New Zealand Navy Captain Yvonne Gray has served as a navy officer in the United Kingdom and Aotearoa New Zealand for three decades. She is a decorated, highly regarded officer who acted with immense courage when HMNZS Manawanui caught fire and capsized on Sunday morning.
Gray managed to save the lives of all 75 crew members and passengers aboard the vessel: the swift evacuation has been described as “something of a triumph, frankly” by New Zealand Defence Minister Judith Collins.
But trust internet trolls to twist the tale, turn it into an example of just how dangerous DEI can be.
I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence – like DEI is a tangible thing that actually endangered the lives of people and caused a navy vessel to catch fire and sink.
The reality is though, people seriously think it’s true. Following the incident, internet trolls raised the fact that Yvonne Gray is a gay woman, as if that was the cause of the incident.
“The commanding officer Commander Yvonne Gray was a DEI hire. Her qualifications: a woman and a lesbian,” one person wrote on social media.
“She sank 12 per cent of her country’s fleet in a day, without enemy engagement or storm. Diversity is our strength,” said another.
Time to call off the court of inquiry investigation, folks! The lesbian did it!
It wasn’t just faceless, nameless, gutless internet trolls doing this – in fact, John McLean, author of A Mission of Honour: A History Of The Royal Navy In The Pacific 1769-1997, weighed in on the incident, saying it points to the problem of “over-promoting” in the Navy to meet “gender and sexual orientation goals”.
Heaven forbid a woman leads.
When Republican nominee Donald Trump was shot in the ear after a failed assassination attempt earlier this year, all sorts of people and groups were to blame for the shooting – trans people, immigrants, Democrats, mainstream media – even DEI, somehow.
To be clear, Trump’s attempted assassin was a white man.
Upon Kamala Harris being named as the Democratic nominee for the US presidential race, misogyny and racism immediately ramped up. She was accused of “sleeping her way to the top”, painted as a DEI pic, among other awful racist and sexist tropes. A former Trump aide was on British news channel GB and subsequently cut off for his language after he said, “this woman, this disaster whose only qualification is having a vagina and the right skin colour…”
Diversity quotas exist for a reason. It promotes inclusion for marginalised groups at the most basic level. But true inclusion stems from people and leaders changing behaviours, welcoming diversity, championing diversity.
When people weaponise DEI, we go back to square one.
Judith Collins, New Zealand’s Minister for Defence, spoke to the press on Thursday condemning the sexist and homophobic comments targeted at Gray.
“Seriously, in 2024, what the hell is going on here with people who are sitting there in their armchair operating a keyboard making comments about people that they do not know, about an area they do not know, and they are just vile,” Minister Collins said.
A court of inquiry has been launched to investigate what went wrong over the weekend to cause the ship to sink. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t Gray’s gender or sexuality.