To my so-called friends and allies ... broken record

Please accept that I'm saying no to helping VUW (my alma mater) and that's my decision to make. Most of my real friends are fine with that, and are probably growing tired of this battle that I'm fighting. I simply want a few large, powerful organisations to stop thinking they can buy me off, and allow me an opportunity to produce an investigative piece that lays bare their various financial woes. You know my evidence is solid, and that I'm becoming a decent journalist, so why is it that you won't let me ask you some genuine questions? - I don't have a $30 million deficit. That's Victoria University of Wellington. I'm not trying to raise that amount to rennovate a building either, or setting up offices in Asian countries in an attempt to grift international students into covering their expenses. Instead, I spent 2021 reviewing essays by those international students across the Commonwealth (for institutions other than VUW, such as AUT). This is the grift that I'm referring to: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2022/09/victoria-university-of-wellington-confirms-new-partnership-in-vietnam https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2022/01/our-team-across-the-world Pre-Covid, international education was a $5 billion industry. VUW took in $46 million. Their deficit is literally the number of international students and that is a sign that they were using them to subsidise Kiwis. I find that repellant, though admittedly I find the entire idea of for-profit universities repellant. Every uni does this, but I'm choosing to target my alma mater because I'm rather angry at them, and many Wellingtonians are. Even most of the professors are angry at their administration, so it seems absurd to me that I should pretend as if it isn't a total shambles. That would be being dishonest. This is why people with more cred than I scream bloody murder about journalistic freedoms. The entire point of the fourth estate is that we shouldn't be in the pockets of large, powerful companies or lobbies; so, if I allowed myself to be bought off, then I'd lose whatever integrity I have as a commentator or a filmmaker. - Note that I've chosen to study at an institute that isn't a for-profit uni. In fact, Te Wānanga O Aotearoa forgoes a significant amount of money to offer the Te Reo Māori course that I've enrolled to study in 2024 for free. They all basically have no international students, and had surpluses. This suggests that perhaps the Māori way of doing things is more likely to be mutually beneficial. Though one could say that this reproduces a perceived anti-migrant bias that many people think Māori communities have, I'd say that it's more likely that there's not a massive amount of interest from international learners regarding Mātauranga Māori. It tends to be something that people become interested in after migrating to NZ, rather than something that they perceive from the outside. https://oag.parliament.nz/2023/tei-audit-results/part7.htm 'Students at wānanga are much more likely to be Māori, female, and aged 40 years and over. Because of these demographics, wānanga have a greater proportion of students who are more likely to have competing responsibilities, such as work or looking after children and whānau.' - I wish that National or ACT would take a swipe at the Town Hall project rather than the bloody polytechs or Let's Get Wellington Moving. It's such an obvious piece of elitism: the main reason the building wasn't torn down was because it has heritage status, despite not really being of particularly significant architectural value. Plus the cost blowouts are truly staggering: they cancelled light rail, but they still want this to happen? Brief history, thanks to RNZ: 'Cost estimates to redevelop the site have risen from an initial $32m to $145m, when work started in 2019.' [...]

'The council said the $182 million project could cost an additional $70m-$147m to complete.' https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/499287/wellington-city-council-faces-up-to-147m-town-hall-budget-blow-out - More on VUW's odd financial priorities: "It takes the total raised to $21 million of our $30 million target.” https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=153556 'Smith said the university risked “becoming insolvent by the middle of next year” with a deficit of between $35 million to $38m.' - September 2023 https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350074518/fear-hasty-decisions-victoria-university-ahead-restructure Wellington's Victoria University is axing 229 jobs and cutting six language and geo-science courses in an effort to save money. The institution will no longer offer Greek, Latin, Italian, geophysics, geographic information science or physical geography.

Eleven other courses will need to achieve set targets as part of a managed financial plan, or meet the same fate. These are: education, the English Language Institute, history, midwifery, workplace health and safety, Earth sciences, physics, theatre, modern languages, Master of design technology, and the New Zealand School of Music.

Vice-chancellor Nic Smith said a voluntary redundancy process saw 75 staff walk away from their jobs, while an estimated 65 more would be made redundant, after further voluntary redundancies, resignations, and redeployment to 34 newly-created positions were taken into account.

The cuts would see the University save $22 million in staff costs. About a third of the jobs being lost were academic roles.' https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/498474/devastated-victoria-university-axes-229-jobs-and-six-courses I notice that they're still short on their deficit, which suggests that (yes) their plan is to recruit more international students. I mean, it's not like the Nats or ACT or NZ First is likely to open the kitty and give any large subsidies... that's not their style. I could be wrong, but that's precisely the sort of thing that my documentary could tackle. - For the confused people: Why do they want me to come back? This: they've had a stay of execution, but it's entirely likely that the music school will be destroyed by the end of 2025, unless they can use my script to advertise themselves to international students... or so I presume their pitch goes. Why am I saying no? I deeply resent the way that I was treated as an undergrad, and got out of there as fast as I could. As Sondheim said on Charlie Rose, with my kind of music it's something that it's better to put on than to theorise about, so that's what we did. Plus personal animosities: Sally-Jane was all over Jake, yet has never spoken to me. That's a key reason reason that I keep saying no: yes, I was the one behind much of Jake's musicianship*, but that's literally people choosing to speak to a charismatic dolt over an awkward nerd who was obviously femme. I think my tapes have made it fairly clear which of us was a stronger improviser, and Pan's Preludes is 100% mine, proving that I can write my ideas down too.

