Submission: Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill

Submission from Brooke Hart

Kia ora,

My name is Brooke. I'm a woman in my thirties and have lived in Auckland for my entire life. Matters of sex and gender affect me personally, and in particular are relevant to my safety and ability to participate in public life.

I own my own home, and work full-time as a software engineer. I live a relatively normal life. I spend time with my family, walk to the dairy to buy milk, go out to dinner. In my late teens I was a competitive athlete, and was proud to represent Aotearoa internationally.

I have an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering which, coupled with my own medical history, has led to a deep appreciation for the complexity of biological sex.

This bill is a Trojan horse intended to smuggle hate speech into our laws

Prior to the Bill first being proposed on 22 April 2025, NZ First had accepted two petitions asking for a bill like this.

These petitions were each made by organisations that are well-known for campaigning to restrict the rights of queer people in Aotearoa, often with a focus on restricting the rights of trans women in particular. It appears clear that these petitions were the inspiration behind this bill.

Both petitions were made prior to the sessional order on electronic petitions with highly discriminatory content, which was passed on 31 March 2026. It is not immediately clear whether or not they would have been permitted under current rules.

Family First petition

On 7 August 2024, a petition from Bob McCoskrie's far-right Christian lobby group "Family First" was accepted by NZ First MPs Winston Peters and Tanya Unkovich.

The Family First petition asked:

That the House of Representatives define "woman" as "an adult human female" in all New Zealand laws, public policies, and regulations

The petition did not propose a definition for "female".

Because Parliament does not accept electronic petitions that were not hosted on the Parliament website the petition had only a single signature, presumably McCoskrie's. It also asked the House of Representatives to:

note that 23,531 people have signed a similar online petition.

This "similar online petition" in question was part of Family First's "What is a woman?" lobbying campaign that ran for over a year from its launch on 19 July 2023 until the petition was presented on 7 August 2024.

The government response to the Family First petition said:

the request of the petitioner to define ‘woman’ as ‘an adult human female’ in all New Zealand laws, public policies and regulations would be both resource-intensive and not have the desired impact as legislation does not frequently use this term.

We believe the resources required to fulfil the petitioners’ requests in-full would create more positive impacts for women and girls in New Zealand by way of direct investment in areas like in health, education and employment.

Family First has a long history of anti-queer campaigning, including:

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that Family First does not qualify for charitable status, saying that:

[Family First's] purposes are discriminatory - it advocates for measures to prefer the traditional family to the disadvantage of others.

Family First's advocacy is not fair, balanced or respectful, so its advocacy is not charitable.

Family First had earlier been de-registered as a charity in 2013 due to its campaigning against same-sex marriage.

Speak Up for Women petition

On 25 March 2025, a second petition from anti-trans hate group "Speak Up For Women" (SUFW) was accepted by NZ First MP Tanya Unkovich.

SUFW was founded in 2018 specifically to oppose the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill (BDMRR). This bill updated the process by which people - including trans people - born in Aotearoa could update their name and sex marker on their birth certificates. Where the previous process required involving the Family Court, the new process introduced by the Bill was significantly streamlined and was commonly referred to as "self-identification".

Since the BDMRR Bill was passed unanimously at its third reading on 9 December 2021 - a vote for which half the members of this committee were present - SUFW and its original founders have continued to campaign to restrict and deny the rights of trans women in particular.

The SUFW petition asked:

That the House of Representatives defines that "sex" in the Human Rights Act 1993 and any other legislation has the biological meaning.

The petition did not propose a "biological meaning" for "sex".

The Petitions Committee's report on the SUFW petition directed SUFW to the government response to the Family First petition, and also noted that:

[Speak Up for Women] is particularly concerned that trans women not be permitted to use services designated for women.

Both petitioning organisations were told to wait for the Law Commission's Ia Tangata report. That has since been published, and the government response on 24 February 2026 was to say legal reform in this area was not a priority:

The Government acknowledges the Commission’s findings and recommendations. As the Government currently has significant commitments and priorities in the Justice portfolio, progressing the Commission’s recommendations is not a priority at this time.

