Oh, Te Pāti Māori. Just when you think they’ve reached peak performance in the political theatre of absurdity, they dig deeper—and find an entirely new level of cringe. Their latest press release, conveniently ignored by the mainstream media (can’t imagine why, right?), declares that gender itself is a colonial imposition. Yes, you read that correctly. According to the intellectual titans leading the party, “the Crown’s latest attempt to erase trans inclusion from sport… is a direct continuation of colonial gender imposition.”
Ah, yes. Because before colonisation, Aotearoa (and the South Island too) was a utopia of gender fluidity and inclusive rugby matches, where men braided each other’s hair and women stormed enemy pā with patu in hand.
Let’s rewind a bit. Pre-colonial Māori society had well-defined gender roles. Men were warriors. Women were kai-preparers. Men performed haka; women twirled poi. Men hunted the moa to extinction. Women did the breast feeding. Men spoke on the Marae, women didn’t. Yep, I think there were gender distinctions long before colonisation brought such things as greater life expectancy, the wheel and written language. Pre-colonialism, the many disparate tribes of Maori weren’t exactly RuPaul’s Drag Race: Moana Edition. But don’t let reality get in the way of Rawiri Waititi’s fantasyland where “Western binary systems” are the real enemy—not, say, the actual physical differences that underpin competitive sport. And let’s not be too harsh on him, it’s not as if he drank copiously from the trough of education.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer dutifully chimed in with the usual virtue-signalling word salad: “Rainbow inclusion is a human right.” Which is touching and all, but also utterly irrelevant to the question of whether a biologically male athlete should be smashing records and opponents’ faces in the Olympic boxing competition, right?
This press release is so drenched in academic gibberish and activist buzzwords it might as well have been written by ChatGPT on a bender. “Ira tāne, ira wāhine, ira atua.” Beautiful words. But turning whakapapa into a tool for political gaslighting? That’s next-level nonsense.
In summary: Te Pāti Māori has declared gender a colonial construct, sport a battlefield of oppression, and biological reality a microaggression. Tune in next week when they announce time, gravity, and mathematics are also tools of white supremacy.
Ka pai, team. You’re really nailing that “serious political movement” look. Or maybe… this is just a distraction. Hey John Tamihere… has your Party Secretary filed those accounts yet? No? Didn’t think so. When? Oh… ‘later’.
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