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- Date published:
11:51 am, July 17th, 2025 - 19 comments
Categories: uncategorized -
Tags: LGBTQ, transgender
Reposted from Mountain Tui Substack
I’d like to speak about something in which I have no qualifications in at all – LGBTQ+
At a younger age, I remember sitting on a train and feeling the eyes of an individual on me.
I looked up, and it was another young person, the same gender as I.
I felt uncomfortable. Understood this was a look of attraction and interest, but I didn’t reciprocate it. It wasn’t in me.
My family was quite conservative too.
Later in life, I travelled the world, and in one place, met a homosexual man. I understood deeply at that point that this is natural – it was an intrinsic part of him, as it is in nature, and for that I was grateful to understand.
Yes, I sound like a dinosaur, and a dinosaur I am, but that was many years ago now.
Times change, so do attitudes.
Love is love, that much I know is true.
So does New Zealand, the first country in the Asia Pacific to legalise same sex marriage in 2013.1
The public gallery in parliament breaks into song following the vote to legalise same sex marriage.
There is nothing in me that disbelieves that where unselfish, non harmful2 love is real, any of us have a right to intervene or judge – whether it’s Romeo and Juliet’s connection, or homosexual love, or freedom to be oneself, without harm to another.
Again, I am uncomfortable.
It is unfamiliar territory. I am unfamiliar with the words I should use. People get offended if you use the wrong words – a problem, I believe, in our society.
We could all do with a little less political correctness, and more mutual friendship.
One of my laughing movies is Harold and Kumar, it’s a somewhat politically incorrect film, with jokes about the Taliban, sex, ethnicities, drug taking, and whatever else was in it.
I like to laugh.
I think too much political correctness has ensured we can’t do it as much – and we continue to risk alienating people who would otherwise not hold things so tightly, not become so “extreme”.
My experience with transgender is limited too.
I remember I was at Costco one day, looking for some frozen berries. I rushed up to a staff member and said “Excuse me.”
The person that turned to me was a woman who had chosen her identity as such. I didn’t skip a beat.
It didn’t matter to me at all – why would it?
It’s their choice.
It’s also their bravery and life.
Isn’t that what matters?
There’s been a lot of fear mongering – just as at one point in “history”, it was rumoured females were witches, and many were actually murdered with that aspersion.
Homosexuality also used to be illegal in Western, democractic countries, and we would punish and damage those who were.
We evolve as humans, and at each level and at each layer, we learn to be more human, more evolved, more spacious in our hearts and minds.
Fear is the only thing to be suspicious of. Fear drives us to a different mode than love does.
Love expands, fear contracts. Isn’t that what they say?
Is it true? Fear leads to hate…
There’s a fear by some that transgender are using their identity to harm others, to rape, to molest, but as we all know, that’s not backed by evidence or reality.
Individuals are far more likely to be raped, molested and abused by the state and in some religious circles, and in society, by those who appear as upstanding and “successful” individuals.
We know of Harvey Weinstein, we know of Mohamed Al-Fayed, we know of Donald Trump too. There are so many, and yet we never say that it is all white men that do that because instinctively we know stereotypes are just that – stereotypes.
Live and let live
David Seymour took on the identity of Māori the other day when he attacked the United Nations for their critique of his “dangerous” Regulatory Standards Bill.
He did it because he lacks inner nourishment. He puts on cloaks as arguments – always to parry and defend. It must be tiring.
Cloaks don’t matter, status doesn’t, nor our professed words.
The only thing that matters is the heart, how we choose our energies, and where we put our time and attention.
And choose we do.
I am under no illusion that the externals are far less important than the inner workings of us all.
I’ve seen victims of racism be racist to others.
I’ve seen the persecuted turn around and persecute others.
The person I protect could be the offender tomorrow.
Protection starts within each person – guarding our own sanctity, flaws and all, is the best way to protect that which matters.
Someone said it better: “Be the change you want to see”
I understand the intent to protect children and to reflect and consider.
I don’t discount any of that – but I also urge those who are fearful of transgender to look into who is really harming children.
I ask you why you don’t care that the Auditor General has told you that National and ACT’s Oranga Tamariki changes will hurt vulnerable tamariki and their families.
I ask you why you don’t care that our national child agency is saying they can’t cope and children will get hurt.
I ask you why you don’t care that David Seymour’s ECE changes are being called out as potentially leading to the death of babies – babies!
I wonder why so many of you grieved the loss of the innocent American Kyle Whorrall in our lands, yet I wondered how many of you who have mocked him if we were still alive.
I ask you why you focus on a small section of the population who already face discrimination and hurdles of their own – and who have never been shown as a group to hurt anyone else.
I’m not not conservative.
