Author: Stephanie Rodgers

Stephanie Rodgers is a campaigner, communicator, and commentator on New Zealand politics. She provides advice on messaging and communications strategy, media and social media, organisational culture and crisis management for progressive and community organisations.
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Green Party announces Stephanie Rodgers as candidate for Ōhāriu

Stephanie Rodgers has been selected as the Green Party candidate for Ōhāriu.

Stephanie is a communications expert and campaigner who has worked in the union movement, public service and Parliament, as a political commentator, MC and YouTube board game reviewer.

“I am so proud to have the support of my branch to provide a real alternative to the voters of Ōhāriu, who deserve to be represented by someone who lives here, who has chosen to raise her family here, who truly loves the mighty northern suburbs of Wellington.

“This election is a pivotal one. We have a choice between maintaining the status quo or building a bright green future for everyone in our community; between divisiveness or solidarity; between quibbling over the definition of “crisis” or taking real action to address the cost of living, housing, climate change and environmental exploitation.

“I know Ōhāriu is an electorate full of women like me, who want stronger representation, an intersectional feminist voice in politics, and real change for our whānau. 

“Aotearoa needs a strong Green Party in Parliament, and I will be working hard to be a part of that.”

ENDS

Authorized by Miriam Ross, L5, 108 The Terrace, Wgtn.

You can support Stephanie’s campaign here!

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Fear

In a post lost to the mists of Internet time, on one of those forums like Tumblr or Ask A Manager, a tech support person related the tale of helping a member of the US military with a computer problem. They’d told him to make sure everything was turned off and unplugged, then, as the repair proceeded, heard a sharp, “Ow!”

“Did you unplug the computer, sir?” they asked.

The reply has been burned into my mind for maybe more than fifteen years.

“Marines don’t FEAR electricity!”

The same swaggering macho arrogance is on full show in the recent rhetoric of Aotearoa’s rightwing political parties, and their former leaders, around our COVID response.

“Fear and hope are not a strategy” declared John Key, a man who governed for nine years on little but.

“It’s time to move from fear and uncertainty to hope and optimism” ACT leader David Seymour echoed while also contradicting.

A month before Key decided to break back into the political discourse and save his party from itself, Chris Bishop, National’s tragically unsupported COVID spokesperson, characterised the general attitude of New Zealanders to COVID as “… very persuaded by the idea that one case in the community is Disasterville.”

The obvious retort, and one which makes this a very short post indeed, is to ask whether fear is an unreasonable response to a global pandemic of a massively infectious virus which has so far killed more than four and a half million people.

That’s where the machismo comes in. If your politics are rooted in ego and individualism, there’s nothing worse than showing fear. Than acknowledging uncertainty or the need to rely on other people.

I satirised it on Twitter as “what, you SCARED? You SCARED of THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE DYING? Like some kind of WUSS??? Harden UP love, destroying our health system will build CHARACTER.”

You can see the same thinking at work when Chris Bishop warned that the government, having moved Auckland to level 3, would have a “tricky decision” to make if case numbers increased. It’s only tricky if you think acknowledging “we were wrong, we need to do better” is a show of weakness, Chris.

The longer answer is perhaps crueller. It makes you ask, have the right been paying any attention to our actual response to COVID, or are they simply incapable of comprehending Ardern’s and others’ communications, the overwhelming approval they’ve been met with, and the unquestionable success of our approach?

I went back and re-watched the Prime Minister’s first (I think?) televised broadcast at the start of the pandemic, on 21 March 2020.

She reassures us that the majority of people who contract COVID 19 will have only mild symptoms. But some will need more care. We want to slow it down, so we’re just getting “groups of cases that we can manage properly as they arise”. Other places have done this! She compares the alert levels to fire risk or water use warnings – making them familiar and normal. She emphasises things you can do; and things the government can do. Supermarkets and essential services will always continue. Shop normally! She asks friends, family and neighbours to support older NZers and those with suppressed immunity. Change how you work. Limit your movement. Even at this earliest stage of the pandemic, the PM appreciates people want a lot of information, and that misinformation is a risk, and gives a strong source of truth – the official covid19.govt.nz website.

