Take this issue to your MP
Formerly titled "Well aren't you privileged “Ben”" before some housekeeping.
NZ has the Pharmaceutical funded self identification bill on the agenda for this year. It will of course, like Victoria, be wrapped up in a 'no gay conversion' cloak, which is totally absurd as cutting genitals and breasts off physically healthy people is the most obscene type of conversion.
The best thing that you could do to stop this bill in its tracks is to take your opposition to your local MP. In my experience MPs tend not to know what's going on in regards to this issue. My own MP is in this category (and a few other categories if I was to be unkind but this is just not my style).
To rely on the SUFW group* in NZ to do this for you is asking for failure, even if most of its members are genuinely concerned with bills like this. We all need to be active on it.
So please take your opposition to your local MP off your own bat. Organize a meeting with them, take a friend if needed. Make sure that you know what you're going to cover in your meeting with them. It helps to realize that most of them tend to think that they're being progressive in agreeing to attend to this issue on behalf of Big Pharma and don't realize that they've been gamed into supporting a 21st Century version of the homophobia that their parents generation dealt to. The occasional MP is not along these lines so best to do your homework. I for example would place Chris Hipkins and Andrew Little in the latter category, it is my view that they're not trying to be progressive, the little tyrants.
Discussing this issue and expressing your concerns on this issue to your MP is the best way to stop this bill from becoming an Act of Parliament and thereby becoming law.
#politics #gender