My instinct is to be conservative – I understand the urge to protect people, and children, I understand the urge to take things slowly and be careful when it comes to kids. I understand to allow people to change and learn over time. I understand that we all have our innate biases and comforts. I understand the need to analyse and review research before jumping to conclusions and I understand trade offs.
But I’m also a huge fan of listening, especially to those who do no harm. A huge fan of learning and dialogue.
So let us be, but also let us find the patience, resilience and an ability to find our inner courage for each other – whatever our views on the matter.
Thank you for this Post, Mountain Tui. I wish everyone would just let people live their authentic lives. 👍
Absolutely. Everyone has a natural right to be themselves and to express that whichever way they like. The interesting aspect is that humans use an operational dyad: authenticity plus simulation. It appears to be a key driver of social darwinism.
So a person exploring sexuality for the first time may be strongly attracted to the opposite sex – or not. They can only discover their own balance of anima/animus (Jung) via the interplay with others. Thus we experiment with shifting between authenticity and simulation. I found that I adapted into a social persona via role play, despite being encultured into introversion as a child. When you play a role you simulate a role model.
There is no LGBTQI+++++ community. There are same sex attracted people and there are straight people.
Men can never be Lesbians despite how many magical incantations of "I identify as" they utter.
People are harmed by Gender Ideology. It harms women and it specially harms Lesbians.
https://womensdeclarationusa.com/lesbians-in-the-crosshairs-how-the-forced-teaming-of-lgb-with-tq-has-harmed-lesbians/
Yes Visubversa. I totally agree.
Men as lesbians, what rubbish. Often used as a pick up move to have het-sex. That kind of sex is not what lesbains are all about, despite those men who swear all is needed is a bit of dick. (sorry to be explicit but this is a common held view of some men.)
Men dressing as women, chopping off bits of themselves, taking heavy duty pharmaceuticals does not ever make them a woman.
The conflation of same-sex attraction with obviously untrue identity claims is profoundly offensive.
Yes that is it at the crux of it.
That plus addled magical Humpty Dumpty thinking that if I am a man and if I say I am a woman I am.
Plus the danger to women in all of this.
Danger, absolutely. The idea that allowing men into women-only spaces poses no risk to women is just bizarre, and it's often held by people who otherwise think of "unsafe" in terms as trivial as someone expressing opinions they don't like.
Absolutely agree DF with some provisos
1 the oft quoted 'doing it in the streets and frightening the horses' This despite what some say is censorship is actually not. It is about owning the effect that your actions may have on others. No problem with what you do in the privacy of your own home as long as it is not illegal and doesn't 'frighten the horses'.
2 the beauty, learning and breadth of discretion. To make our points we don't need to shout, rush, frighten or tip sauce bottles over anyone. We don't even need to shout over those we disagree with. That is where discretion comes in.
We recognise that others have a right to listen and learn from whomever they want. Some of the most powerful protests I have seen are those with good placards and where the protestors stood absolutely silent. I think I saw an anti abortion protest like that and I definitely saw several silent anti apartheid protests. Eventually you see the audience take an interest in the posters being held, their eyes quietly swivel to read the placards.
Using the thugs veto is a low value protest move. Eg at Albert Park in 2023 and we see it in some protests against a mayoral candidate at the moment in Wellington. Doing so signals that the thuggers don't actually value the tenets of democracy at all.
In those cases where women are protesting against values esposued by men, the men involved have a significant advantage in the strength stakes over women. When these actions are used against women especially women trying to defend themselves, or others, then it reflects on the shovers, pushers, tippers of sauce bottles or it should.
Too often it is the strong, the pushers, the ones with the loudest voices that somehow other people think are making wonderful points as they deny the rights of others to watch, listen and make their own points by asking questions.
3 when sexuality is involved then frightening women in places where they should feel safe is an appalling breach of the discretion available to us all, even those who are transitioning. Even before the growth of men dressed as women in women's toilets a woman going to public toilets was a risky exercise. We didn't know who was in there and what state they had left the place in. Every time women go to use a public toilet we put our lives in danger. This is why often women go in twos or groups. This is why in the toilets below the Michael Fowler Centre, years ago, women were gathered silently with other women until a man had come out of the women's toilets and gone on his way.
Men dressed as men were lurking in womens toilets long before men dressed as women were.
4 In the olden days they called it the 'urinary leash'. It kept women close to home. Women felt able to go to toilets in department stores or even public toilets as these were often policed at the door.
5 Wellington has some fancy dancy toilets. Well two sets actually. All so-called uni-sex One at each end of Courtenay Place. I went to use one, it was covered in urine sprayed over the seat, the floor, toilet paper strewn about and paper towels also…..I zoomed out. The light up loos may be an art work but unless they keep women safe, and we are able to be in clean toilets, they are useless. WCC would have been better to have brought back some toilets specifically for women with attendants, but no.
