Am I still a woman? NZ First has me confused as all hell

I have a pussy and a pair of tits but I don’t know where to shop for clothes, shoes and chocolates. Veronica Schmidt works through her gender identity with the help of NZ First.

Before New Zealand First began its campaign to define men and women, I was entirely sure I was a woman. I was also fairly convinced I was in an old-school relationship with a man. But as more of the party’s MPs and candidates have made public declarations as to what a woman is (they don’t seem so fussed about what a man is), I have become increasingly confused.

Last night, I was thrown into new turmoil when NZ First candidate George Ngatai posted his definition of a woman on Facebook, really nailing down the biological and sociological aspects of gender to arrive at the answer that we are people who “know where to shop for clothes and shoes and chocolates”. 

The party’s reason for pursuing definitions seems to be that we can’t have the sort of woke situation where individuals decide for themselves, willy-nilly, whether they’re men or women. It is best that members of NZ First give us their clear-eyed, incisive definitions on radio shows and social media platforms.

But what happens if some NZ First wisdom defines you as a woman, and other NZ First wisdom defines you as a man? Here, I have pulled together NZ First’s various definitions and clues to work it into a makeshift matrix and try to figure out my own gender. 

1) Stuart Nash test A

I’ll first size myself up against former NZ First candidate Stuart Nash’s definition of a woman. He famously brought clarity to the vexed question of what a woman is last September when, during a conversation on The Platform with Sean Plunket, he eloquently defined a woman as “a person with a pussy and a pair of tits”. I can confirm that when I last checked I had a pussy and a pair of tits, however I do not habitually refer to them as such. If I have a vagina and a pair of breasts, am I a woman? Or do I need to sexualise these body parts – or have a middle-aged man do it for me – to qualify?  

Verdict: Gender unclear

2) Stuart Nash test B

Having brought such clarity to the gender conversation in 2025, last week Nash got involved again. He told former National minister Chris Finlayson that National’s Napier MP Katie Nimon, who took time off after having a baby, was lazy. “Katie took nine months off on full pay, went back for a week, then took another month off. Laziest MP I have ever come across. Nice woman, but ill-suited to the rigours of being an electorate MP.”

Now, this was not Nash defining a woman (he’d already covered that exhaustively), but it does give us an idea of what the now former NZ First candidate (this whole Nimon business didn’t play well for him) believes becomes of women when they have babies, which is helpful to plug into this matrix. 

I was extraordinarily lazy after having both of my children. Well, let’s be honest, it started during the deliveries. I spent 42 hours lounging around in labour the first time and an indulgent 16 hours the second time, languidly vomiting and contracting and enjoying having the epidural administered incorrectly so I could revel in the resulting complications. 

After the births, I arsed around something chronic. I was at home for more than six months each time, idly waking up every two to three hours all night, every night to feed and change and generally keep these small, dependent humans alive. One had a medical issue, so I’d make slovenly trips to Starship Hospital to arse around there. Looking back, I’d say I probably peaked on the sloth scale when I had cracked nipples and mastitis and stayed up all night, despite being gripped by fever, to pace up and down the hallway holding my colicky newborn upright. 

Verdict: All up, total dropkick vibes means I’m a woman, a mother and unsuitable for the workforce.

3) The Jenny Marcroft bathrooms test 

NZ First says it wants to define men and women via legislation in order to protect women’s spaces. Jenny Marcroft, who put the definitions bill into the biscuit tin, is as fond as leader Winston Peters of talking about the “biological reality” of women and men and how her party is delivering legislation to “protect this reality in law”. Decoded, that means the party doesn’t want trans women in women’s bathrooms and other women’s spaces.  

I have never felt afraid of a trans woman. Nor have I worried about sharing women’s spaces with trans women. In fact, I’ve never met a woman who has had a bad experience with a trans woman in a women’s space. I have felt afraid of cis men quite a lot for as long as I can remember, though, and I don’t know a woman who hasn’t felt the same. The crime statistics point pretty definitively toward men too.

Complicating matters further, a man secretly filmed me in a changing room. I was not in a gender-neutral area, but a women’s one. He was not a trans woman, or a man who pretended to be a woman. He just wanted to victimise me, so he entered that women’s space and did it.

If I don’t need protection from trans women, but I wouldn’t mind some help when it comes to cis men, what am I?

Verdict: Unclear

The George Ngatai test

NZ First George Ngatai for Papakura lobbed a new definition of a woman into the Meta-verse yesterday. Posting on Facebook, he said his wife had told him he better know what a woman is. “I said well darling a women [sic] is like you a female that know where to shop for clothes and shoes and chocolates.”

This really feels like a curveball. I have zero interest in shopping and even less knowledge as to where to do it. It is an activity I partake in as rarely as possible, to the point that on a good year, I will go clothes shopping once. On a bad year, when zips break and clothes wear out, I’ll be forced to go twice. 

My husband (who until yesterday I believed to be a man) is all about shopping. He loves clothes and he loves shoes. His wardrobe overflows with more coats than he can possibly wear and don’t get me started on his T-shirt draw. He is a member of every rewards scheme known to apparel, and only yesterday I found a Cadbury dairy milk wrapper stuffed in the car’s glove box. 

Verdict: I’m a man. My husband is a woman.  

Alright, matrix worked through. Where have we landed? I have always believed I was a cis woman married to a cis man. With the help of NZ First, I’ve come to see that gender can be fluid and means different things to different people. 

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