Her final message emphasises great traditional “Kiwi” values: “We know how to rally and we know how to look after one another, and right now, what could be more important than that? … Be strong, be kind, and unite against COVID 19”.

This is not the politics of fear. It’s the politics of caring for each other and taking reasonable, measured, practical steps to do it.

Nowhere is this better highlighted than in the bumper Toby Morris & Dr Siouxsie Wiles box set of graphics at the Spinoff. Whether it was flattening the curve, staying in your bubble, breaking the chain and predicting with hilarious accuracy that if our approach worked it would be denounced as an over-reaction – these graphics are serious and authoritative but also calm, approachable, accessible and (I’m going to say it) kind.

They literally went around the world, and not in a Boris Johnson “incoherent panic-inducing terrible COVID communications” way.

Now, you can argue about specific alert level decisions or point out that there have been critical errors in implementation – like when we found out that a lot of border workers, contrary to repeated statements from the government, weren’t getting tested – but that doesn’t change the simple reality that the only people sowing fear and anxiety are those who are mad we didn’t sacrifice other people’s grandparents to ~the economy~. Which would have tanked anyway. Because global pandemics are like that.

That’s the final irony. It is the right who are operating on fear. Fear that COVID will drive home lethal political lessons: that people are more important than profit, and profit doesn’t happen without people anyway. That the Sacred Economy doesn’t work if you let thousands of people die.

Fear that their model of politics, with its kneejerk reactions, short-term money fixation, and utter disregard for human life is being dismantled bit by by every day we work together and fight this pandemic as a community.

In his op ed, Key opened with an anecdote about Apollo 11 (definitely a natural thing for him to do and not the kind of intro a PR company drafts for you as part of a lobbying strategy.)

On April 11, 1970, when Apollo 13 lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, its mission was to land on the moon, but on just the second day, an explosion on board changed everything.

Suddenly, with diminished oxygen supplies, a frantic process began to try to return the three astronauts to Earth.

In a crisis, humans can be creative and inventive. 

What Key and his ideological pals cannot see is that humans aren’t just creative and inventive. We are social animals. In a crisis, we come together to support each other and find solutions. It doesn’t fit the Great Men Of History model (and it’s always men, isn’t it) which assumes a few key (sorry) individuals are the trailblazers and disruptors shaping the future. But that’s because the Great Men of History model is garbage, which has always relied on downplaying and erasing the communities behind those men.

We are at our most creative and inventive when we are working together, for each other. And that’s what New Zealand has demonstrated over the past year and a half. We made evening walks a cultural touchstone. We put teddy bears in our windows and distracted ourselves making (and giving up) sourdough. And our frontline community organisations are still pulling out all the stops to get people tested and vaccinated.

There are plenty of criticisms to make about the Labour government (would you just spend some bloody political capital on actual transformational change already????) but the alternative? Now that’s frightening.

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Support accurate birth certificates for trans and non-binary people

Content note: suicide, transphobia

I’d wanted to get this done a lot earlier, but we bought a house in the middle of lockdown and that has a tendency to throw every other plan out the window. It’s definitely not perfect and I apologise for anything I’ve missed or messed up on.

The important bit: there’s just one day left to submit on the very concisely named Inquiry into Supplementary Order Paper 59 on the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill.

This SOP would allow people to change the sex/gender marker on their birth certificate without having to go through the current Family Court process.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a really positive step, and of course it’s being dogpiled by transphobes who claim to love women’s rights but really just want to make trans people disappear.

My submission is below. You can also check out the submission from Gender Minorities Aotearoa. And make your own here. As with the conversion practices ban, you don’t have to write a lot. You don’t have to share your darkest traumas. You can simply say you support the GMA submission, and leave it at that, if you want.

Select Committee submissions aren’t an opinion poll – it doesn’t necessarily make a difference if there’s more subs on one side of the issue than the other. But having a broad range of voices and arguments makes it easier for the Committee to consider what needs to change.

13 September 2021

To the Governance and Administration Committee

Submission on the Inquiry into Supplementary Order Paper 59 on the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill

Kia ora koutou

My name is Stephanie Rodgers. I am a feminist, Pākehā, mother and public servant from Wellington, and I write in support of the amendments to the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill.

