Basically every sexist belief holding women back has been defended by claiming it’s for their protection and because they’re actually so highly valued, just saying

Yup, people should be able to choose to update their beliefs and customs for themselves but I don’t like it when conservative christians do it ‘we have different, equally valuable roles’ and I don’t like when it happens at Waitangi ‘women are so especially important, we have to

protect them.’ I keep seeing people explaining the control context behind women sitting behind and not being able to speak whenever someone questions it but some of us have had this explained to us before, we just don’t find it satisfactory

Any iwi can run their marae however they choose and if you choose to enter that space, you should respect that. But don’t presume our disagreement/dislike of it is automatically a result of ignorance. I’ve seen at least ten pieces of content this week explaining the perspective