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Meghan Murphy

Meghan Murphy is one of Canada’s pre-eminent feminist journalists and the editor and publisher of “Feminist Current”. Feminist Current’s reach is international.

For a decade Murphy has dedicated herself to articulating feminist arguments and analysis and has provided a digital platform for amplifying the voices of the movement for the liberation of women.

As such she and the women who write for Feminist Current often address issues that provoke considerable dissent and heated response.  In many cases this has led to harassment, venomous, hateful comments and threats on social media. These sites, including Twitter, rarely come to the defence of women who experience hateful responses on their platforms. Women complain frequently about threats of violence and depictions of violence against women and are repeatedly ignored.

Over the course of a few weeks, Meghan Murphy was repeatedly locked out of her Twitter account for statements and valid questions such as these: “Men aren’t women. How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between men

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Law change for sex self-identification needs discussion not silencing

Daphna Whitmore

Parliament is considering a law change to allow people to change their sex on their birth certificates by simply filling out a form. If the law is passed there will be no requirement to show any proof of living as the opposite sex. When people have raised concerns about the possibility that this could be abused by predatory males (demanding access to female changing rooms, public toilets, women’s refuges, being housed in women’s prisons etc) they have been attacked with slander, threats and slurs by some strident transactivists. The transactivist campaign has been grotesquely authoritarian, energetically censoring, de-platforming, and hounding those who even question the implications of these changes.

We reprint below an article by Renee Gerlich, a feminist, activist and writer, who has been raising concerns and calling for a proper consultation before any change is made that can impact the rights of women. The article was published on Scoop Media on May 28 this year, and then taken down some time later. Scoop editors Joe Cederwall and director Alastair Thompson had removed it without consulting Renee. She was never given any satisfactory explanation of why her article was censored (see here).

Green Party sex self-identification proposals are “transphobic”

by Renee Gerlich

The government is currently discussing submissions on the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration (BDMRR) Bill. Preliminary hearings have made it appear that this bill largely affects cremation law and updates the existing BDMRR Act by digitising and making historic documents and family genealogy more accessible. Public submissions, however, overwhelmingly emphasise gender identity. The current BDMRR Act allows individuals to change the sex marker on identification papers, like birth certificates – many submitters want this process to be made easier.

Organisations from the Green Party to the Human Rights Commission, Young Labour, Rainbow Youth, the Law Society and “Parents and Caregivers of Transgender Children” want to see barriers removed from the process of changing the sex marker on one’s birth certificate. They want the BDMRR Act amended so that birth certificates can be modified without cost or court procedures. It is claimed that this would be in the interests of “documents with dignity” and “transgender rights”. I argue that while the falsification of historic documents and identification papers may appeal to some trans-identified individuals on a personal level, it is not in the interests of trans-identified people as a group. In fact, proposals that erase evidence of gender transition to conflate it with biological sex can easily be viewed as “transphobic”, to use the language of transactivism, since they involve a refusal to confront the realities of gender transition in favour of systematic invisibility.

Brexit—another day in the death of the old world order

John Smith looks at Britain’s impending departure from the EU in a wider context and explains why the Irish border has become such a make-or-break issue.  (Originally published on MR online; thanks to John for also sending it to us.)

Five months before the March 29 leaving date, talks on how to avoid an acrimonious and chaotic exit of Britain from the European Union are on a knife-edge. A ‘hard’ Brexit would be a political and economic earthquake with global ramifications, but even if an agreement is reached the profound political crisis gripping Britain is set to deepen, as the ruling Conservative Party shatters into warring factions and the possibility grows of its replacement by a Labour Party government led by the avowedly socialist Jeremy Corbyn.

Most pundits expect a last-minute deal because this is what usually happens, but standing in the way is a uniquely intractable obstacle—the border between the Republic of Ireland and ‘Northern Ireland’,

The perks prayer

by Don Franks

The well intentioned folks wanting Jesus put back in parliament’s prayer are on the wrong track. The enemy of money changers wouldn’t want his brand tarnished by that shower in the Beehive.

If MPs really must have a prayer they could say:

Business New Zealand at war with the poor

by Don Franks

A just-released Salvation Army-commissioned survey of over 1000 New Zealanders showed 45 per cent of them went without heating last year, due to cost. Doctors’ visits were not made by 44 per cent because they couldn’t afford it. 

Manager for the Salvation Army’s welfare services, Jono Bell, said his first response to the figures was disbelief. 

“But on reflection, I thought, actually the numbers are not too dissimilar from what we are seeing on the frontlines,” Bell said. 

“It’s not just beneficiaries but people in our community who are working are still not making ends meet and are being forced to choose. It is a widespread problem.”  Bell said it was wrong working families were being forced to choose between food, housing and heat. 

“Some of the numbers have serious implications,” he said.

“People can’t heat their homes, so they are getting sick more often, so they have to go to the doctor but can’t afford it.  More medicine is required so they are having to make a choice between medicine and food.  And then there’s the house prices on top of that.”

 In the same week as the Salvation Army survey, an alternative opinion was published in the New Zealand Herald, by one of the economy’s most 

Remembering the soldiers from our patch

by Don Franks

At the end of our street, there’s a little stone memorial. It was raised in 1920, for local working people whose lives were cut short or ruined by the Great War. The young men from Holloway Road and surrounding streets came from tiny dwellings of two rooms and a scullery. Many of them, no doubt excited at the prospect of overseas adventure, which would have hardly been their lot in peace time.

Wellington City Council’s official description of the monument reads:
“The Mitchelltown War Memorial has artistic value. A four-sided obelisk upon a concrete base with marble plaque, a feature of notable interest is the lemon squeezer hat that decorates all four sides of the memorial. The lemon squeezer hat is a symbol closely affiliated with New Zealand. It was rare for New Zealand World War 1 memorials to feature New Zealand iconography, so in this regard the Mitchelltown memorial is slightly unusual.” 

Auckland protest against the massacres in Gaza

by Daphna Whitmore

Protest in Auckland against the Israeli massacres in Gaza

Around a hundred people gathered today in Auckland to protest the massacres in Gaza. Roger Fowler from Kia Ora Gaza spoke about the appalling conditions in Gaza ‘the world’s largest prison’ and noted the Government has said nothing about the recent killings. Tali Williams from First Union spoke about Israel’s latest attacks on the March of Return protesters. Sid Aksoy recalled as a child in Turkey his family giving refuge to Palestinians.