Aotearoa’s Very Own Trans Takatāpui Trailblazer

By Cameron McCausland-Taylor

CW: Mentions of sexual assault

The passing of Georgina Beyer is being felt heavily across Aotearoa, especially within our Māori, takatāpui and rainbow communities. She is best known for being the mayor Carterton from 1995 to 2000, where she then entered Parliament as the Labour Party’s candidate for Wairarapa. The world’s first openly transgender mayor and member of Parliament, she played a huge part in bringing trans representation to the forefront, creating a path for others to pursue. I admittedly did not know a whole lot about Beyer before her passing. However, having dived into her life story, there is so much inspiration to be taken from it. As a transgender Māori wahine, the odds were stacked against Georgina, but she twisted the narrative and became a rangatira that the world had never seen before.

Beyer is a descendant of Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Raukawa, and Ngāti Porou. She spent her childhood and teenage years in Taranaki, Wellington, and Auckland, experiencing feelings of gender dysphoria from as young as four years old. Growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, attempts were made by adults to condition habits and behaviours such as wearing women’s clothing out of her, to the point where Beyer began to hide how she truly felt. That was until she reached the age of 16, left high school, and moved from Auckland to Wellington to work in gay nightclubs as a drag queen.

Being a part of the LGBTQIA+ community in ‘70s Aotearoa was unforgiving, with Beyer unable to gain employment or government benefits unless she claimed a “psychosexual disorder”. Therefore, her sex work career was born. A pivotal turning point in her life came during this time, when she was beaten and sexually assaulted by a group of men in 1979. She did not report this to the police, firm in the belief that the law would not protect her due to how she identified. Wanting nobody else to experience what she went through, Beyer decided to pursue a life of proud visibility as a trans woman.

As an SA survivor, I think back to when I went through my traumatic experiences, the pain and despair it cast upon my life, and the way in which I thought there was no future ahead for me. Not to mention, the circumstances around sexual assault and how these cases are dealt with in Aotearoa are still bleak as fuck, discouraging many of us from reporting a crime when it occurs, especially those who experience severe oppression such as Beyer. So, what came next is a remarkable feat that deserves all the recognition.

Her experience in the sex work industry came full circle in her political career, being an advocate for the Prostitution Reform Bill in 2003 that offered legal protection for sex workers. In her speech at the third reading, Beyer spoke with integrity and honesty about what she and many others went through, believing that with such a reform bill, she may have been able to approach authorities instead of dealing with the situation alone. She also spoke of all the prostitutes she knew who died before the age of 20, talking of their mamae due to the “hypocrisy of our society”. It brings me a huge amount of hope to know that in my lifetime, a member of parliament had the bravery to discuss a taboo subject so openly and vulnerably. She also influenced at least three other MPs to vote for the bill… did somebody say, slay?

“I plead with those members in this House who are wavering right up to the wire, to think, for heaven’s sake, of the people of whom I have just spoken, including myself, who might be spared some of the hideous nature of the way society treats prostitutes—because that is here with us.”

- Beyer, 2003 (www.parliament.nz).

Beyer was, for the most part, unwavering in backing what she personally believed in during her time in Parliament, such as supporting gay marriage in the Civil Union Act 2004, supporting sexual orientation being added as grounds for forbidden discrimination in the Human Rights Act 1993, and playing an active part in the passing of the Māori Language Act 2003. Thanks to her, LGBTQIA+ and Māori viewpoints were finally included in conversations that we’d been kept out for so long. Having said that, there was one form of legislation that Beyer referred to as “the beginning of the end” of her political career; the seabed and foreshore legislation of May 2004.

The legislation is an ongoing debate, based around the ownership of Aotearoa’s foreshore and seabed, to which many Māori claimed their rightful title. While Beyer personally opposed the legislation, she felt compelled to vote it in due to pressure from her electorate, prompting the passing of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 that declared the land to be owned by the Crown. Beyer later said she would “never be torn between who and what I am as far as my heritage is concerned” (RNZ).

This part of Beyer’s story is another that I felt, and many others can feel deeply connected to. Due to colonisation, Māori have become enormously assimilated into the Pākeha way of life, including our jobs. It sucks to say, but the majority of us will most likely not work in an organisation where Māoritanga and tikanga are the norm, and introducing our ways of life into mainstream organisations can be a tough journey to take. Beyer’s 2014 candidacy with the Mana Party was one way in which she tried to “make amends” with Māori for the vote which “totally broke her”, as she said in a 2014 Mana Party press release.

Personally, I can see why Beyer went with the majority. While it may seem out of character for her, it’s easier said than done to stick to your values under times of pressure, especially when your job is on the line. In saying that, the regret of this decision stuck with Beyer until her passing, a decision she constantly reflected on when interacting with the media and in her parliament resignation speech. By admitting her wrongs, perhaps it can show us as Māori that staying staunch in our culture is always the right decision.

There is so much more that could be written about Beyer and the iconic queen that she was. She is remembered as being direct, honest, loyal, brave, and a trailblazer. Her contributions to the Māori, rainbow and takatāpui communities live on to this very day, with her mahi acknowledged recently in 2020 when she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to LGBTIQA+ rights. We are so incredibly lucky to have had someone so groundbreaking in our Aotearoa government. Looking towards the general election and seeing all of the Māori, rainbow and takatāpui candidates already putting their names forward to stand, I am so excited to see more gamechangers enter our political midst and bring even more minority representation to the highly conservative, Pākeha structure in our society that is the government. Moe mai rā, e te rangatira, thank you for all you did during your time on Papatūānuku.

Glossary:

Takatāpui - Māori who identify with diverse genders, sexualities and sex characteristics

Rangatira - Chief, noble Wahine - woman

Mamae - hurt, suffering, pain

Māoritanga - Māori culture, traditions and way of life

Tikanga - customs and traditional values in a Māori context