The status quo hurts people

Although I am cisgender (my gender identity matches the sex I was assigned as birth), I have a personal interest in this legislation. The night I graduated from university with my Honours degree, a friend of mine took his own life. He was a young trans man who struggled hugely with a lack of acceptance from people in his life including his employer, who persistently misgendered him, used the wrong name for him and refused to see him as the man he was.

A few years earlier, his friends at university had put together the money for him to change his name legally, as a birthday present. I think we all cried when he opened the envelope and realised what was inside.

Even at his funeral he was mis-named and mis-gendered by others.

I don’t think this legislation would have been enough, on its own, to save my friend’s life. Not having a birth certificate that reflected who he was, was only one of the obstacles our society put in his way and in the way of many other trans and non-binary people, that prevented him from just being able to live his life as himself. It is in some ways trivial. But it is also hugely significant because it represents who you were from the day you were born. It might have helped. I’ll never know.

Having accurate identity documents is something cis people (people whose gender matches the sex we were assigned at birth) get to take for granted. For people like my friend, it was just another massive straw on the camel’s back.

The Human Right’s Commission’s PRISM report found:

Youth12 data for suicide rates supported [the findings of the Counting Ourselves report], showing 37% of trans participants had attempted suicide at some point; more than twice the rate reported by same or both-sex attracted young people.

Trans, non-binary and intersex people are whānau, but they are made to feel like they cannot be themselves, or will never be accepted by society as themselves, by processes like the current Family Court procedure for updating their own birth certificate.

The current process is onerous and inconsistent

At present, people who want to change the sex on their birth certificate must go through a Family Court process including providing proof of having undergone medical treatment. There are several reasons this is unfair:

  • Many trans and non-binary people do not seek or want to undergo medical treatment. They may not experience the kinds of dysphoria that can be treated or alleviate with surgery or hormonal treatments. This doesn’t change the fact that their birth certificate is inaccurate.
  • If they do seek medical treatment, they may face long waiting times or even a complete inability to access those treatments in Aotearoa New Zealand. Despite increased funding provided in the last term of government, the Ministry of Health’s Gender Affirming Surgery Service reported just last month that there were 295 referrals for a first specialist assessment on their active waiting list, but only five surgeries performed in 2020 and eight in 2021. It is cruel to make people wait to update their documents until they have undergone surgery which at current rates could take decades through our public health service.
  • Finally, this process is inconsistent with the far simpler statutory declaration required to change gender markers on driver licences and passports. Aligning these processes is logical, especially given that birth certificates are potentially the least commonly used of the three.

There are also practical, potentially harmful implications of the current process. Having a driver licence and passport that say one thing, and a birth certificate that says another, presents a risk of a person being outed – revealed as trans or non-binary – against their will. We know that trans and non-binary people are at a serious and real risk of violence when they are outed. The PRISM report released by the Human Rights Commission in 2020 stated:

Multiple comprehensive reviews show that people with a diverse sexual orientation and gender identity experience a higher risk of physical and sexual violence than the general population. In most cases, the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity was a factor in the perpetration of the abuse.

This demonstrates why it can be a matter of personal safety for a person’s documents, including birth certificate, passport and driver’s licence, match who they are and how they present themselves to the world.

Youth, parents and migrants also deserve to be included

Parents

Some trans people do not come out or transition until well into their adult lives, and may have gotten married, or had children, before they felt able to live as their true selves. This can mean they have additional documents such as their child’s birth certificate which reflect inaccurate information about who they are (e.g. listing them as a child’s mother rather than their father.)

The BDMRR Bill already allows for parents to be able to request that their child’s birth record include information relating to their marriage or civil union after child’s birth. It should also allow parents to request that their identifier be changed, e.g. from “mother” to “father”, if that parent has transitioned, come out, or otherwise changed how they identify as a parent. As with a person’s own birth certificate, it is important these things reflect reality, and avoids the risk of someone being outed, if their child’s birth certificate accurately represents their parent’s gender.

It should also allow people to update their marriage or civil union certificates with accurate name and gender information.