This bill being inspired by two petitions comes with an implication that its existence is driven by popular support. However, two other petitions that have arisen in opposition to the Bill demonstrate that things are not so simple.

In response to the Bill's first appearance, a counter-petition to Parliament by Tu Chapman gathered 10,602 signatures over three months. It took eight days to surpass the number of signatures on SUFW's three month petition. This counter-petition asked:

That the House of Representatives order that the proposed members’ bill Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, or any bill that is the same in substance, may not be introduced.

Although this was not a likely outcome, the petition became a sort of rallying cry where people could make known their opposition to this bill before it had been drawn from the ballot.

Following the Bill being drawn from the ballot, a second counter-petition titled They Don't Speak for Us was started on the website ActionStation:

As cis women in Aotearoa, we’re standing alongside our trans whānau and calling on all members of this Government to affirm everyone’s right to exist as who they are in society, and vote against the Legislation (Definition of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill at its second reading.

We’re making it clear: transgender women are women, and we stand alongside them.

They don’t speak for us - this Bill is not in our name!

This petition surpassed the number of signatures on SUFW's three month petition within four hours. It surpassed the number of signatures on Family First's 13 month petition in less than a month.

Of course, there's more to this matter than merely public support. Even if it were true that there was, in general, public support for this bill I would still believe opposing it is the morally right action. However, given the implication of public support due to this bill's background, I wanted to dispel this myth in my submission.

Cases where the tyranny of the majority leads to discrimination against minorities under a democratic system do not imply such discrimination has a moral basis. I believe Parliament has an ethical obligation to safeguard against the introduction of discriminatory laws even in cases where they could be said to have popular support.

The Bill's relationship to hate speech

The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill was first proposed within a month of the SUFW petition being accepted, and uses a combination of wording from the two petitions:

(a) woman means an adult human biological female; and
(b) female means a human biological female.

Like both petitions, the Bill does not propose a definition for either "biological" or "female". Equivalent definitions are also proposed for "man" and "male".

The specific wording that this bill intends to elevate to law is a type of political slogan often referred to as a "dog whistle" - one that is designed to be understood by those who share the underlying (typically discriminatory) ideology while appearing benign to those who do not.

An example of a dog whistle you may already be familiar with is "family values", which is often used to signal an anti-queer ideology while appearing unrelated to queer rights to outside observers.

"Adult human female"

The specific phrase "adult human female", as offered in Family First's petition and lightly modified for this bill, rose to prominence in 2018 when anti-trans hate group founder Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (also known as Posie Parker) paid £700 to put up a billboard in Liverpool that read:

woman
wʊmən
noun
adult human female

Keen-Minshull visited New Zealand in March 2023. Gender Minorities Aotearoa, Inside OUT Kōaro, and Auckland Pride organised legal action to attempt to bar her from entering the country out of fear for her inciting transphobic violence. Her visit to New Zealand was supported by SUFW and promoted by Family First.

The phrase "adult human female", specifically as a proposed definition for the word "woman", has been used for years as part of coordinated anti-trans hate campaigns both locally and abroad.

SUFW paid to put up their own billboard with the same messaging on it in Wellington in 2021. The billboard was removed by Go Media within 24 hours, who said they "believe it maybe [sic] in breach of ASA codes".

"Biological female"

Similarly, over the past several years the term "biological female" has also risen in prominence as an anti-trans dog whistle, where it's frequently used as a stand in for "cis woman". It has become a common sight in increasingly transphobic British media such as the BBC.

This has been documented by various international queer rights organisations such as US-based GLAAD and UK-based TACC. A 2025 open letter from dozens of biologists and healthcare professionals in the UK, titled Biology is not binary, laid this out:

Like “biological sex”, the terms “biological woman” and “biological man”, used by the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission] and others, are often not used as scientific terms but political ones. To our knowledge, neither the [UK Supreme] court nor the EHRC has attempted to define “biological sex”.

The specific request from SUFW for the word "biological" to be used in any definition, despite the lack of any definition of "biological" in this context, reflects its use as a political slogan rather than a useful definition.

