New Third Sex Identity Classification Obfuscates Enforcer Duties
Transgenderism has emerged as the flagship politico-media outrage flashpoint in a nation which barely a generation ago exulted in a culture of exaggerated masculinity.
Not long ago the nation revelled in the exploits of its sporting, military and property tycoon heroes.
No longer.
The pinnacle of achievement postulated in the more activist wings of politics and throughout the legacy media is now embodied by those of a very different category.
It is comprised of those who have switched their genders, or who are in the process of doing so.
The transition is a movement in the true sense of the word and it has become a defining consideration judicially.
This is illustrated by the way in which it has influenced the outcome of the case involving the Morrison family. The family was burned out of their rural dwelling.
The suspect undergoing gender transition and who is in a women’s prison has to date sidestepped appearing in court and continues to protract while parting company with a string of lawyers.
This state of affairs (see previous story) came to light when the family sought redress from their fire insurer which is under the banner of the Automobile Association.
The fervour ignited by transgenderism is illustrated by the riotous turn taken in Auckland’s Albert Park (a Speakers Corner equivalent) when British gender transition foe Posie Parker was the centre of a public meeting furore.
Much more recently it was demonstrated during the book tour of Irish comedian and playwright (Father Ted) Graham Linehan, a lugubrious if hardly incendiary character. Linehan (pictured) was greeted on arrival not by chortling fans at the airport but by two anxious police officers.
Binary until quite recently referred exclusively to information technology. The penetration of the binary fixation into public life is officially codified now by the mandatory application of selective defining pronouns to anyone in any occupation at all in any sector of government service.
Transgender has overtaken even ethno-climatism as preferred positioning visibility with public figures and educators echoing their solidarity, and willingness to devote their energies to implementing it for those who seek it.
The entire topic owes its institutionalisation to its dovetailing into all three of the operational moral pillars of diversity, equity and inclusion. These were the three horsemen of the social justice apocalypse of the Jacinda Ardern government. This feelings-based policy troika was mounted rather less ardently by her prime ministerial successor Chris Hipkins.
Its appeal is to the inner city suburbs where the non-productive intelligentsia tend to dwell.
This electorally sensitive location means that the current face-value conservative tripartite ruling parliamentary coalition, smarting from absorbing continuing dismissive coverage from free-to-air broadcasters, handles it gingerly, especially in terms of its medicalisation.
Curiously the entire issue everywhere might reasonably be said to have started in the New Zealand North Island township of Morrinsville, hometown of Jacinda Ardern and Dr John Money.
Dr Money?
He was the scientific figure who dissolved the gender binary boundary and ignited the new non-patriarchal orthodoxy of social equity that became the hallmark of the multilateralists.
Equipped with his Phd (from Harvard) and now at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, he was the first clinician to describe himself as a sexologist and to be officially described as such. He was the pioneering exponent in child rearing of the "nurture versus nature" concept in gender assignment.
Dr Money contended that it was behavioural characteristics and not its physical ones (nature) that would decide whether it was male or female.
His fame came as director of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and he authored some 40 books on sexology.
He established the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in 1965. The hospital began performing sexual reassignment surgery in 1966.
He retired only two years before his death at 85 in 2006.
His collection of primitive art was bequeathed to the gallery in Gore, after metropolitan museums and galleries declined it.
New Zealand’s coalition government edging around transgenderism and its treatment might appease its intractable urban arts constituency with its public broadcasting cheer leadership by touring the Dr Money’s art collection, the authenticity of which has never been challenged.
Such a tour in today’s mood will not be cancelled. Unlike Graham Linehans’s or Posie Parker’s.