 3: take quite a hostile kind of tone sometimes. So defining
Speaker 3: what these categories mean is a perfectly reasonable question that
Speaker 3: we would pursue in research. For instance, what do people
Speaker 3: mean when they identify as a man or a woman.
Speaker 3: We could ask that sort of question, but then sometimes
Speaker 3: the task of defining what it means gets to be
Speaker 3: much more judgmental and much more sort of with assumptions
Speaker 3: attached to it, assumptions about whether or not you might
Speaker 3: belong as a woman or a man, and more of
Speaker 3: an assumption that we would exclude people who don't seem
Speaker 3: to fit. So, I think the desire to understand things
Speaker 3: seems very reasonable, but it's when it is used to
Speaker 3: produce an exclusionary understanding that it really becomes a problem
Speaker 3: for us, because it ends up excluding anyone who doesn't
Speaker 3: fit into those predetermined definitions, the binary definition of woman
Speaker 3: and man, which I think is where the current debate
Speaker 3: is focused.
Speaker 2: This conversation has obviously come after the Supreme Court ruling
Speaker 2: in the UK. Can you talk us through that and
Speaker 2: why has that case been seen as a kind of
Speaker 2: when for women by some and how did this even
Speaker 2: become a women's rights issue?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we need to see this in the
Speaker 3: context of why it wider spectrum of political changes globally
Speaker 3: at present, we've got in the us, we've got a
Speaker 3: roll back of anything to do with diversity and gender
Speaker 3: and women as well. We've got in the UK is
Speaker 3: as you say, the Supreme Court ruling, which some might
Speaker 3: see as a win for women, But I would caution
Speaker 3: about that because I think from a feminist perspective, it's
Speaker 3: important that we understand feminism as thinking carefully about gender
Speaker 3: power relations, working towards change to address inequities, and simply
Speaker 3: defining categories is not going to do that, And certainly
Speaker 3: defining categories as an illegal definition of what is a
Speaker 3: woman that is not going to embrace diversity at all.
Speaker 3: That's going to simply exclude people. It's really going to
Speaker 3: exacerbate current issues with inequities. And so I'm very concerned
Speaker 3: if al Tardo New Zealand would be looking to move
Speaker 3: in that direction. I think it is something that's happened
Speaker 3: currently in the UK because of the current political climate,
Speaker 3: but it wouldn't make sense for us to follow that
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: And we do, I suppose in New Zealand have a
Speaker 2: different attitude towards trans rites. I mean, I'm thinking of
Speaker 2: Georgina Bayer.
Speaker 4: Why do you hate people like us so much? Be
Speaker 4: real Christians? I'm going to come a longage in every
Speaker 4: one of you. I don't mind at all your hatred.
Speaker 4: It's totally intolerable. You dare you use the cloak of
Speaker 4: Christianity when you are impart into your children prejudice, discrimination.
Speaker 3: Door people like me days and lesbians and other people
Speaker 3: who live.
Speaker 4: Differently, better by the law and pay their taxes.
Speaker 2: Why do you do this to us? Do you think
Speaker 2: that even the what's happening in the UK and the
Speaker 2: US can even be translated here?
Speaker 3: I don't think it can or should be translated here.
Speaker 3: As you say, New Zealand has led the way for
Speaker 3: a long time in terms of both trans rites and
Speaker 3: also gender rights more broadly that women's opportunity to vote
Speaker 3: in national elections. You know, New Zealand led the way
Speaker 3: in that, and also we've led the way in terms of,
Speaker 3: as you say, Georgina Bayer having a openly trans mayor,
Speaker 3: and numerous other things as well. I think, for instance,
Speaker 3: intersex advocacy in Altito, New Zealand has been outstanding, and
Speaker 3: also things like research into Takatabe identity, the sort of
Speaker 3: mildy understandings of gender and sexuality and sex diversity, all
Speaker 3: of these things really are recognized internationally as something that
Speaker 3: New Zealand does that is special and extraordinary and worthwhile.
