This is the speech Valda would have made at the Let Women Speak rally planned for Wellington on 26 March this year, which was canceled due to safety concerns after the Auckland rally was overrun and women were violently attacked by counter-protesters.

by Valda

I came out in my late teens into a society where the word ‘lesbian’ was seldom used and then only in hushed or disapproving tones. Most lesbians and gay men lived closeted lives. We often socialised together at someone’s home,  in secluded bars, or at a private gay men’s club. At that time,  we didn’t use our full names and some of us used false names. Public exposure or blackmail could mean the loss of a job or accommodation. Although sex between women was not illegal, there were other controls on lesbians. Then, for instance, ‘outed’ lesbian mothers justifiably feared losing custody of their children.

Luckily, I came out in a time of political change. Women’s liberation and gay and lesbian liberation movements emerged. Throughout the next decades, I worked with gay men and lesbians for Homosexual Law Reform and for the protection against discrimination. Gay Pride grew in New Zealand Aotearoa from the grassroots as lesbians and gay men fought for their own rights. They did not usurp the civil rights of other groups.

Lesbian Pride was also a time when we rediscovered our history, and built a vibrant lesbian culture: clubs, lesbian sports teams, magazines, and newsletters, radio programmes, as well as lesbian information and support services.

In 1993, New Zealand became the first country to include the word ‘lesbian’ in its Human Rights Legislation. This was an amazing achievement. We never envisaged that thirty years later, however, men would challenge the legal meaning of ‘ lesbian’. Sex and gender identity must never hold equal weight legally. The constant undermining of lesbian and women’s rights is unjust, undemocratic, and totally irrational.

Appropriation is one of the modus operandi of trans ideologues who have invaded the gay and lesbian movement in the name of ‘progress’. We have watched as the Rainbow flag has been corrupted by increasingly ugly additions to the original graphic.  Worse, we have had our spaces and services occupied by self-entitled men. Our history is being rewritten. Increasingly, lesbians are being pushed back into the closet. Don’t say ‘lesbian’ is the clear message.

In fact, there is nothing progressive about trans ideology. Gender non-conforming women and girls, especially, are encouraged to medicalise and mutilate their healthy bodies. Young children are taught that they might be born in the wrong body and that they can change sex. This is child abuse. It is also an attempt to ‘trans away the gay’.

Despite this regressive onslaught by trans cultists, I argue that there have always been women who have fallen in love with members of their own sex. Even though these women didn’t call themselves lesbians, they existed just as we do now.

“The subject of lesbianism is very ordinary”, as the poet Judy Grahn wrote in The History of Lesbianism, “it’s the question of male domination that makes everybody angry.”