Rights Aotearoa's Submission Guide for the Legislation (Definition of Woman & Man) Amendment Bill

The Legislation (Definition of Woman & Man) Amendment Bill is an unworkable, expensive solution in search of a non-existent problem.

1. The bill is lawfare against transgender, non-binary and intersex people.
2. The anti-trans forces think that they need this bill to be passed in order to eventually ban trans people from spaces that align with their chosen gender identity. That is their goal here.
3. As it stands, the bill would not achieve these aims as it is very badly drafted. The danger is that the bill is extended in ways that further its aims during the select committee process.
4. The bill introduces circular definitions that go nowhere. It doesn't define what biological sex means.
5. With the passing of the BDMRR sex self-id legislation, NZ adopted a paradigm where one could self-select the sex/gender markers on one's identity documents.
6. Since the BDMRR law passed, trans people have been using the spaces that align with their chosen gender without any trouble whatsoever! There have been no recorded instances - in particular of trans women - behaving badly in women’s spaces. This is a key point. There are also no recorded instances of a cis man posing as a trans woman in order to abuse people.
7. The NZ First bill would introduce another contradictory paradigm at great legal expense.
8. The bill erases non-binary people.
9. The bill erases intersex people (people with innate variations of sex characteristics).
10. The bill erases takatāpui - it is likely a breach of te tiriti obligations.
11. Because the bill introduces a new paradigm at odds with BDMRR the only way to establish what sex assigned at birth is if the government issues sex-ID. This would be a catastrophic violation of your medical privacy and very expensive. There is no other practicable way to make this legislation work. Sex ID would be a multi billion-dollar project that the government currently has no line item for in its budget.
12. How to make a submission. You can find the link here: https://www3.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/make-a-submission/document/54SCSSC_SCF_9E8E8A14-A51C-4567-AB33-08DE9053A7D1/legislation-definitions-of-woman-and-man-amendment-bill
13. Start by introducing yourself (if you are comfortable doing that); if you are cisgender and writing in support of the bill say this as allies are strongly needed.
14. Argue that the bill is badly worded and seems to have no intrinsic value except to exclude transgender, non-binary, and intersex people from public life.
15. If you have time look at some of the ways the anti-trans forces are arguing to have the bill changed and rebut them. I won’t link them, but several submission guides in favour of the bill are doing the rounds.
16. Argue that the BDMRR legislation is working fine - society hasn’t fallen since the legislation came into force - there is no need for this bill except to promote bigotry.
17. Argue that the Human Rights Act (HRA) gains no further clarity with respect to gender identity from this legislation. The Crown Law 2006 opinion, which is respected by the HRC, argues that gender identity is included in the Human Rights Act under the ‘sex’ grounds. What is needed with respect to the HRA is for the recommendations of the Law Commission’s Ia Tangata project with respect to trans rights. This would introduce ‘gender identity’ explicitly into the HRA. The Human Rights Commission thoughts on the bill are laid out here: https://tikatangata.org.nz/news/definitions-of-woman-and-man-legislation-not-necessary-risks-further-harm-to-rainbow-people 
18. The HRA already allows for the provision of single sex spaces without the definition of men and women being made in law. This current paradigm is consistent with the BDMRR.
19. The point about requiring a sex-ID infrastructure is not hyperbole or overreach. Your sex assigned at birth is private medical information that you have no obligation to share with any other person. The state would need to gather this information (presumably using a chromosomal-based test, which would further erase intersex people) and store it and record it in a way that could be made available to operators of private spaces. There is literally no other way that this legislation could be made workable without requiring genital inspections, which would themselves be unreliable and not align with people who have had SRS, and would further exclude intersex people. 
20. Society does not benefit from this legislation in any way - it introduces a nexus for control of society in ways that would end up hurting people with non-traditional/non-stereotypically gendered presentations. On the ‘challenge’ enforcement regime, cisgender people who do not have stereotypical gender presentations will be ‘challenged’ by operators of spaces.
21. This bill would be totally unworkable if the BDMRR legislation remains in force. There are no good reasons to revoke the BDMRR paradigm - but the anti-trans forces will try to argue the primacy of the definitions bill to get the BDMRR paradigm revoked - this is a key goal of the anti-transgender lobby groups. NZ has already decided upon the sex self-ID paradigm.