On a Thursday evening, at the end of May, there is a debate about housing in the main hall of the House of Representatives. Minister of Housing Elanor Boekholt of D66 stands behind the lectern, answering questions from MPs. Suddenly everyone laughs loudly, Boekholt himself clearly has no idea why. She looks around, with her mouth open.
Just before, House Speaker Thom van Campen had corrected her: Boekholt called non-binary MP Ines Kostic of the Party for the Animals “Ms Kostic”. Van Campen said that “the representative” wanted to be addressed as “member Kostic”. “My apologies,” said Boekholt. And also: “Quite right.” As if she knew what it was about. But less than two minutes later she first calls BBB’er Femke Wiersma “madam…” and then quickly “member Wiersma”.
Van Campen also laughs. Then he sees Boekholt’s confusion. “Mrs. Wiersma,” he says, “I think she would like to be addressed as Mrs. Wiersma.” Boekholt looks at Wiersma, she swallows and smiles. “I can say Mrs. Wiersma.”
In the café of the House of Representatives last Wednesday, Ines Kostic says that many ministers, state secretaries and MPs are wrong. “No problem.” There was only one time when Kostic thought: this might be intentional. In a debate on the transgender law in April 2024, Kostic called himself non-binary at the interruption microphone. The law would make it easier to change the indication of your gender in your passport. “This is also about me,” said Kostic. Nicolien van Vroonhoven of NSC, strongly against the law, immediately addressed Kostic as “Madam”. When he said something about that, Van Vroonhoven turned her head away. “I don’t hear a question.”
What has been noticeable for some time now is that MPs who chair debates in small rooms attended by Kostic are increasingly omitting ‘madam’ or ‘sir’ from everyone. They are all ‘the member’. In such a debate, an MP sent an app to Laura Bromet of Progressive Netherlands, it was about a male colleague who was suddenly also a ‘member’: “He has been robbed of his gender.” “I am Mrs,” Bromet himself said two weeks ago in a meeting to the chairman, Maarten Goud Sword of JA21.
BBB’er Femke Wiersma never expected that someone would ‘question’ her as a woman again
She says to me: “I have noticed that I enjoy that, madam is more personal.” But if it is better for Kostic and later for other non-binary MPs that everyone is a ‘member’, Bromet says: “Very good, of course.” She finds it “a bright spot in dark, extreme right-wing times” that the MPs, no matter how harsh they often are with each other, all do their best to call Kostic ‘the member’.
BBB’er Femke Wiersma almost always wears high heels and short dresses. In the debate about housing construction, she texts Van Campen: she did not expect that someone would once again “question” her as a woman. “But given the reactions in the room, I’m starting to have doubts.” Van Campen laughs again. “You are the very last.”
Minister Elanor Boekholt has had a difficult time in debates since she was sworn in. She comes across as insecure, she once said to MPs that she looked at them “like a deer in headlights”. She received debate training, I can hardly imagine that none of her employees said: pay attention, Ines Kostic is ‘the member’. But she didn’t know, she said last week in the hall of the House of Representatives.
What was going on in her head when everyone was laughing? “I thought: a mistake. And it may or may not make it into the newspaper.”