Reasons for hope: Lots of amazing people did a ton of work to make this fantastic, fully interactive resource available - because no matter how bleak things seem, there are millions, and millions of people doing everything they can to protect both the world and their own communities.
You can use this to view and subscribe to updates, project statuses, and for at least some of them even whole dossiers. This is an amazing resource, I highly recommend checking it out
The Definitions of Woman and Man Amendment Bill has passed its first reading but hope is not lost
It is now time to make a submission to the select committee. In recent times, submissions have had a big impact on whether bills pass the second reading or not. In 2022 100,000 submissions led to the banning of conversion therapy (passing 113-7 btw!) and in 2025 300,000 submissions killed the divisive treaty principles bill. Make a submission by 02 July 2026 and make sure you clearly state you oppose the bill.
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What kind of harm will this bill cause and why it's important you make a submission:
This bill will legally define a woman as an “adult human biological female” and man as an “adult human biological male”. This will allow the government to legally discriminate against Transgender, Intersex and Takatāpui New Zealanders. There have also been concerns raised that using the word adult in the definition will exclude minors from women's rights such as access to abortions. I remind you that this government does not care about women. In 2025 this government passed the equal pay amendment act which made it almost impossible for women to make pay equity claims, as of May 2026 this is currently being investigated by the United Nations for systematic discrimination against women. It has been clear to me and hopefully you how badly similar bills in the US and UK have affected Trans and Intersex citizens. In short, this bill could affect their access to healthcare, government IDs that match their gender, gendered services and overall safety. Internationally, bills like this one have also negatively affected cis women and girls who they claim to protect. In the US we have seen this lead to “genital inspections” to allow young girls to play sports and the end of Roe v. Wade which has taken away access to abortions for many women and girls even in cases where the pregnant person's life is at risk. The wording of the bill is intentionally vague, unscientific and intentionally does not define what biological female/male means. Biological sex in humans is not black and white there are many variables, this definition leaves biology up to interpretation by politicians not biologists. Vague wording is often used against the queer community, as for example seen with the ban of drag “in public or anywhere minors might be present” in Tennessee 2023 where the lack of definition of “male or female impersonator” made it unclear whether trans or gender non-conforming people would be allowed in public spaces. In a real life scenario how do you even prove someone's biological sex by this vague definition since this bill claims it will “ensure that language in law reflects biological reality”? Are for example women trying to access women’s shelters going to have to endure hormone or chromosome testing, genital inspections, must they always carry their birth certificate to prove their assigned sex at birth? For a bill that claims to support reality they seem to have not even considered its real life application. Let me know if there's anything I should add/correct to this post!
I wanna give a quick mention to youtube.com/itsintheballot for uploading the speeches about this bill in parliament to youtube
There's a million different political commentary channels that would cover something like this if it was in the US but I've found it quite hard to find youtube channels that cover NZ politics (at least that are not far right reactionary yikes). You could likely either find the speeches on Tiktok/Reels or the full thing on parliament tv but personally I'm not someone that would watch either of those so I've been finding this helpful to stay updated
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