I said what I said. And I’m sorry… sort of

Sunday, 18 May 2025

Andrea Vance is National Affairs Editor for The Post and Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: I said what I said.

And I’m sorry.

Sorry that politicians and the media spent last week focusing on my potty mouth and not the terrible injustice that is being done to care-workers, nurses, teachers and other underpaid women.

By now, you may have heard that I used a rude word when writing about the Government’s amendments to pay equity laws, using parliamentary urgency to rush the reforms.

But first, a thank-you to everyone who took the time to write or call to offer support, and kind words. Particularly those who are directly impacted. If I haven’t yet responded, it is because I have been overwhelmed. The solidarity far, far outweighed those who disagreed, and those who took the opportunity to be nasty.

C… is an incendiary word. But that doesn’t mean its use is indefensible — especially where the point is to expose entrenched misogyny and political betrayal.

I invoked it intentionally to reflect the seriousness of the situation: that a number of female politicians were fronting a policy intentionally rolling back protections meant to ensure women are paid fairly for their work.

Those changes might have been defensible. But they chose not to defend them. And in doing so — by subverting democratic norms and the rule of law — they also robbed women of a voice.

How it was done was obscene. But it was the word that caused a symphony of selective sensitivity to sweep through the Beehive.

I dared to call out female government MPs as those “prepared to be a c…”.

Not “was.” Not “is.” I didn’t call anyone a C-word.

I described a decision. A conscious, strategic political decision to wipe 33 existing claims and force applicants to reapply, all because the Government’s Budget didn’t add up.

A betrayal not only of the women affected, but of the National Party’s own previous pronouncements about fairness and equality.

The distinction is important, but who needs distinctions when there is sanctimony to manufacture?

The kind of people who'd normally gleefully refer to Jacinda Ardern as ‘My Little Pony’ or like tweets that refer to parliamentary colleagues as ‘a virus’ were suddenly deeply offended by the sight of four letters. (Well, strictly one letter and three punctuation marks.)

A party that champions free speech “as sometimes hearing words and ideas that challenge us” was so dreadfully upset by the C-word that they felt the need to see it repeated, etched forever on Parliament’s Hansard record.

And MPs who spent 18 months fostering vicious online Māori-bashing over legislation that went nowhere had an attack of the vapours at a strong swear-word.

Because the problem here isn’t the persistent and measurable underpayment of women. It’s that a woman used a naughty word in a newspaper column.

Do you see what I did there? Readers, that’s sarcasm. The intellectual work required to grasp that does not add up to hard labour.

Let’s start with the deliberately misread sarcasm of “girl math”. (Or making things add up the way you want them to.)

I used the phrase intentionally, entirely conscious of the stereotypes it makes fun of, to mock the Government for selling a Budget that says underpaying women is fiscally responsible.

That’s not misogyny. The sarcasm isn't punching down at women. Just like the intent of the viral trend, it's twisting the power dynamic and punching up at a system that continues to undervalue female labour while cloaking that political spin dressed up as feminism.

(Much like the girlboss movement — a branded strain of “feminism” in which women are repurposed as tools of the very patriarchy they claim to disrupt.)

It wasn’t an attack on women — it was a mirror held up to the insulting economic logic used to justify this policy reversal. It challenged female leaders not for being a woman, but for failing women.

But the Government knows this. And to give them their dues, they turned it into crisis communications gold.

You do have to marvel at a political class and media ecosystem that reacts more viscerally to a four-letter word than to the actual structural inequality it was being used to highlight and the people that affects.

It was a charade. An entire week where the focus wasn’t on the policy, the motivation, or the women whose pay claims are now dust — but about whether a journalist had been mean to a Cabinet minister.

All that choreographed fragility and weaponised offence served as a distraction. An opportunity to solicit donations. And, in the episode of dropping the C-bomb in the House, a stunt.

You don’t have to be a political strategist to see the well-worn playbook. Frame legitimate media scrutiny or critical journalism as a “personal attack.” Share it online, preferably with a healthy dose of faux outrage. Wait for the reply guys, the trolls, and the culture warriors to pile in.

And then publicly distance yourself from the worst of the abuse, while privately reaping the benefits of silencing dissent.

All political parties and their allies have actively fomented hostile online mobs against journalists and critics for years.

We are treated as fair game — called biased, branded activists, targeted for retribution. Some MPs even elevate this behaviour to an art form: winking at the culture warriors while pretending to keep their own hands clean.

They would never condone abuse. Just screenshot a journalist’s byline to 50,000 followers with a #dogwhistle. Or establish a YouTube channel to encourage harassment.

Let’s be absolutely clear — misogynistic abuse is real, widespread, and repugnant. Women in public life get death threats, rape threats, relentless harassment.

But the MPs crying foul over my column? Most of them have been silent — or complicit— when that abuse is directed at other women. Particularly women on the other side of the political fence.

And as I’ve written before, our lawmakers have steadfastly refused to hold social media companies to account, or meaningfully tackle the polarisation of our society and discourse.

So I’m sorry. But I won’t be taking lessons in feminism or civility from any of them.

What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz. Please include your full name and address.