Why do so many conspiracy theorist parties have “gender ideology” policies?

Really this is five claims, all bunk, of varying levels of conspiracy theorist beliefs. We’ll break down where the theories have come from, the techniques used to push these beliefs and why they are harmful to Aotearoa New Zealand’s social cohesion. 

A nefarious other is grooming children via “gender ideology” to make us transhuman and depopulate the world. That’s why they are grooming children in schools. Only by electing a minor party can we reverse the indoctrination.

• Anti-LGBTQIA+ propaganda is used as a bridging issue that can lead to more extreme beliefs and real world harm to members of the community.
• Grooming children is real and needs attention, but the majority of the grooming is done by people close to or in the family, not by the LGBTQIA+ community or drag queens.
• Gender Ideology is not even a thing. It is a buzz word used to scaremonger, to say that the visibility of LGBTQIA+ people is harming a mythical “traditional family.” 
• Transhumanism is a real movement, and may have ideas on the future of gender. But that has no bearing on LGBTQIA+ communities, who are looking to enjoy equal rights.
• And no, “gender ideology” is not a ploy to depopulate the world. In fact, people of all genders would like to have the right to have children too.
• It’s not true that schools are grooming children into “gender ideology”. Schools release their sex education programmes for feedback from parents, and are based on up to date research and best practices.

Often, social issues are used as a bridge between far-right, conspiracist, and religious groups, cloaked in euphemisms and half-truths. Many anti-vaccine and anti-mandate conspiracy theorists in New Zealand pivoted to anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric this year from fear-mongering that appealed to their meta-conspiratorial minds. It was a seamless transition. And that’s because their beliefs in some overarching conspiracy theories lend well to othering people in all forms.

FALSE CONSPIRACY THEORY 1: “Grooming”

This is the idea that the LGBTQIA+ community enter children’s spaces to turn them gay/trans/lesbian, or because they are paedophiles. This is not true, but that doesn’t stop the false information being spread. Attacks against Drag Queen Story Hours at Libraries are full of this rhetoric, suggesting the Queens are only reading to children to “groom” them into their ideology. 

The talking points used by anti-LQBTQIA+ activists are almost identical to those used to oppose homosexual law reform in the past. To this point, the use of the word groomer in this instance is regressive and inflammatory. During the 1970’s it was predominantly used against gay men, calling them a danger to children. It’s now used mostly against trans people. ‘Groomer’ has a specific meaning, “manipulative behaviours that the abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught.”

Research has consistently found no link between homosexuality and child abuse. But that doesn’t stop the false information being spread. 

FALSE CONSPIRACY THEORY 2: “Gender politics” is used to undermine “traditional family values.”

This theory suggests LGBTQIA+ people are motivated by a plot to destroy the family unit in order to cause the collapse of western society. They see familial structures as the cornerstone of the West, with a father at the head, a mother, and then the children below. Any break in this structure will cause chaos. Some say there are people trying to break this social order to corrupt society, and often blame this on Marxists, Socialists or/and Jewish people.

Conspiracists cast queer rights activists as sinister agents trying to undermine society – rather than ordinary members of society asking for their rights to be observed. They think that people are being “brainwashed” into the beliefs of the conspiracists’ over-arching-evil-of-choice, making them pawns in an evil agenda.

While it’s true that the left of the political spectrum tends to lean towards social justice themes, LGBTQIA+ movements have sprung up from grassroots movements around the world. There are now many advocacy groups around the world still fighting for LGBTQIA+ people where their fundamental human rights are not taken seriously.

Numerous groups across society, including the LGBTQIA+, have campaigned to expand the meaning of “family”, to be more inclusive of all the ways people build their trusted family circles. A narrow definition of family can neglect the experiences of many people and can impact policy and programs.

FALSE CONSPIRACY THEORY 3: “They” want to make us “transhuman.”

The idea is that “gender ideology” is being used by “them” to butter us up for a future of enslavement to machines and “overlords.” “They” ranges from the United Nations to a “Jewish Cabal.”

Transhumanism in the real world is a philosophical and artistic movement that concerns itself with how technology intersects with human lives. It is frequently an inspiration for science-fiction, such as the cybernetic limbs found in Cyberpunk. What it isn’t, is a coordinated plot by global political and economic elites to transform the human species into something more than human.

“Transhumanism” conspiracy theories are often combined with others. For example, Kelvyn Alp from Counterspin Media claims there’s an international plot to divide and poison society so elites can take power, turn most people into transhuman slaves, and kill the rest.

Kelvyn links transhumanism to “The Great Reset,” “merging consciousness with AI,” “social credit system,” and “Geoengineering,” where those who do not comply are excluded from society. To Kelvyn, it’s “their” endgame.

Hannah Spierer also from Counterspin Media thinks transhumanism is the “real” objective of the World Economic Forum. At a Counterspin live event Hannah linked transhumanism to COVID vaccines while ex-AUT Lawyer Amy Benjamin told the crowd it is being “pushed through the radical transgender ideology” in order to “confuse our sexuality” and “de-sex us” with the next step being half human-half organic hybrids. She has also said “It’s about cultural corruption…an orchestrated agenda to corrupt the West… to corrupt the minds of people and families.”

Ex-broadcaster, conspiracy theorist, and current political party leader Liz Gunn has drawn parallels with today and Weimar Germany. This is disturbing for many reasons. 

Firstly, her argument was that Germany was depraved before Hitler took power, and that this “depravity” was used to springboard the NAZI takeover. But history tells us that the Nazi takeover was based on populist blaming and demonising of groups and a rhetoric that cast some people as evil and deserving of annihilation. The LQBTQIA+ community were among the first to be taken to concentration camps. Secondly, she was sharing this false information from a neo-Nazi website, showing that in her haste to reprimand the LQBTQIA+ community, she had believed an explicitly far-right website. The article praised Nazi’s response to what they call “degeneracy,” which was genocide. 

