Ethnicity Pakeha New Zealander Name Rosemary McLeod | Role Writer | |
Occupation Journalist, writer, feminist Books With Bold Needle and Thread: Adventures in Vintage Needlecraft | ||
Rosemary Margaret McLeod (born 1949) is a New Zealand writer, journalist, cartoonist and columnist. McLeod has written for New Zealand's major publications, including North & South, The Dominion Post, The Sunday Star-Times and the New Zealand Listener.
McLeod was the devisor and principal writer of the iconic TV soap Gloss, which won the award for best TV drama in New Zealand in 1989. From 1995 to 2000, she was a member of the Broadcasting Standards Authority. McLeod has been a judge of the MovieFest competition since its inception in 2003.
Her book, Thrift to Fantasy: Home textile crafts of the 1930s-1950s won a Montana Book Award in 2006.
Controversy
In February 2012, McLeod was heavily criticized, and her suitability for publishing questioned, after she used her column in The Dominion Post to insist that a transgender man is still a woman. McLeod repeatedly refused to acknowledge the gender identity of transgender fathers by referring to them as "he/she" and women and then criticized transgender parents who do not keep their "unusual situation private" for putting their children at risk of the same kind of prejudices she was displaying.