We are delighted that the Child and Adolescent Therapists Association (CATA) has organised a conference on the impacts of transgender ideology, to be held mainly online on August 5.
Unsurprisingly, when CATA announced the conference, on 10 June Stuff published an extremely biased article about it in which only the views of gender identity believers were reported. The article singled out one speaker, Fern Hickson, and incorrectly described her as a detransitioner. Although that error was quickly removed from the online article, it was retained in the print version of 11 June. The article accused the conference participants of being “outrageous”, “wrong” and using “fear and misinformation.”
When Fern asked for the right to respond, Stuff offered her an 800 word opinion piece. That was duly supplied but the senior editors refused to print it on the grounds it was “pejorative and prejudiced”, although they did not specify which parts of the carefully referenced writing they objected to. You can read the opinion piece here and try to spot the offending words for yourself.
CATA also supplied a statement on 17 June but it wasn’t until nearly three weeks later, on 26 June that Stuff printed their comments, maliciously accompanied by a photo of a burned rainbow flag. This article counterposed the views of CATA with opposition to the conference from the NZ Association of Counsellors and ended with an emotive quote from the parent of a transgender youth. It did not include the part of CATA’s statement that said: “The Child and Adolescent Therapists Association is surprised by the assumptions being made about its planned conference on children, adolescents and gender… It’s as though the Conference had already happened and it fulfilled the commentators’ worst fears.”
You can register for the conference here.
This blatant bias by Stuff has been evident for at least the last three years. A few days after rejecting Fern’s opinion piece, The Times of London published this article that corroborates everything she said. Although Fern forwarded the Times article to the editor and urged Stuff to investigate gender ideology in a balanced way, she received no reply.