The claim that transgenderism is a top down project to create a transhumanist dystopia ignores decades of struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights. It dehumanises people by portraying them as dupes who only decided to be trans because a “big pharma” or a billionaire psy-op brainwashed them.

The claim that trans-activism is directed by billionaires opens the door to more sinister conspiracy theories. Anti-transhumanism conspiracies with clear antisemitic roots have also been mainstreamed in Gender Critical communities

FALSE CONSPIRACY THEORY 4: “Depopulation” and the “Great Replacement.”

LGBTQIA+ people are replacing “normal people” to reduce the population, making us more compliant to “Them.” This underpins many of these conspiracy theories and is fundamental in far-right ideology.

Some in “wellness” communities are ripe to believe that they’re being poisoned by “Big Pharma” or that pharmaceutical companies are promoting transgenderism in order to create a new market for their drugs, while the far-right believes it’s Jewish people. All these theories are abhorrent, this one has an extremely large death toll. 

NB: We do know what puberty blockers do, they’ve been used for decades for many reasons. And young children are not given “cross-gender” hormones.

Anti-trans activists will claim that teenagers are being supplied with experimental puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones, causing so-called ‘irreversible damage’ to children who have been misled into mistakenly identifying as transgender.

In reality, puberty blockers are a well-understood medicine that has been used for decades in treating cisgender (‘cis’ is a prefix meaning ‘same’ – a cisgender person is merely someone who is not transgender) youth experiencing precocious puberty. They are used to ‘pause’ puberty, giving the patient time to explore their options. They are considered safe and fully reversible by the medical community.

In New Zealand, testosterone and estrogen treatment require the patient to be 16 years old, and able to give informed consent.

Fears of creeping transhumanism give space for overt conspiracism in Gender Critical communities. In their rush to decry the ‘transhumanist agenda’, parts of the Gender Critical movement continue to inadvertently launder antisemitic conspiracy theories.

FALSE CONSPIRACY THEORY 5: Sex Education in schools is indoctrinating your children.

All of the above beliefs have led to a group of New Zealanders railing against parts of the New Zealand sex education curriculum. This cry, while abhorrent, is the most palatable to the public at large and is often used to veil more extreme views. 

Helen Houghton from New Conservatives has been touring the country, talking to Christian and Voices for Freedom groups, and telling tall tales about what children are being taught in sex education in school. The rhetoric mirrors international efforts from Conservative political outfit “Moms for Liberty” which has been harassing school boards in the name of “parental rights”. And we have seen something similar here, with Helen and local parents addressing school boards about the content of sex education programmes. 

The community is entitled to address the issue of curriculum content. Sex education curricula are publically shared with parents, and updated every two years. It’s hardly a secret plot to indoctrinate if it’s all publicly accessible. The curriculum takes great care to be up-to-date and age-appropriate. 

The attack on sexuality education using a school-by-school approach is an attempt to leverage individual schools’ desire to meet community needs by presenting a minority view as a large, even a majority one. This is achieved using tactics sourced from overseas to seed fear in schools and parts of local communities. By moving a minority of the community from acceptance to fear to panic, the movement seems bigger and more urgent than it is. In reality schools and teachers do want to keep their communities cohesive and well-integrated, which can make opposing a vocal and fearful minority challenging.  

Times change. New Zealanders widely accept the LGBTQIA+ community. And schools do a great job of trying to keep up with and preparing their students for our society. Voting for a minor party with regressive and conspiratorial policies isn’t going to change that.

BONUS FALSE CONSPIRACY THEORY: No, the Trans flag is not the same as the supposed “Minor Attracted” flag, and no-one is trying to add P for Paedophile to the LGBTQIA+ acronym. Honestly, takes just one minute to find the truth. One minute.

• In What Is a Woman?, Matt Walsh asks a question, but doesn’t like the answers | Science-Based Medicine: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/in-what-is-a-woman-matt-walsh-asks-a-question/ 
• ‘Unhinged conspiracy theorists’: Auckland drag queen targeted in Avondale library protest speaks out – NZ Herald: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/unhinged-conspiracy-theorists-auckland-drag-queen-targeted-in-avondale-library-protest-speaks-out/TE6BFUOXVJC6VFYMU4VAUAERTQ/ 
• Thousands reject anti-trans movement at rallies against Posie Parker tour | Stuff.co.nz: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/131595886/thousands-reject-antitrans-movement-at-rallies-against-posie-parker-tour 
• FACT Aotearoa Twitter thread showing many of NZs conspiracy theorist influencers involvement in the Posie Parker event: https://twitter.com/factaotearoa/status/1639113805761507328 
• The ‘Groomer’ Slur – ISD: https://www.isdglobal.org/explainers/the-groomer-slur/ 
• Expanding the definition of family to reflect our realities” https://theconversation.com/expanding-the-definition-of-family-to-reflect-our-realities-131743 
• Fears of creeping transhumanism give space for overt conspiracism in Gender Critical communities – The Skeptic: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2022/02/fears-of-creeping-transhumanism-give-space-for-overt-conspiracism-in-gender-critical-communities/ 
• Making Sense of the Racist Mass Shooting in Buffalo | The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/making-sense-of-the-racist-mass-shooting-in-buffalo
• Providing Health Services for Transgender People | Te Whatau Ora:
  https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/our-health-system/preventative-healthwellness/providing-health-services-for-transgender-people/
• Transgressive Transitions – The Disinformation Project: https://thedisinfoproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Transgressive-Transitions.pdf

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