The Women’s Rights Party is taking to the road on a nationwide tour from today to meet with New Zealanders concerned about the erosion of sex-based rights, just as politicians from the Left and Right are desperately trying to avoid making this an election issue.

NZ First sparked the “not me” moment for National Leader Chrstopher Luxon and Labour Leader Chris Hipkins when NZ First Leader Winston Peters announced a policy to introduce legislation to ensure all new public organisations had clearly demarcated, unisex and single-sex bathrooms which couldn't be used by the opposite sex.

The announcement also included cuts in funding for sporting bodies that did not have an exclusive biological female category.

Luxon said anyone talking about ‘bathrooms’ was on another planet at a time when New Zealand was facing an economic crisis.

Women’s Rights members have reacted with anger. A life-long National voter said she will not be voting for the Party in October.

“An economic crisis isn’t the only crisis NZ is facing. Half the population is being erased in the name of inclusion. He’s an idiot if he doesn’t realise that half the population also votes.”

Hipkins reportedly said he was unaware of the issue. Women’s Party co-leader Jill Ovens says the issues of safe single-sex spaces and fairness in women’s sport have absolutely been raised within Labour and have caused division.

“The Labour Rainbow Sector has been putting forward policy proposals that would make toilets in all new public facilities ‘gender neutral’ for example. Women reacted to the proposal saying their safety and privacy would be put at risk and received so much abuse, formal complaints were raised by both sides to the Labour Party Council.”

Ms Ovens says an amendment from an Auckland Labour women’s meeting to restrict gender reassignment surgery to those over 18, was not allowed to make it to the Labour Party Conference floor last year.

“Not many New Zealanders would think it okay to allow teenaged girls to undergo a double mastectomy, euphemistically known as ‘top surgery’, or teenaged boys to be castrated, known as ‘bottom surgery’, so they can change their appearance to the opposite sex” Ms Ovens says.

”These surgeries are irreversible and can cause life-long medical harm.”

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Te Pati Māori Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Greens Co-leader Marama Davidson have condemned the policies, with Davidson describing the policies as “hateful” and saying it was “harmful and dehumanising to transgender people to debate their existence”.

Ms Ovens says no one is denying the existence of transgender people, but all political parties currently in Parliament are recklessly ignoring protections for women and girls that are enshrined in law in the Human Rights Act as they are actively progressing rights based on “gender identity and expression” that will put the rights of women on a collision course with those of men who identify as women.

In the words of one Women’s Rights member that reflects many others on fb last night: “I refuse to vote for, or support a party that will not acknowledge my existence or rights. It’s absolutely disgusting, and actually incredibly hurtful for women. I cannot believe we are here. How did we get to a point where men’s rights as women trump and dominate any existence of rights, safety, and fairness for actual women?”

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