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I'm Charlie. I'm, uh, head marshal for this gig. We've got- We're in Civic Square, just behind the central library in, uh, Pōneke, and we've got a gathering of queer people and allies. Uh, yeah, we're just gathering up now for the, um, start of, uh, a rally and march, uh, through the city. And what is the rally, uh, in aid of? Uh, it's kind of a joint thing. So earlier, uh, l- late last year and early into this year, we've [00:00:30] been campaigning about the ban on puberty blockers, a- against the ban on puberty blockers, uh, for trans youth, and the government has just brought out, uh, a bill into the f- uh, into the first reading. It's, it's hearing submissions now, um, to define, uh, m- man and woman as, you know, adult male, uh, adult female. Yeah, and we're against that. And so the, the music's just started. Can you just paint a picture for me of what we can see around us? Just [00:01:00] a, a cool, chill gathering of a bunch of, uh, you know, queer people and, and, and their friends, whānau. Um, yeah. Lots of, lots of trans flags. Uh, marshals. Uh, yeah. Uh, it's quite windy, but we're still gonna have fun. It's Wellington. Uh, and, and what is the route you're taking? Uh, we should be going, uh, Victoria, Wakefield, Manners, uh, uh, Cuba, Manners, uh, Courtney, uh, Blair. You're testing me. [00:01:30] Across Wakefield, um, and then Schaeffer, and then onto, uh, behind Te Papa. Kia ora, everybody. Woo. There are so many of you. Woo. We love to see it. All right, to kick this off, I'm gonna pass this microphone to Kōwhai. We are going to be starting with our karakia. Whakataka te hau ki te uru. [00:02:00] Whakataka te hau ki te tonga. Kia mākinakina ki uta. Kia mātaratara ki tai. Kia mākinakina ki uta. Kia mātaratara ki tai. Hei ake ana a takura. Hei tio. Hei huka. Hei hauhuti. Hei mauri ora. Kia ora. Kia ora, Kōwhai. Oh, my gosh. This is a beautiful day for an action, I gotta say it. All right. We are- we all know why we're here today. We are not gonna let those losers in Parliament define us.[00:02:30] All right, we are about to start with our first speaker. Okay, we have coming up here the wonderful Other Charlie. Hi, um, I'm Charlie, and today I wanted to talk a bit about biology. Um, I'm a biology student, and I study biology because my first love was the natural world. Don't tell my partner that though. And [00:03:00] all of this talk of biology from the government had me thinking. The thing about biology is really the more that we learn, the less we know. This world, it's so vast and complicated. It's made of so many moving parts all weaving together and combining in the exact right ways to create everything we see around us. And every time we try to understand it, to put it in a box, it throws something new at us. It laughs in our faces and dances away from us again. Look around [00:03:30] you. See the grasses growing over the edges of its berth and in between the cracks, and the bushes poke through the gaps in the fence. See the water spilling over the edge of the pools. You can't legislate that. You can't tell nature what to do. As part of the natural world, we too are made of millions of moving parts working together to produce something beautiful. Every gene, every trait, every cell in our bodies have endless different possibilities for [00:04:00] how they present. About twenty-eight million per cell to be exact. We put it into these boxes to make ourselves feel better, but biology will tell you it's not real. Just like everything else, there's a million different options for what your sex could be. That's the thing, it's impossible to put biology in a box. How do you define what a man or a woman is? Genitals? What about people that have both or neither? [00:04:30] Hormones? What about natural differences in levels? Whether you make sperm or eggs? What about if you make either, or the one you do make doesn't align with some other defining factor? How do you define someone who's spent their whole life as a man, except instead of having testes, he has ovaries? Okay, what about chromosomes? That's the one people always talk about. Surely that must work, right? Except it doesn't. Someone who can, by every other means appear to have, to have, be one [00:05:00] sex, have chromosomes that don't match that. Every time you try to put biology in a box, it laughs in your face and dances away from you again. You can't legislate nature, no matter how hard you try. And that pisses some people off. So they mine out the earth and drill into the ocean floor and bomb olive groves until there's nothing that can survive there anymore. But nature, it always finds a way to come back swinging. You can't [00:05:30] legislate that away. To Winston Peters, to David Seymour, to Christopher Luxon, you cannot legislate that which makes you uncomfortable away. No matter how hard you try, you cannot legislate us away. Kiota Charlie, you are so right. All right, our next speaker for today, um, [00:06:00] should be Erin? Yes. Erin from PSA Today. Kia ora tātou. Thank you all for coming out here today. Uh, ko Waiau, ko Erin tōku ingoa. Ko Pākehā ahau, ko tangata tiriti ahau. I'm Erin. I'm a Pākehā trans-masculine person and a PSA Union delegate The Public Service Association [00:06:30] condemns the Gender Defini- Definition Bill. This bill will make trans, intersex, and takatāpui working people less safe. It will encourage harassment of these people in the workplace. Employers may fear that if they don't actively discriminate against trans and intersex workers in line with the definitions in this bill, they will be sued. The PSA stands in solidarity with these workers. It knows that an injury to one of its members is an injury to all. I call on every one of you here to [00:07:00] make a submission against the Gender Definition Bill by the time select committee submissions close at the end of the day on Thursday, 2nd of July. Make your comments on the bill as individual and original as possible. The select committee will lump together submissions which use a template. But in the recommendations box, I strongly recommend writing that you reject the bill in its entirety. It's a short bill. All it does is discriminate, and there's no saving it.