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Why citizens’ assemblies work

Like the Pennsylvania groundhog, I emerge from my cave to see if spring will come again.

This article has been bumping around in my head for a few days now and I THINK I’ve pinpointed what annoys me about it: none of the people pushing for citizens’ assemblies actually understand how they succeed, and in fact are pushing a really shitty narrative about people, society and politics as they do.

“It provides a safe environment to have a conversation. There is zero tolerance for conflict in that room. You’re allowed to express your opinion, whatever that opinion is, in complete safety, and people will be respectful of you too.”

The reasons put forward in the piece are basically: “true deliberation” solves political conflict; “ordinary people” come up with the best solutions because they find the “middle ground” and “reduce the noise” of “complex and divisive” issues.

And honestly, bullshit on most of that, and on the general ~vibe~ of the piece that “intractable” or “complex” or “divisive” issues are just ~matters of opinion~ and ~if we all sat down together~ and ~saw the human on the other side of the table~ we’d come to ~a true consensus~.

Consensus is great. And citizens’ assemblies are great. The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand are pretty hot on both.

But I think citizens’ assemblies work for very different reasons, and those reasons matter, and shutting down this wilfully apolitical, “we can all get along if we just stop shouting” narrative is important.

Here’s my take:

1. The majority of people hold progressive views. No, they don’t think of themselves as political, they haven’t Done The Readings, they wouldn’t necessarily place themselves square in the bottom left quadrant of politicalcompass.org. But they care about other people. They want their family, friends and community to be happy and healthy and free to live their lives. They value schools and hospitals and parks and pools and being able to get to work or school or indoor netball, to have autonomy in their lives and to know where to go for help.

They don’t really care if someone is gay or trans or has an unusual haircut, unless they are told lies about those people. They aren’t worried about immigrants opening cool new restaurants in their suburbs or someone getting to rest up after an injury unless they are kept in a state of personal economic anxiety, and told those other people are to blame.

And we know this. We know the majority of people support gay rights, trans rights, wealth taxes, paying teachers and nurses more, having thriving local shops and good jobs, bodily autonomy, and accepting and celebrating diversity.

So no shit Sherlock when you get a bunch of them in a room and ask them to devise solutions to social/environmental/political issues, they’ll deliver progressive results, which is to say: supporting human rights and equality.

But what about the opposition? What about the other side? If it’s so easy, why did thousands descend on our Parliament and set the goddamned playground on fire over vaccination?

2. The true opponents of progress are a fringe minority of a minority who run scared if they’re forced into real conversation about their views. And no, I don’t mean “everyone who opposes gay marriage” or “everyone who grumbles about taxes”, I mean the hardline, dyed-in-the-wool types who will never shift.

The grumblers? The anxious ones? Take the citizens’ assembly approach and put them in a room where they’re expected to listen to others’ views, consider the evidence, and form a clear-headed view. Reality has a left-wing bias. The talkback radio/InfoWars/Facebook Boomer meme arguments don’t stand a chance.

The hardliners? There are so few, and they are so unrepresentative they probably won’t get in the room. If they do, most will hide their true leanings. That’s why there’s still multiple New Zealand knitwear designers on Ravelry who I have to remember not to purchase from – because they don’t wear their “founder of Voices For Freedom” badges loud and proud on their business profiles, strangely.

But if that’s all true, Stephanie, why don’t these good changes just happen? Why don’t our political decisions match our community views?

3. The real obstacle to most progressive change is political will. Not lack of political will, not an absence of action, but a proactive, considered decision that nothing should be done. Ruling things out. An obstruction of good ideas by left-of-centre parties across the world who, if I’m charitable, believe the ridiculous myth that doing good things isn’t politically popular.

(That they’re not financially popular, I can agree with.)

There’s also the trap of organisational inertia. Once you’ve been in central government spheres – whether the Treasury benches or Opposition – you just get used to a certain way of doing things. Of course we can’t just feed the poor, do you know how many agencies and regulations and funding rounds and tripartite consultations would be involved? Of course we can’t just pass a good law, the other side will simply repeal it!