Speaker 3: So it would be a real step back for us
Speaker 3: if we tried to follow in the footsteps of either
Speaker 3: the US or the UK and the directions that they're
Speaker 3: currently going. The way that we embrace diversity and work
Speaker 3: critically with these concepts of gender, gender identity, and the
Speaker 3: sexed body as well, that's quite remarkable and recognized. As
Speaker 3: an academic I regularly get contacted by researchers and research
Speaker 3: students from overseas who want to come here because they
Speaker 3: see this as a place where they can do research
Speaker 3: that's in the context of embracing diversity, in the context
Speaker 3: of rainbow community and understandings of gender and sex as
Speaker 3: going well beyond the binary. So if we narrowed down
Speaker 3: our thinking, that would be a great loss and it
Speaker 3: would be a big change in our tada New Zealand.
Speaker 2: I saw in the US a UGOV poll of about
Speaker 2: one thousand adults in twenty twenty three found that respondents
Speaker 2: estimated that about twenty one percent of the American population
Speaker 2: is trans, when in fact it's about zero point six percent.
Speaker 2: So do you think that this overestimation, I guess, is
Speaker 2: fueling some of this backlash.
Speaker 3: Well, it might be, but I think there are some
Speaker 3: more easily documented examples of what's fueling the backlash. If
Speaker 3: we think of it from the point of view of disinformation.
Speaker 3: There's been a documented rise and hate speech, a documented
Speaker 3: rise in the spreading of disinformation and disinformation about a
Speaker 3: range of topics, including to do with trans and non
Speaker 3: binary people and identities. And I think this trend is
Speaker 3: something that we need to watch out for. And yes,
Speaker 3: maybe that feeds into the kind of poll data that
Speaker 3: you're citing, that people are exposed to hate speech and disinformation,
Speaker 3: and they maybe then draw a conclusion that there is
Speaker 3: some big threat out there that simply doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: I think we should talk about the differences between biological
Speaker 2: sex and gender. To the uninformed person, they might see
Speaker 2: it kind of as the same thing, but they aren't really,
Speaker 2: are they.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. No. I think in terms of
Speaker 3: gender theory and gender research, it's been since about the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies that there's been a very clear division between
Speaker 3: concepts of gender and sex. So it's often explained that
Speaker 3: gender relates to identity. How we identify how we express ourselves.
Speaker 3: Gender roles might be a familiar concept, while sex relates
Speaker 3: to the sex body, sex anatomy, sex characteristics, and so
Speaker 3: if we think of gender as social and sex as biological,
Speaker 3: that could be one way of understanding the difference. But
Speaker 3: I would also like to say that since about the
Speaker 3: nineties anyway, it's been more under did that gender and
Speaker 3: sex have a socially constructed aspect to them. So, as
Speaker 3: a society, we might construct gender as being binary, as
Speaker 3: just being woman and man, and we might construct sex
Speaker 3: as being binary as just being male bodies and female bodies.
Speaker 3: But research recognizes very clearly now the way that that's
Speaker 3: simply not the case. There isn't a clear binary except
Speaker 3: in the social construction. What is observed, For example, in
Speaker 3: sex bodies, we see a whole spectrum of possibilities of sexes,
Speaker 3: not just two, not just male and female. We see
Speaker 3: all kinds of variations in sex characteristics, and these are
Speaker 3: being talked about much more widely now. If you engage
Speaker 3: with intersex literature or activism, there's lots of talk online
Speaker 3: about variations in sex characteristics or intersex identity, and similarly
Speaker 3: in terms of gender diversity. There's of course lots of
Speaker 3: talk about trans and non binary gender identities, so I
Speaker 3: think these might help to tease out a little bit
Speaker 3: those differences between gender identity versus sex characteristics, the physical
Speaker 3: anatomical features.
