Qtopia Condemns NZ FIrst’s “Definition of Woman” Bill

Qtopia condemns the passing of the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill at its first reading, and is calling on all parties to stop the bill in its tracks and instead implement the recommendations of the Law Commission’s Ia Tangata report on improving protections in the Human Rights Act for transgender people and those with innate variations of sex characteristics.

“Transgender people in Aotearoa face well-documented harm and health impacts due to the discrimination we still face in society,” says Jennifer Shields, Managing Director. “Despite Luxon correctly identifying that New Zealanders are interested in the cost of living and not New Zealand First’s far-right agenda, National are voting for this Bill anyway. By allowing this Bill to pass its first reading, National and Act are contributing to the harm trans people face in Aotearoa.”

The Bill has the potential to perpetuate significant harm to people in Aotearoa with innate variations of sex characteristics, by relying on outdated binary definitions of biological sex that typically undermine their bodily autonomy and broader human rights.

“Human sex is not a binary, rather a spectrum. There is a range of possibilities ranging from female to male, with the majority of people at either end, and a significant minority somewhere in between,” said Dr Ed Hyde, an obstetrics and gynecology specialist with a specialist interest in biology. “In Aotearoa, approximately 1.7% of the population is known to have an innate variation of sex characteristics.”

“This Bill does nothing to help anyone, and has come from disinformation about transgender people and Aotearoa’s human rights legislation,” says Shields. “It boggles my mind to have to say this in 2026, but transgender women do not pose an inherent risk to cisgender women. This Bill hearkens back to the days where people thought gay men were an inherent threat to children - when we unjustly sentenced gay men to jail for crimes they did not commit. It’s been four years since we recognised that as a miscarriage of justice - it’s unconscionable that in 2026 that kind of thinking is creating legislation.”

Under the Human Rights Act, organisations in Aotearoa are already allowed to provide services exclusively to cisgender women if that exclusion meets one of the exceptions in the Act.

“The reason women’s refuges in Aotearoa allow trans women to access their services isn’t because they’re forced to by the law - it’s because the people running those services, the people with the experience running those services recognise that trans women accessing that support pose no harm to cis women. I trust the expertise of those people.”

In September 2025 the Law Commission published its final report recommending changes to the Human Rights Act to better protect transgender and intersex people in the Human Rights Act, along with assessing whether the existing exceptions in the Act that would allow discrimination in certain contexts were fit for purpose.

“We have a sensible review of the Human Rights Act that followed a robust, established process of multiple reports, background papers, consultations and submissions - carried out by actual experts. In contrast, this Bill is 2 pages long and proposes the type of changes considered in depth and rejected by the Law Commission,” said Shields. “A Select Committee process places huge pressure on a relatively small community to once again advocate for our basic human rights, when this work has already been commissioned and completed.”

“Minister Goldsmith declined to action the Commission’s recommendations, and instead is voting for this poorly designed Bill based on the reckons of a coalition partner who once upon a time worked as a lawyer for four years.”

The Government’s response to the Law Commission’s report was “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”.

“The Government has clearly shown its hand. It does not have time to change the law to protect transgender, non-binary and intersex people from discrimination”, said Shields. “Yet, it has plenty of time to prioritise supporting this member’s bill, to waste the Select Committee’s time hearing submissions at the expense of the taxpayer, and to create a platform for spreading disinformation against our communities”. 

The Law Commission’s Ia Tangata report provides a way forward to ensure that the transgender and non-binary people and people with innate variations of sex characteristics are adequately protected from discrimination too. Qtopia is incredibly concerned that those protections are even more sorely needed now. 

Qtopia encourages the media to report on this issue with sensitivity and consideration for the harm this rhetoric does to trans people in Aotearoa.

“We know that a quarter of transgender people are seeing negative messaging about themselves online and in the media on a daily basis,” said Shields. “The harm that does to our already-vulnerable communities is immense.”

“‘Adult human biological female’ is a political slogan - it is nonsensical, illogical and does not have a scientific meaning,” said Dr Hyde. “Sex is a complicated and often misunderstood outcome of chromosomes, genes, gene expression, enzymes and hormones. It is far more complex than a female being XX and a male XY. This over-simplification is NZ First’s fundamental apparent error. Such a definition is impossible when trying to describe a binary that does not exist.”

“‘Biological’ is not a synonym for ‘cisgender’ - the Bill doesn’t even define what ‘biological’ means,” said Shields. “It’s time we move past the high-school level biology and listen to what the actual experts are saying: human sex is not a binary.”