(My plea to the Labour Party for the new year is to notice how much National/ACT/NZ First do not care about such things.)

The RNZ piece itself discusses the way that people frequently ARE “ahead” of the political curve, and what our politicians consider “acceptable” or “responsible” or “vote-winning” policies. But that’s the point: citizens’ assemblies work, when they work, because not only are the majority of people caring, compassionate, progressive, and realistic, they’re also unconstrained by dogma about what is and isn’t politically possible.

So why does this even matter? If I like citizens’ assemblies and people are promoting citizens’ assemblies, why write a thousand(plus) words quibbling with their reasoning? Two reasons:

1. Painting basic human rights issues as “complex” is a copout, and portraying both sides as equally unreasonable, extreme or bad faith is harmful.

From the article:

“[Ireland], for the last 60 years, was unable to have a civilised conversation about abortion, because the minute the conversation starts, the people speaking retreat to the extremes and start shouting at each other,” he says.

The opposing “extremes” in the abortion debate are people who want to access healthcare and people who want to force people to be pregnant against their will. Those things simply aren’t equivalent. Pregnant people “shouting” because another side wants to use the power of the state to coerce them into undergoing pregnancy even if it kills them is not the same goddamn thing as anti-choicers “shouting” that doctors are murderers and pregnant people are sluts.

(Also, please stop falling for the right’s tactics of yelling about something and then insisting it’s “divisive”, when they’re the people doing the dividing.)

2. Telling people who are oppressed that they have to sit down and respect their oppressors is really shit. When people are fighting for their right to exist, to live good lives, to have basic equality, it is lethal to turn around and say “well you just need to sit down and break bread and form an understanding with the person who wants you silenced, closeted and/or dead” and to imply in the process that direct action like protesting or obstructing motorways is bad or unhelpful (they can be! But they aren’t inherently!)

This was my issue with the Human Rights Commission’s “dial it down” campaign during COVID which proposed “netiquette” to “take the heat” out of COVID discussions online and honestly I don’t have enough sarcastic quotation marks to express my scorn at the idea this is a ~both sides~ problem instead of a public health crisis being exploited by grifters and well-funded extremists to undermine our democracy.

Let’s conclude with the suggestion in the RNZ piece, that a citizens’ assembly could be useful for the “issue” of te Tiriti. And yes, that sounds a lot better than ACT’s bullshit referendum, but we must understand and state out loud that this isn’t a debate where two sides just happen to have different views for no reason. One side has facts, human rights, international law and decades of pre-existing constitutional debate to support its views and the other side just has racism.

A citizens’ assembly would not reach a good conclusion because ~the issue of te Tiriti is so nuanced and complex and we need to get ordinary people to take time to digest it~. It would (probably) reach a good conclusion because people are fundamentally progressive and the fringe minority are tiny and cowardly. Because one side is grounded in reality. Because these issues are not really complex and the obstacle is wilful political inaction.

That is how citizens’ assemblies succeed. And it’s important to say so, instead of depowering progressive politics and erasing the reality of our struggles, and the opposition we face.

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Making waves

A great write-up of my campaign launch event appeared on Stuff today:

Pole-dancing is not often used to launch political campaigns, but it seemed like a natural fit to Stephanie Rodgers – public servant, part-time pole dancing teacher, and Green candidate for the Wellington electorate of Ōhāriu.

“I don’t think any electorate has seen a pole show campaign launch before,” said Rodgers.

After discussion with her campaign manager they landed on the idea of hosting pole show at Wellington’s Fringe Bar as a way to bring Rodger’s passion for pole dancing and her political campaign together. The event on June 22 will be her campaign launch and a fundraiser.

She’s been pole dancing in her spare time for six years, and said the pole show was about bringing her full personality to politics.

I’m really stoked by the positive reception it’s gotten, and dazzled by the lineup of far-right conservative hacks who denounced me as a harbinger of the end of days. How I will do without the votes of transphobes, advocates for child-beating and anti-vax conspiracy theorists, I do not know.

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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