Speaker 2: And I understand you've done a lot of research around
Speaker 2: into sex people. To those who don't know, what does
Speaker 2: intersex mean?
Speaker 3: Sure, so, intersex refers to variations in sex characteristics. It
Speaker 3: refers to the way that the body naturally develops as
Speaker 3: having sex characteristics that aren't necessarily male or female, that
Speaker 3: might involve some kind of combination of chromosomes, genes, hormones, anatomy,
Speaker 3: sexual and reproductive anatomy. That isn't simply what we might
Speaker 3: have been taught in a biology class. For instance, we
Speaker 3: might have been taught that women have xx chromosomes and
Speaker 3: men have x y chromosomes. Well, it's simply not true
Speaker 3: that the whole population either has xx or x y chromosomes.
Speaker 3: There are a range of alternatives. There are a range
Speaker 3: of different chromosome or configurations, and those that fall outside
Speaker 3: of the norm would be called into sex. Some people
Speaker 3: would not use the word intersex for this. Some people
Speaker 3: would say they have a variation in sex characteristics, so
Speaker 3: there's different terms going on at present.
Speaker 2: So where do trans men sit in all of this?
Speaker 2: You don't ever hear much about people wanting to define
Speaker 2: a man in law or worried about trans men in bathrooms.
Speaker 2: Are they kind of a silent victim in all of this?
Speaker 3: That's a very interesting question because I think many trans
Speaker 3: men pass much more easily than trans women. It is
Speaker 3: quite usual for a person who takes testosterone to grow
Speaker 3: a beard to develop features that are easily read as male,
Speaker 3: and so I think trans men pass quite easily in
Speaker 3: our society and are often not noticed. And so for
Speaker 3: people who are listed in defining women legally as a
Speaker 3: binary category and in an exclusionary way, what I would
Speaker 3: say is that we need to imagine if what one
Speaker 3: wants is to define a space as woman only, maybe
Speaker 3: a toilet for instance, and say, well, I only feel
Speaker 3: safe going into the space if I know that there
Speaker 3: are only biological women in this space. Then we have
Speaker 3: to imagine that if we define sex gender biologically in
Speaker 3: this way, then we will end up with trans men
Speaker 3: going into women's toilets, And that to me seems like
Speaker 3: quite counterproductive, like not really what is desired. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I think trans men are certainly often not visible, but
Speaker 3: are very active in the space of trans advocacy and
Speaker 3: speaking out about trans rites. And trans men would certainly
Speaker 3: be in a very peculiar position if there was some
Speaker 3: kind of legislation that excluded them from male spaces and
Speaker 3: forced them back into female spaces.
Speaker 1: They would not be challenging their lifestyle until they want
Speaker 1: to walk into a toilet they don't belong and because
Speaker 1: they are male, or they want to well go onto
Speaker 1: the rugby paddock or some sporting situation or with the
Speaker 1: boxing gym.
Speaker 5: And how would they have to prove that That's what
Speaker 5: I'm saying, This would be intrusive, wouldn't You would have
Speaker 5: to have a chromosome test or something.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the way that the medical society has been
Speaker 1: working ever since has been a study of biology and
Speaker 1: got to the advanced that it is. We've are known
Speaker 1: that they've got different chromosomes. Excepting that a whole lot
Speaker 1: of people are saying, forget all the science, forget what
Speaker 1: we all know. Let's have our narrow work view and
Speaker 1: force that down.
Speaker 5: So you would actually test them a biological test on them?
Speaker 5: I mean, because that's where you would end up with this,
Speaker 5: wouldn't you.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're going to make claim that you're something
Speaker 1: that you're not, yes, you will be subjected to a
Speaker 1: biological test. And why not?
Speaker 2: What would the flow on effects be in your mind
Speaker 2: if a biological definition of man and woman were actually
Speaker 2: enshrined in law.
