On 29th September the NZ Herald published a response by ACT’s David Seymore to an article by Lizzie Marvelly attacking him for suggesting that the Ministry for Women be converted to a Ministry for Gender.

It doesn’t seem to appear on the Herald website, but you can read it on the ACT website here:
Shoot-the-messenger Marvelly trapped in identity politics

Seymore writes:

The problem with Marvelly’s column is a kind of anti-intellectualism where identity matters more than ideas. Stripped of all the bile, it said: “A Minister for Women is needed because women are still behind in many statistics, whereas a Minister of Men is not needed regardless of challenges the gender faces because there are lots of men in Parliament to advocate for men.”

What caught my attention was Seymore’s clear explanation for the “heads I win, tails you loose” nature of the feminist approach to gender debate:

Identity arguments are the easiest in the world to make and impossible to refute. If I say left-handed people will never understand what it’s like to be right handed there is no comeback for the world’s lefties. They have already lost the identity argument no matter how well they argue.