by the Council of Disobedient Women

We call on the Council of Trade Unions to show some fortitude and take a stand with your sisters.

Unionists know that there is a material world, otherwise workers could simply identify out of poverty. They could declare themselves Well Paid. Why stop there, they could declare themselves capitalists. No, lift your horizons newly-minted capitalist, declare yourself an oligarch. These transcapitalists will own all the means of production. The unions’ work is done and a new edition of Das Kapital for the 21st century can be issued: “Das Essence”.

If you recognise the absurdity of this why do you remain silent on the absurdity that men can declare themselves women? Women are adult human females, and we fought for safeguards like separate changing rooms and women’s refuges. We’ve battled to have our own sporting competitions, and spent decades trying to get abortion rights. We cannot identify out of our physical bodies and we insist that a just society makes provision for our needs as women.

The union movement has much to be proud of, but it also has its shortcomings. Unions have not always given priority to the rights of women to be seen and heard as equals.

There are people in unions today insisting that everyone must chant “transwomen are women” or be ostracised and cast out. Do women who question that dogma not deserve a job or an income? Punishing women for “wrong think”, is this a ‘union principle’?

The shameful deplatforming of Speak Up For Women by Massey University should be denounced by unionists. Your silence sends the message that it’s fine to “do a Massey”. Is the truth that women exist as a sex class so frightening to trade unionists that they say nothing? Are women’s issues still not on the agenda in the 21st century?

Will New Zealand’s trade union movement be completely captured by this self-identification ideology of one hundred genders? If so, then we suggest the National Presidents and General Secretaries of all the unions gather around on a cuddly blanky and have a warm glass of kombucha, while a kindly, self-identified chiropractor gently massages the area of their back where a spine would normally be found.