This bill is part of a larger context

The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill was dropped and re-introduced twice between its initial introduction on 22 April 2025 and its eventual drawing from the ballot on 2 April 2026. NZ First's recent approach to using members' bills to generate press releases has been well documented. The Spinoff published an article about this behaviour on 6 November 2025, when the Bill was re-introduced after having been dropped for a different bill two days earlier.

The Wikipedia page for this bill quotes the NZ First chief of staff regarding this strategy for an earlier anti-trans member's bill proposed by the party:

According to NZ First chief of staff Darroch Ball, the withdrawal of the "bathroom legislation" was part of the party's tactic of submitting, withdrawing and replacing member's bills as a means of "generating headlines."

Other anti-trans dog whistles, such as references to the "safety of women and girls", have been used in NZ First press releases regarding this bill. This rhetoric rests on the implied myths that trans women and girls pose a threat to cis women and girls, and are neither women nor girls.

This bill is part of ongoing international efforts to legislate trans people out of society. This campaign has waxed and waned over the years, but has been ongoing for decades. In 1979, Janice Raymond wrote in her book The Transsexual Empire:

the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence

Her words were echoed recently by Michael Knowles, speaking at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference in the US:

for the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely

These attempts to push trans people out of public life have often been driven by "bathroom bans" such as the one previously proposed but since withdrawn by NZ First. To be unable to access bathrooms in public has the side effect of restricting how long trans people can exist in public before needing to seek a private bathroom. Existence in community or competitive sports has been another example of a common wedge issue used specifically to push trans women in particular out of public life.

I have been keenly aware of transmisogynistic hate speech both locally and internationally for some time. Based on this experience, and on the background of this bill, it is my opinion that the incoherency of this bill's definitions is by design. The absence of a working definition is a feature, rather than a bug.

The Bill seems designed to both invite people to consider how they might define terms such as "woman", and encourages media to discuss the topic using the language in the Bill such as "biological female". In my opinion, this bill is very similar to the billboards put up by Keen-Minshull and SUFW. I believe all the evidence I have discussed in my submission so far strongly implies that its real primary purpose is to raise the profile of anti-trans hate speech.

I am concerned, given that this bill passed its first reading, that Parliament is not properly equipped to manage this sort of hate speech Trojan horse.

Our current legal definition of sex

The definitions that are proposed in the Bill are circular. However, the quality of the definitions is not the problem here. Changing the definitions would do nothing to salvage this bill. In truth, Aotearoa already has working legal definitions for terms such as "man", "woman", "male", and "female" that are fit for purpose. These definitions come about via the BDMRR bill, which as already mentioned was passed unanimously in 2021 and was voted for by half the members of this committee.

Roughly speaking, here is how the current legal definition of "sex" works in Aotearoa:

For those of us born in Aotearoa:

First, when a person is born, a doctor views their external genitalia and decides on a sex marker to record on their birth certificate. Most often this record is either "Male" or "Female", however a small number of people are born with ambiguous external genitalia and in this case "Indeterminate" may be recorded.

Second, under circumstances laid out in the BDMRR Act, a person may apply to update the sex marker on their birth certificate. Doing so involves making a statutory declaration, and alongside "Male" and "Female", "Non-binary" is an option that can be applied for.

Other documentation, such as passports, may have similar sex markers but the birth certificate is typically considered the primary "source of truth".

For those of us not born in Aotearoa, the situation is more complicated. However, the broad strokes are the same: a doctor makes a determination at birth based on the appearance of a person's external genitalia, and later in life that person may need to go through some process to correct the information if the doctor got things wrong.

What is sex, actually?

For most people, most of the time, the first step here regarding the appearance of external genitalia at birth is good enough. It's used as a heuristic to predict several other characteristics that might arise in a person as they grow, and we often refer to these as "sex characteristics".

In truth, the concept of "sex" itself is a social construct. Humans have made both collective and individual decisions about what does and does not count as a "sex characteristic".

Most people, most of the time, exhibit certain groups of these characteristics. For example, a person born with a vulva is likely to grow breasts in their teens, whereas a person born with a penis is likely to develop facial hair around the same age. These two common modes have led to the categories "male" and "female", even though not everyone fits neatly within those boxes.