Speaker 3: Well, for one thing, I think it would be very
Speaker 3: hard to do that in Altaro, New Zealand. How would
Speaker 3: that be policed? Would it mean doing chromosome tests on
Speaker 3: every child that's born, And then what would you do
Speaker 3: when those tests showed that the child didn't fit into
Speaker 3: these categories? Would it mean policing everyone as they walk
Speaker 3: into a bathroom. It seems to me that putting this
Speaker 3: kind of thing into law is quite counterproductive. But just
Speaker 3: looking from a research point of view, what we know
Speaker 3: is that trans and non binary people face a terrific
Speaker 3: amount of hate speech, discrimination and abuse as it is,
Speaker 3: and that is exacerbated when there are exclusionary circumstances. So
Speaker 3: this law would set up an exclusionary situation. We know
Speaker 3: already that children and young people who question their gender
Speaker 3: identity have a harder time in school, are more likely
Speaker 3: to face persistent bullying, are more likely to drop out
Speaker 3: of education altogether. And we also know that people who
Speaker 3: question their gender identity or who come out as trans
Speaker 3: or non binary are more likely to engage in self
Speaker 3: harming and also suicidal behavior. And so these are the
Speaker 3: effects of a society where gender diversity is not accepted
Speaker 3: and not welcomed. So if we had a law that
Speaker 3: emphasized that and institutionalized that refusal to acknowledge diversity, then
Speaker 3: I think we would see even worse outcomes. Just thinking
Speaker 3: about health and education as examples, I think such a
Speaker 3: law would be very damaging, and it might be damaging
Speaker 3: for people beyond what is imagined as well. There are
Speaker 3: many people people who don't identify as trans or non binary,
Speaker 3: but who are regularly misrecognized in terms of gender, who
Speaker 3: are regularly subject to some kind of gender policing, and
Speaker 3: this law just would make that sort of policing seem
Speaker 3: justified rather than promoting understanding, And I think what I'd
Speaker 3: like to emphasize is the importance of building understanding and
Speaker 3: building community rather than building barriers and building a basis
Speaker 3: for animosity, which is I think what this kind of
Speaker 3: law would do.
Speaker 2: And Katrina, do you think there is a world in
Speaker 2: which both signs of this debate will ever be able
Speaker 2: to coexist happily. Or is there just too much tension
Speaker 2: around this to reach a resolution.
Speaker 3: I think we can coexist happily. But maybe I'm just
Speaker 3: an optimist. I think that there is a lot of
Speaker 3: room for a dialogue, There is a lot of will
Speaker 3: to come to some shared under standings, and I do
Speaker 3: think that is possible. That might be because I'm in
Speaker 3: the university context where I teach gender and sexuality studies,
Speaker 3: and so I'm used to having these kinds of discussions
Speaker 3: in the classroom. I'm used to seeing people at diverse
Speaker 3: ends of an opinion spectrum come together and find some
Speaker 3: common ground. So I am optimistic about this. But I
Speaker 3: think in order to come to some shared understandings what
Speaker 3: we all need to be willing to question our sources.
Speaker 3: We all need to be willing to ask Am I
Speaker 3: just going along with some sort of misinformation or disinformation?
Speaker 3: What are my sources? Can I actually see evidence of
Speaker 3: the things that I'm concerned about? Do I actually know this?
Speaker 3: Or am I actually being drawn in by some sort
Speaker 3: of fear mongering or hate speech that I might have
Speaker 3: been exposed to to questioning our sources and our assumptions.
Speaker 3: And I think it's also important that we are all
Speaker 3: humble in what we think we know, so to hold
Speaker 3: our understandings with humility, and especially when we think we
Speaker 3: know things about other people, people whose lives might be
Speaker 3: quite different from our own, I think it's worth being
Speaker 3: humble about what we think we know, and that way
Speaker 3: we might take a step towards being able to build
Speaker 3: understanding rather than building animosity. Thanks for joining us, Katrina,
Speaker 3: You're most welcome. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.