[00:07:30] Speaking in my personal capacity, I want to acknowledge that it's getting harder and harder to be trans, queer, brown, Black, disabled, or poor, both here in Aotearoa and overseas. Regardless of whether this bill passes, we need to look after each other. We need to strengthen our communities so we have the energy to fight the systemic hyper-capitalist forces that are making life harder for us all. But that's a task for [00:08:00] tomorrow. Right now, if we can defeat the Gender Definition Bill, that's a blow to the hate we're facing and one less bullshit thing we have to worry about. So all I have left to say is fuck this bill, hug your friends, and don't forget to submit by 2nd July. Kia ora. Ciao Aaron This is [00:08:30] such a beautiful crowd. I realized I forgot to introduce myself to y'all. My, uh, ko kaupapa tokoinua, I am a trans man, I'm an educator, I am a friend to so many people in this crowd who I love so dearly. Whoo. And I love so much that everyone is here today, and we've had such an amazing turnout. I am gonna hand the mic over to the wonderful Scarlett. Hello, all. I am Scarlet [00:09:00] and I come from the South Island. The medical system in this country has many issues that we have to fight to fix, including bringing an end to corrective surgeries that I myself was a victim of. But instead, we stand here today to fight for the basic right to be recognized as our chosen gender. This bill fails to recognize intersex people and would force us into incorrect boxes alongside our trans and cis brethren. This government has failed intersex and trans people alike by letting the medical [00:09:30] system backside further, by stripping protections, and by refusing to release updated g- guidelines about gender-affirming care. By letting doctors pick and choose how they provide care instead, which gives us inconsistent and failing results. We are all here to support the rights of each other. And after we defeat this bill, we need to keep this fight going to help each other achieve full equality with no violations of our human rights. [00:10:00] This is one united battle against those who seek to discriminate against us. They came for puberty blockers, and we stand with PAPA as we fight against that unlawful legislation designed to spread hatred and misinformation about our communities. And now they are coming for us by trying to define who we are, and we will have none of their imported culture wars. We're alive and we're here. We will scream till you hear. Thank you, and fuck you, Winston Peters.[00:10:30] Kia ora, Scarlet. All right, I am gonna get us going. If you have a chant sheet, pull it out. We're gonna practice some chants. All right. All right, so first one on the list: We're here, we're queer, we will not live in fear. We're here. We're queer. We will not live in fear. We're here. We're queer. We will not live in fear. We're trans, we're proud. You cannot keep us down. [00:11:00] We're trans, we're proud. You cannot keep us down. We're trans, we're proud. You cannot keep us down. What do we want? Trans rights. When do we want it? Now. What do we want? Trans rights. When do we want it? Now. What do we want? Trans rights. When do we want it? Now. I should not be shouting so hard so soon, but, you know, here we go. All right. Today was meant to be emceed by the badass Tris, but unfortunately they are unwell, so it is [00:11:30] me today. But I am going to pass to the wonderful Emily and her children. Kia ora. Um, ko Emily Wright toku ingoa. Um, thank you for the invitation to speak. Um, I will be as quick as I can be. Winston Peters, the ACT Party, and this government have never and will never speak for women. [00:12:00] Um, cis women do not need these fascist politicians to speak for them, and we sure as shit don't need a bunch of musty repressed TERFs speaking for us and claiming it's feminism. We know that it is not feminism. We will stand with you all the way. We will fight with you and for you and alongside you. We know there are many cis women leading the hateful transphobic rhetoric we are seeing rising. [00:12:30] Shame indeed. I wanna ask all the cis women and men here today to use your privilege to protect and support our trans whānau. Show solidarity, speak up, and fight this, not just today, but every single day. Finally, I wanna say to all of the trans community, young and old, as a cis woman, I am so very sorry. I am so [00:13:00] very sorry that so many ignorant and ugly cis women have led this campaign of bigotry and hatred. I am so sorry that cis women and men have made you feel so unsafe and so uncared for. I'm here to say that you are beloved, you are vital, and you are crucial, and you are valued and deserving of respect, and we love you so much. That you have been forced to [00:13:30] justify your existence and identity is abhorrent. It's abhorrent, and