Why do you suppose Georgina Beyer was so beloved in red neck NZ ?.Elected mayor of Carterton …a rural farming town..back in the 1990s, and winning the right leaning electorate of Wairarapa for Labour in 1999, while being openly and proudly transgender, or trans sexual as it would have been described in those days.
I think it was because she was utterly authentically trans, she did not require or insist that others believe she was an actual biological woman.She knew she wasn't a woman…and that humility and honesty meant that most NZers were more than happy to accept her as she was , a beautiful, empathetic, humorous human being.
And yet this is the precise thing that many of you anti-trans activists won't allow. Please do go on though.
You're still not getting it
The problem now is the insistence that transwomen are women, and if women don't actually believe that and don't wish to pretend they do,
they're absolutely rubbished by all and sundry as hateful bigots. Women have had an absolute gutsful of being defined by men…this is so familiar to us
It's not a female issue or identity at risk – but all I heard from you was "me, me, me" Fancy defining offence in your identity because someone makes a choice on how they view their own life.
That would be absolutely fine in my book , live and let live, but allow women to have their own spaces, thats all we ask.When a male bodied person insists on their right to female spaces because they think they’re a woman, thats actively impacting biological women, not quite as passive as you’re making out.When a male bodied person insists on taking part in competitive womens sports, that’s again actively impacting women, its making a choice that has the potential to damage women .
And for gods sake , allow people to have their own sexual preferences without being told they’re bigots for not being in the least interested in penises.
Hmm, women (free to be themselves) identifying as men – the poor deluded, sexually confused, fragile wee 'things' – they can dress as men, “chop off bits of themselves, and take heavy duty pharmaceuticals“, but that does not nor will it ever ever make them men (thank you Ms Bartlett OBE).
Still, if their behaviours are legal (without harm to another), then their unsettling “magical incantations“ are really none of my business.
You are not getting it though, deliberately and possibly in an anti female way.
The ones we knew absolutely knew they were men who sometimes dressed as women. Of course often for sexual reasons.
They had no desire to fool their friends or insist that their friends saw them as something that they were not. They did not live/dress as the other sex full time, though one had a certain amount of pride that he was able to hold a job as a woman. Of course if we ever saw him at work we were polite and addressed him as the person he was when he got the job.
We socialised with them for long hours. No way did they ever insist that they were women when they dressed as women. Hence our mild astonishment with the knocking on the door of the women’s toilets to see if they could come in when one of their’s was not working.
Of course they treated us with care, kindness, laughs. We treated them like-wise.
The big difference between now and then was the lack of pretence/artifice. There was no expectation of a belief that they had magically become women just because they wore women's clothing. We knew they hadn't, they knew they hadn't.
But the current times we are expected to believe that it is actually possible for a man to become a woman. Biologically this is not possible.
All that can be expected is varying degrees of passing or not, or acceptance or not. Our genes are encoded as to which of the sexes we are.
And yes they were most definitely same sex attracted and most definitely women protectors as well as friends. How different to now when women are scorned, we are to believe that dresses make them female…..
I agree. Many of the ones like Georgina Beyer are a different type from now. As a uni student I socialised with what we called cross dressers or Transvestites. No-one in our circle ever belived they were women, sometimes they even socialised dressed as men ie after they had come straight from work.
And no, they did not force themselves into the ladies loos at the pubs, they still used the men's because, wait for it, they knew they were still men.
I still remember to this day being in the women's and hearing a knocking at the door though. No-one came in which was usual if it had been the male cleaner. Puzzled several of us went to the door and there was Fxxxx……problems in the mens with one of the stalls they used, was it Ok if they came and used the womens. Of course.
Yes, in our young days the trans identified people were all same sex attracted. Now there are a lot of the men who are sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as women, plus a bunch of sissy porn addled wierdo types, and chancers who want the publicity and to win in women's sports because they are mediocre at best in men's sports.
Yes to the blots these men are in women's sports.
I'm glad you raised this in the way you have.
I'll add my 10c worth and say how difficult it is for straight people to understand what one could say is a parallel universe and terms that seem to change and coventions and lifestyles that, with the best will in the world, we simply can't imagine.
Like, if someone refers to themselves as queer that's ok, but it's not ok for me to do the same. It's a world I don't inhabit. With the best will in the world, because I don't inhabit it, it's incredibly difficult for me to avoid putting my foot in my mouth occasionally.
I remember reading the term LGBT community for the first time. In an earlier time, thanks to an inheritance, I had an MGBGT and I spent ages trying to work out why car officicianados would be linked to (what I now know to call) the rainbow community. Straight people really are that naive.
So I'm making a plea to the rainbow community to understand the straight community's difficulties and not to presume discrimination from a lack of understanding.