Youth

The current wording of the Bill requires applicants aged 15 and younger to have a guardian make the application on their behalf, together with a letter of support from a qualified third person.

Unfortunately, many young trans and non-binary people are not in the care of guardians who are supportive of their true gender identity.

Young people are already able to make many other significant decisions on their own behalf, if they can demonstrate an understanding of the implications and consequences of those decisions, and the law should be consistent here. Amending this process to require support from either a guardian or qualified third person would be fairer.

People with identity documents issued in other countries

The Bill does not allow for overseas-born people to change the sex marker on their existing birth certificate. For many people, it is simply not possible, and could be very dangerous, to return to their country of birth and attempt to get their birth certificate corrected. However, the Bill does allow for the government to issue name change certificates for people whose proof-of-name documentation is from overseas. It seems fair and easy enough to expand this to include the option to issue a document recognising a change of gender or sex marker as well.

Sex and gender are not simple matters

Finally, I am aware many submissions to the Committee will insist that biological sex is a clear-cut binary of male vs female, defined by chromosomes, genitalia or whether a person’s body produces sperm or ova, and that birth certificates represent some kind of definitive evidence, carved in stone, of such matters. These submissions are grounded in ideology, not scientific reality, certainly not in compassion for trans and non-binary people, and I urge the Committee to treat them as such.

As a cis woman, a feminist and a mother, I want to state as strongly as possible that all this Bill does is give people, who experience huge amounts of discrimination and marginalization, the simple dignity of a birth certificate that reflects who they are.

It is not a passport into women’s bathrooms (and I am more concerned about those who want to peer into people’s pants to check what’s there before they pee, than whether the person in the next cubicle is trans). It is not a denial of “biological” reality. We are all wonderfully complex, varied beings and our lives should never be defined or limited by the shape of our genitals or whether we can get pregnant.

Trans and non-binary people have existed in every human culture in history, facing greater or lesser prejudice. We have an opportunity to demonstrate that Aotearoa New Zealand is on the “lesser” end of that spectrum. As a bonus, we will save time and Family Court resources by removing an unnecessary and onerous process from its ambit.

I do not wish to appear before the Committee.

Stephanie Rodgers

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End conversion therapy in Aotearoa

I’ve just hit “send” on my submission to the Justice Select Committee on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill – also known as the “conversion therapy ban”, except it’s not therapy, it’s torture.

Submissions close 8 September. They definitely don’t have to be as long and detailed as mine, they can be more personal, or as simple as “I support the Bill”. The Parliament website makes it really easy to make your voice on this.

What I’m saying is, make a submission on this Bill, because we know that the evangelicals certainly will. And after that, do one for the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill because it’s “be a good ally to our gender diverse whānau” week.

Here’s what I had to say on conversion practices – minus some quirky formatting which WordPress was not happy with!

To the Justice Select Committee

Submission on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill

Kia ora koutou

My name is Stephanie Rodgers. I am a feminist, Pākehā, mother and public servant from Wellington, and I write in support of the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill.

I unreservedly support a ban on conversion practices, which are often mislabelled “therapy”. These practices seek to alter or suppress fundamental parts of a person’s identity – their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. They are unscientific, harmful, and grounded in bigotry against those who differ from the norm, because of who they are, who they love or how they live.

The PRISM report released by the Human Rights Commission in 2020 [pdf] stated:

Multiple comprehensive reviews show that people with a diverse sexual orientation and gender identity experience a higher risk of physical and sexual violence than the general population. In most cases, the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity was a factor in the perpetration of the abuse.

This highlights how critical it is for our Parliament to send the message that these facets of a person’s identity and life are valid and worthy, and that it is neither acceptable nor possible to change them by force or coercion. Banning conversion practices is a powerful way to send that message, as well as responding to the specific harms caused to by these practices.

Specific recommendations

I support section 5’s definition of conversion practice, and especially wish to endorse its inclusion of gender identity. New Zealand, following the United Kingdom, has unfortunately become a battleground for trans rights due to a vocal, minority, orchestrated campaign which seeks to marginalize and erase trans and nonbinary people, reaffirm a strict gender binary in society, and position the rights and lives of trans and nonbinary people as antagonistic towards cis women and LGB people.