I'm so sorry. You deserve safety and kindness and respect, and you will get it. Because there is no world in which you are not here with us, and I am so grateful for that. Thank you so much, and I would l- like to invite some kids up here who wanna speak. Um, yeah, so come on, kids. You're being very brave right [00:14:00] now. Hello everybody. My name is Sam and I'm gender fluid. I'm so grateful- I'm so grateful to the people in my life. Unlike a lot of gender fluid people, I didn't have to hide who I am or be scared of what my friends would say when I came out. And yes, I have dealt with and still am dealing with some gender dysmorphia, but it could've been so much worse if I had to face the kind of discrimination this bill is trying to [00:14:30] enforce. All gender queer people deserve to have an experience like mine, and I'm here to fight for that alongside all of you. The government claims this bill is about protecting women, but that same government has slashed pay equity claims for hundreds of thousands of women and cut funding for Wellington's only sexual harm prevention organization, and they expect us to trust them. We will fight and will not let this bill pass. It [00:15:00] is up to us to define who we are and what we do with our bodies, not Winston Peters and the government. Thank you. The definition of woman and man bill will only mean more discrimination against transgender and intersex people, legalize hate crimes and hate speech, and reinforce the New Zealand government's status as a sympathizer with the far-right politicians of the world [00:15:30] intent on limiting our civil rights. We know who we are and we know who our friends are, and the government can't tell us who we are. We are all standing here together. We know we are stronger than them. We hope in November those who can vote will vote this government out.[00:16:00] Kiara, thank you so much I just thought I'd say real quick, I'm coming here today also as an educator and a teacher. I gotta say, the kids are not all right. They're mad as hell, and they have every right to be Give it up for Kofi![00:16:30] Te Whakapono, me te rangimarie[00:17:00] Ki ora Thank you so much, KofI. All right, we're gonna do a couple more chants and then we'll head on to our next speakers. Okay. So the classic, gonna ask you guys a quick question. What do we want? Trans rights. When do we want it? Now. What do we want? Trans rights. When do we want it? Now. No constraints, no restrictions, we defy your definitions. No [00:17:30] constraints, no restrictions, we defy your definitions. All right, gonna pass on to our next speaker, KofI. All right Tena koutou katoa. Ko Taranaki te iwi. Ko takatāpui ahau. Ko Kowhai toku ingoa. I appear before all of you today to speak on the issue at hand, the [00:18:00] Disgusting Definitions Bill. This bill, not only is it transphobic and intersexist, but it's racist. It breaches Te Tiriti o Waitangi as it poorly attempts to erase our takatāpui whānau, and it also tries erasing our Pacific whānau and other- our other indigenous whānau. It makes me ashamed to live in this beautiful country. This'll actively make it harder for our BIPOC whānau to get healthcare in a society that already makes it pretty much impossible for us to get [00:18:30] any form of help. Um, they're trying to push their colonialist ways onto us once more. And I say, well, this is what they would probably say, "Three biscuits for me, none for thee." Brown, Black, and indigenous people have never fit the white standard of what it means to be feminine or masculine. We never fit into a colonialist idea of what a man or a woman is, because you're born, and then at some point, you die. You just become bones. [00:19:00] So I ask the people, do you all think we're back on track? And I'd like to finish this speech off with a quote from Moana Jackson in Imagining Decolonization. "Because whakapapa traverses time between the past, the present, and the future, the building of new relationships and the telling of new stories begins with the identification and untelling of colonization's past and present lies. Stories for and about [00:19:30] transformation rely on honesty about the misremembered stories and the foresight to see where different stories might lead. That is the ethic of restoration. It offers the challenge or chance to clutch truth and justice for f- future flowerings. It is concerned with the balance of relationships rather than a will to limit what they might be." And in giving back to Māori the right of self-determination, it offers everyone a place to stand. Kia ora.[00:20:00] Kia ora koutou. All right. We are on to our last speaker before we get Martin. All right, I'm gonna pass this off to my dear friend Amal Thank you, Wyatt. Uh, tena koutou. My name's Amal. I'm a trans woman. I've had the good fortune to have been on HRT for four years. [00:20:30] It feels like I've only been a human being for those four years. Aw. That's why I hate that we have a system in which trans minors are forced to spend their teenage years, the years we are meant to learn how to become human in the full social sense of the word, being told to wait. To wait in the fog of unknowing and unbecoming until the state deems them ready to know and become themselves, years after their peers. And if the government has its way, they'll be forced to undergo changes that can only deepen the fog, [00:21:00] and as a final humiliation, they'll be forced to lie about who they are in order to piss. This rally is special to me. Since the government first announced that restrictions on puberty blockers were on the cards, we've had many rallies like it. But this is the first that I've had nothing to do with organizing That speaks to the number of young trans people who have become or- begun organizing for themselves. They no longer need jaded rent a mob types like myself. So can we cheer for [00:21:30] the people who put this together? In my absence, I've spent a month in Britain and France. Trans people there face exactly the same agenda that we are fighting here. I heard them express the same fears about puberty blocker restrictions and being defined out of bathrooms. But I also heard them propose the same solutions that I hear in Aotearoa.