‘Resign or Die’: A Student Candidate Faces the Threats Women in Politics Know Too Well

TW: Sexual Violence, Death Threats, Stalking 

By Phoebe Robertson

On Saturday 6 September, while students were still nursing beers at The Hunter Lounge or cramming for upcoming exams, Aría Lal—a candidate for Education Officer in the upcoming VUWSA elections—opened their inbox. 

What they found wasn’t a campaign query or a policy question. It was a death threat. 

The subject line was simple: Resign or die. The body of the email was worse—a torrent of misogynistic slurs, promises of surveillance, and graphic threats of violence. The anonymous sender warned Lal that if they didn’t resign from the race, they would be “made an example of.”

Since receiving the message, Lal says they have felt an unsettling sense of being watched. While Salient has chosen not to publish the email in full due to its graphic content, its effect has been lasting: fear, hypervigilance, and the suspicion that someone may be tracking their movements. 

That anxiety reflects a wider reality in Aotearoa. Until now, stalking has not been a standalone offence under New Zealand law—many behaviours consistent with stalking (surveillance, repeated unwanted contact, monitoring) have instead been prosecuted under laws covering harassment, threatening behaviour, or breaches of restraining orders.

The Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill currently before Parliament aims to change that. It proposes: creating a stalking offence in the Crimes Act 1961; expanding the definition of psychological abuse in the Family Violence Act to explicitly include stalking; introducing aggravating factors for stalking and for breaching restraining orders; and preventing self-represented defendants from personally cross-examining alleged victims.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, in a 2024 interview with the Spinoff, said:“Given New Zealand has not, until now, criminalised stalking specifically, it’s hard to know for sure the number of victims.”

“I just… it took my breath away,” Lal told Salient in an interview. “[the email] called me a slut and a bitch three or four times, told me I was being watched, told me I was going to die. It was designed to scare me into silence.”

Lal suffered a panic attack. Then, like so many women in politics before them, they called friends, gathered themself, and began calculating their next move.

Lal’s experience is not an anomaly. Across campuses and parliaments, women who dare to enter politics face a kind of violence that is both personal and systemic. It’s not opposition—it’s intimidation, calculated to drive them out before they can even begin. These types of threats and harassment, importantly, often make no mention of actual policy issues, merely the fact of the woman’s participation.

In 2023, research from the University of Otago found that every female Member of Parliament surveyed had endured gender-based harassment. Several reported death threats or assaults with weapons—one MP even reported a fake gun aimed at them, at close range. Another MP was told her throat would be cut; others recounted casual rape threats.

Another Otago-led study revealed that 98 percent of MPs had experienced harassment of some kind. Among women, 40 percent faced threats of physical violence, 14 percent threats of sexual violence, and nearly 20 percent had threats made against family members.

These are not relics of a post-Covid polarised past. A 2025 Asia-Pacific study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union revealed that 85 percent of online attacks on women MPs came directly from the public, often accompanied by psychological harassment and explicit threats.

It’s a dynamic that student leaders know well. Former VUWSA President Marcail Parkinson wrote in Salient about the torrent of misogynistic abuse she faced after questioning the makeup of a debate panel. The messages weren’t just from anonymous trolls; they came from peers, mutual acquaintances, even politicians. The pattern was the same as what Lal is now experiencing—attacks on her appearance, her legitimacy, her right to speak. 

In 2018, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson endured rape and death threats targeting her and her children after she condemned far-right speakers. Auckland Councillor Josephine Bartley, the first Pacific-Islander woman on her council, received violent threats over her role in the local COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

And during the 2023 general election, violence escalated: list MP Angela Roberts was physically shaken and slapped at a debate. Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, a Te Pāti Māori MP, experienced a home invasion in which her property was vandalised and a threatening letter was left behind.

During her time in office, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was frequently targeted by online abuse. Police prosecuted eight individuals for making death threats against her, and surveys indicated that 92 percent of abusive political posts were directed at her.

The threats are gendered to their core. As Lal notes: “You never call men sluts or bitches. It’s almost always women.”

This is a playbook older than suffrage: reduce women’s political presence by attacking their bodies, their sexuality, and their safety. It is designed not only to terrify one candidate—it’s to send a message to others: don’t even try.

At Victoria University, as elsewhere, this logic threatens to turn student politics into another arena where misogyny quietly wins. 

“My concern is that women will self-censor or withdraw from elections because of this,” Lal said. “And that should never be the case.”

Despite the terror of that Saturday night, Lal is not stepping down.

“I think it would be foolish to give them what they want,” they said. “If 60% of our student body are women, then 60% of our exec should be too. Representation shouldn’t even be a question.”

The university has provided additional security, and VUWSA has rallied around Lal, but the support has its limits. 

“It’s overwhelming,” they admitted. “I wish there was something that could be done so no one ever faces this again. But I’ve already been told it’s happened before—and it’s likely to happen again.”

Green Party MP Tamatha Paul, who has herself been at the centre of political firestorms, says she recognises Lal’s experience all too well. “Earlier this year, when I raised community concerns about policing practices in central Wellington, I was met with an avalanche of rape and death threats. People literally said to me: ‘I hope you get raped so that you have to go running to the police.’ That is the kind of vitriol wāhine Māori in particular are subjected to. It is insidious, it is normalised, and it is dangerous.”

For Paul, the escalation is not random—it is fuelled by the rhetoric of political leaders and amplified by social media platforms. “When leaders like Winston Peters and David Seymour stoke the flames, it creates a permission structure where people think it’s okay to dehumanise and abuse people. I’ve noticed that wāhine Māori like myself, Hana-Rāwhiti or Tory Whanau appear to be routinely in the firing line.”

Paul argues that this isn’t simply a matter of online nastiness, but a democratic crisis. “Let’s be real—wāhine Māori face far greater scrutiny than the men in suits they work with. For us, it’s interrogation and unsolicited comments on what we are wearing, how we said things, how emotional we are, what we do in our personal lives, and just flat out gendered violence and abuse. How have we become so desensitised to threats of abuse and death threats when women MPs have been murdered for being in positions of power?”

Lal doesn’t want their campaign to be defined by the attack. But they also don’t want it ignored.

“This shouldn’t be about saying, oh well, that’s the risk women take,” they said. “It should be about why women need to be in politics in the first place. Because if our very existence threatens someone enough to send a death threat, then clearly we’re pushing against something that needs to be broken down.”

For Lal, the greater danger is not just the immediate fear, but the effect it could have on others. “The main risk is that women will start to self-censor or withdraw from politics altogether because of threats like this,” they said. “When you put your hand up, your safety should be guaranteed. Political coercion should not be part of student politics.” Lal believes these kinds of attacks are designed to isolate women, to single them out, and to send a warning to anyone else considering the same path.

Around the world, from New Zealand MPs to American congresswomen, women in politics receive exponentially more abuse than their male counterparts. Some step back; others harden their resolve.

Lal is choosing the latter.

“I want to see more women on the exec,” they said. “I want women to know they belong in these spaces, even when someone is trying to tell us otherwise.”

The email told them to resign or die. Instead, they’re still running—not just for themselves, but for every woman who might think twice before putting their name on the ballot.