The reality is that trans people are real and valid; every person’s gender identity is an intrinsic part of themselves which, like sexual orientation and gender expression, cannot and should not be forced or coerced to change; that trans women face misogyny and discrimination based on their gender much as cis women like myself do; and that bigotry against trans people is driven by the same restrictive binaries that are used to oppress cis gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

It would considerably weaken this legislation to remove gender identity from the definition of conversion practices.

I am concerned at the exclusion of the intersex community in section 5. Intersex people also face unnecessary and often non-consensual medical interventions, particularly in childhood, and these should be seen in the same lens as other types of conversion practice, i.e. an attempt to force or coerce someone to suppress their true selves and conform to a rigid idea of sex or gender.

I urge the committee to reject any submissions which seek to exclude gender identity from the definition of conversion practice, or re-frame affirming therapy for trans people as a “conversion practice” against gay or lesbian people. This is simply a tactic used by a transphobic minority to justify abusive and coercive treatment of young trans people, forcing them to pretend to be cisgender, and contributing directly to the extremely upsetting statistics of mental distress and suicidality among trans youth documented in the HRC’s PRISM report:

Youth12 data for suicide rates supported [the findings of the Counting Ourselves report], showing 37% of trans participants had attempted suicide at some point; more than twice the rate reported by same or both-sex attracted young people.

I oppose section 5(2)(a)’s blanket exemption for health practitioners. The 2019 Counting Ourselves report found that:

  • 26% of respondents had experienced a health provider “knowingly referred to [them] by the wrong gender, either in person or in a referral”
  • 21% had experienced a health provider “knowingly used an old name that [they] are no longer comfortable with”
  • 16% had been “discouraged from exploring [their] gender”

These incidents all have the effect of suppressing an individual’s gender identity or gender expression, and when done knowingly, meet the definition of conversion practice in the Bill. However they are not necessarily “outside of the scope of practice” of the health practitioners in question, who should be held accountable for their actions.

I further oppose any exemption for conversion practices performed on religious grounds, or by parents. Such exemptions would render the legislation toothless, and undermine the fact that conversion practices do not work and are never acceptable.

I recently became a mother, and rather than changing my mind on topics like these, having my daughter has only reaffirmed that no parent has the right to force their child to be something they are not.

Everyone has freedom to follow their own religion and practise it how they choose; however, that freedom clearly stops when it becomes an excuse to abuse people. The fundamentalist churches who claim that this Bill will criminalise prayer must have a very different definition of prayer to the mainstream, and if it involves coercing people to change or suppress their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, it should be criminalised.

I propose that section 8 be expanded to include people who are under the care or guardianship of others, regardless of age.

Jurisdictions such as the District of Columbia, despite having a more restricted ban on conversion practice (limiting the ban to people under 18) have explicitly expanded that ban to include people for whom a conservator or guardian has been appointed.

People, including those with disabilities, who are either not permitted to make or assumed to be incapable of making their own medical decisions, are at a much greater risk of having conversion practices imposed on them. They may also be at a disadvantage when advocating for themselves, again because they are assumed to be incapable of doing so.

I question section 9’s reliance on the notion of causing serious harm, or a person’s intent to cause serious harm. Conversion practices are inherently harmful, yet those who commit them typically believe they are in the right and even “helping” the people they are abusing. I am concerned that a requirement to prove that a person “knew” the practice would cause serious harm or were “reckless” about the possibility of causing serious harm creates an obstacle to properly prosecuting and ending these abusive practices. 

I oppose section 12 which requires the Attorney General’s consent for prosecutions under this Act. I refer the Committee to a comparably “contentious” piece of legislation, the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 which abolished the use of parental force for the purpose of correction, and required the Chief Executive of the relevant department to monitor the effects of that Act and report on them two years after the commencement of that Act. I invited the Committee to consider a comparable clause if they believe this legislation requires close oversight.

I note that the report into that Act found no evidence of any detrimental impact on parents “lightly” smacking their children nor any other unintended consequences. This is often the case with pieces of legislation which challenge abusive, but socially accepted practices, and attract overblown, even paranoid responses from those who do not wish to have those abusive practices challenged.

