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  "description": "The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill has been drawn from the ballot. I want to explain why I cannot endorse it.",
  "path": "/defining-women-without-fixing-the-law/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-13T22:30:16.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Penny Marie",
    "Let Kids Be Kids",
    "Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill",
    "New Zealand First@nzfirst",
    "Penny Marie NZ"
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  "textContent": "Penny Marie and Let Kids Be Kids\n_Mum, Woman, Female. NZ based independent investigative reporter, researcher, writer, coach, truth seeker. Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ._\n\n**_I want to be honest with you about something: This piece is going to frustrate some people who consider themselves aligned with my views._**\n\nNZ First is the only party in parliament with the courage to even attempt this conversation. Winston Peters and his caucus have consistently stood in rooms where others have gone quiet, and that matters. I have respect for them. I have gratitude for them. I addressed the NZ First Convention on 6 September 2025, and I said to them directly what I am about to say to you. So this is not an attack from the outside. This is what I told them and their members – because I believe they deserve honesty more than they need cheerleading.\n\nThe Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, introduced by NZ First MP Jenny Marcroft and now drawn from the ballot, would insert new sections 13A and 13B into the **Legislation Act 2019** , defining _woman_ as _an adult human biological female_ and _man_ as _an adult human biological male_. Public polling shows majority support. The intent is genuinely good. But a careful reading of where gender ideology actually entered New Zealand law – and how – tells me this bill addresses the wrong problem.\n\nNew Zealand First@nzfirst\n\n## The real problem is not the word _woman_. It is the word _sex_.\n\nThe activist overreach that sex-based rights advocates have documented over the past decade does not flow from any ambiguity in how legislation defines _woman_. It flows from the Human Rights Commission’s interpretation of **_sex_** – a word that appears in **section 21 of the Human Rights Act 1993** as a prohibited ground of discrimination, but which is not defined in that act. The HRC has, for years, taken the position that gender identity and expression fall within the scope of “sex” as a prohibited ground. That interpretation is embedded in its guidance, its communications, and its complaint-handling.\n\nThe bill does not define “sex”. It does not amend the Human Rights Act. **It does not constrain the HRC’s interpretation of sex in any enforceable way.** A defined “woman” in the Legislation Act does not tell the commission – or any tribunal – what “sex” means in the act the commission actually administers. The lever that matters has not been touched.\n\n## There is a second problem, and it cuts in the other direction\n\nBoth new sections open with the phrase _regardless of gender identity_. That phrase introduces **“gender identity”** as a named legal concept into the Legislation Act for the first time.\n\nCurrently, it has no legislative footprint there. This bill would give it one. For those of us who argue that gender identity is a contested philosophical construct that should not appear in statute at all – this is not a small concession. Naming a concept in law, even to override it, is still naming it. That is the opposite of the direction we have been calling for.\n\n## What I said to NZ First leadership and party members\n\nAt the NZ First Convention I said this:\n\n“I’m done working only with the low-hanging fruit. We need to get to the core of the issues assaulting our society.” – Penny Marie\n\nThe Marcroft bill is, by that measure, exactly the kind of low-hanging fruit I was describing. It adjusts a definition without touching the legislative infrastructure through which gender ideology was actually introduced into New Zealand law.\n\n### Watch the speech I gave at the NZ First Convention in 2025\n\nThat infrastructure is specific and traceable.\n\n  * The **Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act 2022** compels affirmation-only responses to gender-confused children and puts counsellors, parents, and religious communities at legal risk if they explore root causes or alternative frameworks.\n  * The **Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 2021** introduced a self-identification process that allows individuals to change the sex recorded on their birth certificate through a statutory declaration alone – no medical requirement – a mechanism that has been used to advance the narrative that legal sex and biological sex are legally separable concepts.\n\n\n\nNeither of these acts is touched by the NZ First bill.\n\n## I asked NZ First leadership directly at the convention\n\n“So what are you personally, what is NZ First, willing to do in the run-up to next year’s election, to fix what certainly is an ideological takeover of legislation, policy and crown agencies? We are seeing social engineering coming through our education. It doesn’t look like it’s being corrected under the current coalition government.” – Penny Marie\n\nThey heard the full analysis that day:\n\n  * The Yogyakarta Principles pipeline\n  * The Human Rights Commission’s activist role\n  * The downstream effects on school policy\n  * And a specific list of entities I put forward for investigation:\n    * All DEI policy and legislation\n    * Trans and rainbow charity funding\n    * Media\n    * The Human Rights Commission\n    * The Ministry of Education\n    * The Ministry of Health.\n\nThe call I made at the end of my NZ First speech\n\n> **A members’ bill defining “woman” in the Legislation Act does not trigger any of those investigations. It does not repeal the acts that gave gender ideology its statutory footing – the two acts named in this article.**\n\nI used a metaphor in my address that I still think is right.\n\n“We slid off the cliff, and at the bottom is a broken and battered ambulance. So how do we climb back up?” – Penny Marie\n\nThe Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill is not the climb. It is a definitional patch applied to the ambulance.\n\nThe climb – the actual legislative correction New Zealand – requires:\n\n  1. The repeal of the **Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act 2022** , which chills counsellor and parental freedom to explore anything other than gender affirmation with gender-confused children.\n  2. And the correction of the self-identification provisions in the **Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 2021** , which severed the legal connection between recorded sex and biological sex.\n\n\n\nUntil those acts are addressed, a new definition of “woman” in the Legislation Act is a footnote to a much larger failure.\n\nI said this to NZ First. I’m saying it to you now. I do not think less of them for the attempt. But I will not pretend this is the fix when I know – and they surely know – that it isn’t.\n\nThis article was originally published by Penny Marie NZ.",
  "title": "Defining Women Without Fixing the Law",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-13T22:30:15.852Z"
}