Yes, Jane and Sally-Jane are separate people. Sally was supposed to be Anne Salmond. https://www.rnz.co.nz/concert/programmes/three-to-seven/audio/2018895964/proposed-staff-cuts-at-the-new-zealand-school-of-music It's telling that it's mostly arts courses (yes, theatre is on the chopping block too) that are being cut. STEM and BComs are what pay the bills, despite the uppity attitude that my former professors and colleagues have about the superiority of their wanky music that is designed for an audience of other wanky elitists. 🤣 - See, RNZ isn't anywhere near as large or as powerful, yet they were willing to pay me to learn their craft and to come to the office as Amanda the trannie. It didn't work out, but that was some serious balls from Mary and Anne. 🏳️‍⚧️ That's an organisation that, despite slagging them off, I'm keen to return to and have even applied for another job. 👋 I want to be an editor or filmmaker, and I like working around the news. That's totally valid.

- Yes, I wrote a very good piece of classical music with my Preludes, but life imitated art and I felt like the cabal of pro composers, conductors and guitarists had no faith in my orchestrations. That really hurt, particularly given I'd already orchestrated a full opera by that point. It was probably what inspired me to write that scene where Tina slammed my more privileged friends in my Weeded Out script. 🤣

- To me, all this apparent fervour for my Weeded Out script is saying is that you wish that I'd had an easier time with coming out, but also that you're blaming me for taking too radical a stance, and not doing the HRT/sob story version of coming out that you're all familiar with from American TV. My uncle told me point-blank that I'd get beaten up dressed like that, and it feels like you all share that opinion, either implicitly or explicitly. That's terrible allyship, and this is why many people are becoming aware of the rift between LGB and Trans communities. 🏳️‍⚧️

Plus that 'support' rings rather hollow after B got a fright at that concert. I mean, why would I have wanted to housesit for someone that I barely knew, and that I sensed had a lot of rich, old friends that probably weren't going to be very tolerant of my Māori and Pacific-inflected transgenderism? Read this rant if you're confused: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0YgWtP4fMY5GfrQG6A5KNpYeBJCPr8DZxjsgeNdf9K2NP3i8ajargMaEFmP2EjM1jl&id=100086746320921 -

I'm fine with where I am currently; I'm not interested in experimenting with makeup or painted nails. I'm a trannie, and I'm genuinely ok with that.

Stop presuming that I'm distressed because I'm trans. No, I'm distressed because you lot have problems with me being trans because I'm not passing as a woman. That's a fairly common thing, and it's becoming increasingly common, but I don't want to blaze a trail until all those bigots come out of the woodwork and apologise for presuming that being trans and ugly was illegal.

That's literally gender-based discrimination. That's why I'm agitating for law changes.

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Then there's all the drug law reform dramas, and the very distinct sense that I'm being actively surveilled due to attending Question Time. 👍🏻 I dug my own bed in terms of police and Parliamentary Services attention, but attempting to use my drug activism as leverage to make me come back to school and straighten up is really insulting. Maybe it's a sign that my supposed colleagues and peers are transphobic, and should honestly search within themselves to figure out why it is that I challenge them so? That would be far more fruitful than all this bs. 🏳️‍⚧️ For everyone who might want to employ me, read these and notice how your attitudes are actually wrong: https://www.employment.govt.nz/resolving-problems/types-of-problems/bullying-harassment-and-discrimination/discrimination-against-transgender-people/ https://www.employment.govt.nz/starting-employment/hiring/discrimination-when-hiring/transgender-employees/ To RNZ: don't blame my smoking weed on my reticence to chat to people. You definitely could have bothered to get my pronouns right, but you'd probably drunk some of that kool-aid that many people thought regarding: 'he's not really trans' Those people are wrong. I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021. - To everyone who slogged through this post, which I'm very proud of: Please meet me. If you want my help, reach out to me; that's what I attempted to do by trolling people, but I also wrote a lot of real emails and messages to people (famous or not) that I wanted to work with.

That's what all of you who want my scripts or songs should do. That's called being professional, while this is called being manipulative, underhanded and outright evil. I'm valid, and I'm not a threat to the hegemony of male-dominated art music. I write musicals and films, so that's a different world, and that's my happy place.

Mic drop... 🎤 - *Jake indecently assaulted me. The NZSM took his side, and now they're pretending as if that wasn't true. That's the core reason, but these are all nice factoids too.