I do not wish to make an oral submission to the Committee.

I commend Parliament for progressing the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill and hope it proceeds smoothly through the remaining stages. It is important, it is necessary, and it is past time to put such practice behind us.

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Baby talk 6: and then, the good news

Read the full Baby Talk series

Content note: infertility, pregnancy

I hate curtain patterns that don’t repeat in a nice orderly fashion. Something about them makes my brain twitch, and I don’t like to think how much of my life I’ve spent staring at drapes (or wallpaper) trying to find the nice clean border where everything starts all over again.

It feels like I should draw some deep-and-meaningful lesson from that but I can’t think what it is.

The curtains in the little rooms – more like cubicles – in the old Fertility Associates office in Wellington did not repeat. They were an obnoxious mess of green and blue and orange and yellow, squares and swirls and stripes, and oh, what a relief for my brain it was to have that chaotic vomit to focus on instead of what was ahead: our second embryo transfer, with the spare, frozen blastocyst from our first round of egg harvesting.

The clinic was busy that day and I could hear parts of murmured conversations in the neighbouring cubicles. It felt very isolating, and not just because I was on my own for this one. The thing is, you and every other person in there is in exactly the same boat – nobody else in the world knows as well as they do what you’re going through at that exact moment – but you’re separated, by literal walls and also social ones. This isn’t a waiting room where you make eye contact and smile at other people, much less strike up a conversation. You don’t know what stage they’re at – what news they’re here to hear – but you know exactly what the worst case scenario is.

The clinic is obviously aware of this dynamic, so there’s a sign on the cubicle wall for their Facebook group. Here, it says, here’s a safe place to make those connections. We never joined. I don’t like sharing my grief in the moment (she says, on her public blog), I don’t even know how to contain it within myself, it just felt too hard to push it onto others or have theirs pushed onto me.

Once again, it was a quick, clean procedure. Almost too much so. There’s nothing big and scary like sedation or a waiting period to focus your anxiety, so it all goes onto the next week-and-a-bit waiting for the next pregnancy test; and in my case, on work. I was at Parliament while we went through this, and our second transfer happened at the end of July; only six weeks before Parliament dissolved and I lost every scrap of job security.

They say there’s never a good time to have a baby, but I still feel like we chose a particularly terrible one;* on the other hand, it wasn’t a choice. It was a need.

And then the results came in.

And we won the lottery.

I’d spent the whole month, since our first transfer failed, telling myself over and over that someone has to beat the odds. That’s the ironic thing about what I mentioned in the last post, about the idea that every infertility story has a happy ending. When you’re going through it, it feels like everyone you talk to has an unhappy ending. Or tried and tried and tried and tried again and maybe, finally, through sheer force of will and luck and persistence, it happened.

I don’t think I know anyone who got as lucky as we did.

J was home when I got the phone call, so he found out almost as soon as I did; and in true J fashion, his first question was whether there was something performative he was supposed to do. I told him jewellery, or a car.

It was the happiest day of my life, and yet … it’s the same story I feel I’ve told already. Every bit of success on this path just opens up more avenues for failure and anxiety. This blood test was good. But there was another only days away. Three weeks after that, the “early scan”. More appointments in the diary to get good news, or the worst.

I just assumed these early days are when there’s the highest risk of losing a pregnancy. But no one ever said it. I guess you don’t need one more thing to worry about.

Probably the worst bit was having to keep up the damn pessaries. I was looking forward to having clean underwear again.

And on top of all that we had J’s contract at work ending, the election another week closer, and at some point we had thought about moving house before we had a baby, and …. how???

I’m almost happier now, reflecting back, than I was on that day. Because now I’m free of those worries (found plenty of new ones, have no fear). I know that the Wednesday blood test will be strong again, and the early scan will be the first time I see my baby’s heart beating, and everything, everything will work out. Hindsight is great like that.

~

*Four days after the pregnancy test, four cases of COVID-19 were found in Auckland, which went into a level 3 lockdown, the rest of the country to level 2. Great timing, like I said.