I put Winston Peters in the naughty corner last week for his behaviour. I wish I was talking about the real man, but I’m actually referring to the photo of him that we had on the wall in the office – you might have spotted it if you’ve visited the Critic exhibition that has a larger-than-life image of that wall. We had originally found a picture of young Winny P while going through some old boxes of photos and I thought it would be funny to add him to the assortment of other crap we display, alongside a creepy photo of Chris Luxon that says ‘Big Mother is Watching You’ (don’t ask). But he doesn’t even get that status anymore after the recent shit he’s pulled. The photo is now face down.
News reporter Gryffin has written an article in this issue about Mr Peters’ actions. The Spark Notes is that his party proposed a member’s bill to ensure the term “woman” is interpreted as “an adult human biological female” and “man” as an “adult human biological male” across all laws. When RNZ asked how it would be enforced, he replied that transgender women wouldn’t be allowed in single-sex spaces, like sports teams or bathrooms. Most worryingly, he suggested people could be subjected to a “biological test” if they’re “going to make a claim that you have something you’re not”.
The bill comes hot off the heels of a UK Supreme Court decision in April that defined biological women, which known transphobe JK Rowling (who had backed the group pushing for the ruling) celebrated by posting a photo aboard her $150 million superyacht puffing a cigar, drink in hand, captioned: “I love it when a plan comes together.” Meanwhile, the trans community – a chronically marginalised and vulnerable group of people – are left feeling unsafe to live their lives in the public sphere. And now Peters has imported the culture war to Aotearoa, though he denies the UK case had any connection to his party’s members bill.
The Spinoff speculated that the bill may have been necessary to pass a bathroom bill, while pointing out that trans people in New Zealand make up around 0.7% of the population – though Peters seems to be making out that they’re waiting with malice to storm bathrooms, women’s bathrooms especially. In my experience, it’s the other way around, sneaking into the men’s bathroom at a concert when the women’s line is longer than my bladder’s capacity. Friends who aren’t cis-presenting are genuinely scared at this news, and understandably so. One shared that as a masc-presenting female, she already has anxiety in the bathroom: “I over exaggerate my femininity on purpose but now all it’ll take is someone thinking I’m trans and what? I have to whip my shit out to prove I can piss there?”
Winston has always been a problematic character in New Zealand politics. He’s been around forever and has found himself in pretty favourable political positions, being kingmaker in more than one national election. He seems to relish being a controversial character, too, and has a reputation for being antagonistic to journalists, often cutting them off in press conferences to tell them off in one way or another (as a journalist who already has people-pleasing issues, this would have me shitting myself). After a Critic interview in 2023 (I avoided the office on this occasion) he was described to me as a “surprisingly likeable” guy.
But Peters didn’t exactly come across as “likeable” when RNZ reporter Corin Dann asked questions that other parties had about importing a culture war to “distract from failures at home”. Peters unleashed hell on him, saying, “You’re a disgrace to the mainstream media,” accusing Dann of wasting taxpayer money and putting forward the argument of the “woke left”. Subtle.
He’s like your gruff great uncle who’s a hoot at Christmas, despite drinking all your whiskey, but who you avoid talking politics with (gets ugly and racist). It’s just a shame that being a politician is the defining character trait that he chooses to unleash on anyone unlucky enough to cross his path – and his latest target is the trans community. I hate to give him too much airtime, but it’s important to say to the students reading this who have felt targeted by the bill, and feel unsafe and scared by the transphobic rhetoric it’s imported, that Critic supports you. Hot take: we don’t think you should have to whip your shit out to prove anything to anyone.