Suzanne Levy: Speak Up for Women spokesperson on NZ First's Members' Bill aiming to legally define sex

Differing opinions on New Zealand First's Members' bill regarding the definition of 'woman'. 

MP Jenny Marcroft is proposing legally defining a woman as being an adult human biological female. 

Rainbow Auckland co-chair Sibyl Mandow says it's a political move to be divisive, stir up hate, and generate a narrative to distract from more pressing issues. 

Mandow says the bill is trying to denounce the existence of trans people – who have no agenda and just want to exist.  

But Speak Up for Women spokesperson Suzanne Levy told Mike Hosking polling on this issue indicates people don't want trans people to be treated poorly. 

But she says at the same time, people don't think sex can be changed. 

Levy says laws need to be definable, as sex has never had any other meaning than biological sex. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New Zealand first seemed to be occupying themselves with gender

(00:02):
issues these days. They did have that bathroom bill seemingly
went nowhere because it has been replaced by the Campaign
to Define Men and Women. It's a member's bill. It's
been introduced to clarify the two genders. The move followers,
of course, the Supreme Court ruling in Britain last week
Speak Up for women, Susanne Levy is, well, this is
and good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Oh, good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
What's your sense of this as an issue in this
country right now?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh, this is definitely an issue in this country. If
you're a woman or a parent, you should be concerned
about whether or not spaces that are designated for women
and are in fact reserved for women. And you know,
our laws need to be workable and definable. There's no
sort of place in them for subjective terms. Sex has

(00:47):
really never had any other meaning than biological sex. And
you know, I think that the UK Supreme Court ruling
kind of you know, you know, reminded us of that,
sort of reminded everybody everybody of that.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Well, it was a unanimous ruling, wasn't It was fairly
clear cut what do we need our own I mean,
I know technically we probably do, but why can't we
just go see that British thing? We're kind of British,
we do that too well.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Well, yes, I mean we have they have the equalities
that we have. The Human Rights Act are very similar
and they're not identical. You know, we won't just go
you know, we're just like the UK will do the same,
but we will definitely our lawmakers will definitely lock to
that ruling. It's not irrelevant to New Zealand at all.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
What I mean, it's a member's bill. It needs to
be pulled out. It'd be interesting to know whether it
was a conscience vote. If it was a conscience vote,
do you reckon it would pass the parliament?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
That's that's a tough one. It was a conscience vote,
I think it, I think it could. I think you know,
there are so many, so many people that you talk
to that won't say it, won't say it out loud.
I'll say, you know, of course people can't change sex.
Of course sex is real, but they're not prepared to
sort of go out and say that, so they would

(02:04):
get pressure. There would be a lot of pressure on
MPs from constituents to vote that way. Certainly polling would
indicate that, you know, all the polling that's been done
on these sorts of issues indicates people don't really think
that you can change sex. They don't think that trans
people should be treated poorly, but at the same time,

(02:25):
they don't think that you can actually change sex.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
So it's also just a definition things for the practicalities
of like bathrooms. What do you do though, now here's
your next question. In Britain at the moment, they're having
trouble implementing it, so a lot of hospitals, universities are going, well,
what do we do? How do we do it? So
we got this law up and it was not dissimilar
to Britain, and then everyone started going, well, I can't
do this and I can't do that in the can't

(02:48):
so the implementation becomes a problem.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, what I would say to that is of organizations
like you know, gender Minority had spent the last five
or ten years aplicating for spaces for trans identifying people
rather than focusing on co opting women's spaces, we would
all be a hell of a lot better off. I
think we do have a good, good range of universal

(03:12):
spaces here. You know, we've got quite a few gender
neutral spaces, and I think would be a matter of
working on that. You know, as a woman's rights organization,
it's not really our job to advocate for those third spaces,
but we have been we've been suggesting to counsels that
they implement these sort of universal changing spaces, which you know,

(03:34):
do give people who aren't comfortable changing in the in
the facility that matches their sex, you know, somewhere to
change that that's safe. So you know that there are differently,
there are ways, there are ways around it. At the moment,
the focus has just been so much on well, you know,
we want to use women's spaces, so you know, so

(03:56):
I think we need to sort of roll that back
and look look at practical, practical solutions universal spaces, but
keeping single sex spaces as well. So you know, So,
so women have somewhere that's just for them, Men have
somewhere that's just for them, And if you don't feel
like that's somewhere you want.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
To change, then you got a third space.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Then is a third space?

Speaker 1 (04:17):
All right? Well, let's see where it goes. Is and
as I say, it's members Bill and we've got to
be pulled out of the old biscuit tin and then
it'll be fascinating. But we'll talk to Mark and Ginny
about this after eight o'clock this morning. Susan Leber, who's
Speak Up for Women spokesperson. For more from the mic
Asking Breakfast, Listen live to news talks.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
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