If you don’t know, I run a New Zealand-focused Gender Action Tracker. The tracker documents attempts to embed gender identity into policy and law (and occasionally some rollbacks). There’s some international stuff in there as well. It comes with links to original sources where possible.
You can toggle it between oldest events first, and latest first. You can filter the Tracker by one of eight themes: Cancellation, silencing and slurring / Language, definitions, data and science / Police, law and legal changes / Media, advertising and visibility / Medicalisation / Schools and workplaces / Sports / Women's spaces, groups and privacy.
I update it when I can.
I wanted to do this because I think it’s useful to see how changes accumulate, the social mood changes, and certain things become normal that have been unthinkable until really recently. This is interesting. Is this a boiling frog situation, or is this a tidal wave? Did everything change everywhere, all at once, or are things being chipped away?
In February the government decides not to act on Ia Tangata, a Law Commission report that recommended thinking carefully in each instance but effectively banning single sex
PATHA makes various attempts to stop the NZ puberty blocker ban, and the resulting High Court hearing in July. We’re still waiting to hear the outcome. To be honest, it’s all such a shit show, and vulnerable kids are worked into such a lather of believing that puberty blockers save their lives, I’m nervous about a total ban even though I absolute believe there is zero medical evidence to support blockers. Kids, however, are made vulnerable to suicide and self harm by being told they are vulnerable to suicide and self-harm, and they and their families have been told that very thing, by media, social media, by government agencies, by community groups supposedly supporting them for over a decade. Could a ban push them over the edge as trans lobbyists will only get more ardent and panicked? There has never been the kind of announcement from government, even at the level you get from supermarkets recalling products. There has been zero attempt to realign public understanding of the paucity of evidence of blockers, despite the government once claiming they were safe and reversible. Do we need to demand a major corrective public information campaign, to help kids and families realise they have been had, before we ban? We certainly need to properly resource the mental health system. It’s a quandary.
The legislation defining men and women in law passed its first reading on May 20th. All hell broke loose and all sorts of agencies, governmental and non-governmental lined up to say, as they had been instructed by the dubious lobby groups they listen to, that it’s a really really bad idea to say that women actually exist.
In the States, a detransitioner wins 2 million dollars for medical malpractice having received a double mastectomy at age 16. Days later the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons change their advice regarding such surgeries.
Also in the States, the Federal Trade Commission has been investigating WPATH regarding misleading claims about kids. The latest on that is that WPATH has claimed that their Standards of Care (on which our own PATHA’s advice rests) never were clinical advice, just opinion and therefore counting as protected speech.
In the UK, the proposed trial on puberty blockers (which has many methodological flaws) is challenged, stops and starts. Any such trial was meant to come after a data linkages research which would follow up all the people who went on puberty blockers already.
Amnesty International UK releases reports saying a bunch of women’s rights, lesbian and gay organisations are anti-rights. It then withdraws reports. Worth noting Amnesty International NZ, also actively campaigns against sex-based rights, including against the bill that would define men and women as, um, you know.
In Australia, the Federal Court finds that Sall Grover’s app Giggle was discriminatory because she wanted to keep it female only.
But check out the Gender Action Tracker for other 2026 (and earlier) happenings and tell me what else you think should be in there. Do any of my international readers have something similar for their homes?
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