[00:22:00] We must vote for progressive liberal parties to keep the reactionaries out. Around the world, that is the main thing trans people are asking for I'm not gonna tell you that nothing is won through Parliament. There is a real defense of our existing rights to be mounted there. That is why QED has been asking, together with other queer organizations, for firm commitments from the non-government parties. Will they reverse the regulation banning puberty blockers if it survives the courts? Will they repeal the definitions of a man and a woman bill if it passes? [00:22:30] And of course, they will say yes if they know what's good for them But there is a problem with making this our only strategy. What happens if, as polls predict, Labor almost gets in? In walks Winnie. Sure, we'll help you cross the line, but there's just one condition. The anti-trans stuff stays Labor will kick up a stink, but the result will never be in doubt. [00:23:00] Many trans people sincerely think that Labor, the Greens, TPM, would take a stand on any one issue above forming a government. That is fantasy. The only reason that those parties exist is to form government. Their political horizons start and end at the Beehive. It is not in their vocabulary to be refused to be part of a government in order to better oppose it from outside. Say that they do form a government, with or without Win- Winnie. Do we think that the current round of austerity will end? [00:23:30] As the recession deepens, will the job losses, the cuts, the fiscal responsibility plans stop? No. Thousands of people will only see a government that continues the neoliberal agenda. So what will have changed? One main thing. The government will talk a lot more about how much it cares, including how much it cares about trans people. When a government is cutting jobs and benefits on the one hand and talking about minority rights on the other, what does that do? It pisses people off. It teaches them to see trans people and laborers on the same side, [00:24:00] one big woke monolith out to screw them on the deal. Nothing in this world creates National-led governments with the same deadly inevitability as Labor-led governments. Nothing fans the flames of reaction like liberal sanctimony. I meet so many young trans people who have begun the journey of coming to know themselves, but who still don't believe in their own political power. Who think that someone out there, somewhere out there, is a room full of experts, politicians, and activists working towards our liberation. Let me tell you, I have never found [00:24:30] that room. I see only you and me, your neighbor, your coworker, and the main thing holding us all back is a belief that our liberation might come from somewhere else. We have to break the cycle of National and Labor governments. We have to insist on a divorce between the struggle against oppression and the election programs of left liberal parties. To break our dependence on them, we need an independent working class party whose horizon stretches beyond the Beehive. A party that will take the rights of all workers, or of trans people, or of Maori, [00:25:00] as something that cannot be thrown away for the sake of cabinet positions. It is a long road to that goal, but we should have started a long time ago. So look beyond that building, the Beehive. Take responsibility for the fight for a revolutionary party. Every trans person knows what it's like to know and become yourself, but that's only the start. You have to fight for yourself, too. Organize yourself. Find yourself in a collective fight. Then, and only then, do we become fully human.[00:25:30] One, two, three, four. We don't want your culture war. It's a culture war. Five, six, seven, eight. You can't make us cis or straight. Five, six, seven, eight. You can't make us cis or straight. Women's rights, trans rights. One struggle, one fight. Women's rights, trans rights. One struggle, one [00:26:00] fight. We don't need to live a lie to keep ourselves alive. We don't need to live a lie to keep ourselves alive. What do we want? Trans rights. When do we want it? Now. What do we want? Trans rights. When do we want it? Now. Stand up, fight back. Trans kids are under attack. Stand up, fight back. Trans kids are under attack. Stand up, fight back Fight back. We're here. We're queer. [00:26:30] We will not live in fear We're trans, we're proud, you cannot keep us down. We're trans, we're proud, you cannot keep us down. One, two, three, four, we don't want your culture war. One, two, three, four, we don't want your culture war. Five, six, seven, eight, you can't make us cis or straight. Five, six, seven, eight, you can't make us cis or straight. [00:27:00] One, two, three, four, we don't want your culture war. One, two, three, four, we don't want your culture war.
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