In truth, sex is very complicated. If there are eight billion people on Earth, then there are eight billion combinations of human sex characteristics. Grouping people by common traits makes sense in many circumstances, but where more precision is needed this approach is no longer fit for purpose. This is why, for example, in the medical profession more precise language such as "people who menstruate" or "people with a prostate" are often used instead.

The complexity of sex is explained well in the opening to the Biology is not binary open letter:

The term “biological sex” has been used to sort all people into one of two groups. However, a strict, binary categorisation is an over-simplification. An individual’s “sex” is in fact made up of a collection of characteristics, including external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones, and may be better described as bimodal [3]. Each of these traits can vary beyond two categories and may or may not coincide with other measures of sex within the same individual. Thus, a binary, immutable model of sex is not capable of capturing biological diversity present in human populations, and as a result it is an unsafe basis for policy. The medical and scientific community has accepted for some time that there is significant complexity in this area. Recently, both doctors and scientists, including Nobel laureates, have raised concerns about the impact of this oversimplification on human rights [4].

[3] https://bagis.co.uk/position-process-statements/

[4] https://not-binary.org/statement/

The simple model - that there are two sexes, which are both immutable and easily observable - is more of a historical artifact than a basis for law.

This over-simplified "Adam and Eve" model is typically the first model of sex and gender that we are introduced to as children. This is similar to how we begin teaching physics with simplified models such as being told that all matter exists as either a solid, liquid, or gas.

For most of us, this simplified model is likely to serve us perfectly well in everyday life. But it's only if we take our physics education further that we might learn about more complex and correct models that describe such phenomena as supercritical fluid. For some of us, understanding these more complex phenomena is necessary.

Similarly, those of us whose lives or work requires deeper knowledge of sex and gender quickly move past the Adam and Eve model and learn more complex and more accurate models. We learn about things such as intersex conditions, and about how introducing exogenous hormones can cause substantive changes to many human sex characteristics.

If Parliament were to enact a law stating that "All matter is a solid, liquid, or gas" then, similar to this bill, it would solve no real problem, offer no actual clarity, and be inconsistent with reality.

Although the poorly drafted definitions in this bill would not achieve it, based on its history and inspirations it is clear that the legislative intent behind this bill is to legislate the over-simplified Adam and Eve model of sex. This is deeply unhelpful. It solves no real problem, instead attempting to supplant an existing system that works very well (at least for those of us born in Aotearoa). It is a badly drafted attempt to write a falsehood into law.

Protecting the safety of women

This bill having been voted through its first reading has already emboldened transphobes in Aotearoa. During a social outing I recently encountered a person who told a group of queer women who strongly oppose the Bill that they did not agree, and went on to advocate for sending any trans women sentenced to imprisonment to men's prisons. They cited a motivation to "protect women" from sexual assault in prisons.

The 2022 Counting Ourselves survey of trans and non-binary people in Aotearoa asked:

In your whole life, has anyone forced you, or tried to force you, to have sexual intercourse when you did not want to?

32% of trans women who participated in this survey answered that they had. This contrasts with 25% of all women who answered this question in the same way in the NZ Crime and Victims Survey 2021/22.

Campaigns to discriminate against trans women typically ignore these aspects of the society we live in, instead resting on myths that centre on the supposed danger that trans women pose to other women. The unfortunate reality is that trans women are far more likely to be the victims of sexual or physical violence than cis women. 46% of participants on the 2022 Counting Ourselves survey reported that they had experienced deliberate physical violence. 25% of trans women reported that they had received threats of physical violence due to being trans.

The way this bill raises the profile of anti-trans hate speech will serve to feed the social stigma that drives these harmful behaviours. Counting Ourselves also reported that trans and nonbinary people were far more likely than the general public to feel unsafe or very unsafe during activities such as waiting for or using public transport such as buses and trains at night. This fear - often provoked by very real danger - serves to push trans people to the edges of society.

Similar to attempts to ban trans people from using public bathrooms, the larger picture is an attempt to forcefully exclude trans people from society by whatever means are available. Wrapped in the language of "protecting women", the true effect of this bill would be to make a group of marginalised women in Aotearoa less safe. This is not something that should be tolerated in Aotearoa.

Recommendations

This bill is unsalvageable. It should be scrapped in its entirety.