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Do you think referring to a man as a she/her is stupid? Yeah, well you may have to watch your step and bite your tongue in Canada or face the consequences. Write your MP and get them started on amending these laws to include a lick of common sense.
‘Back in 2016, I fought tirelessly just to publish anything, anywhere, explaining my concerns about Bill C-16, Canada’s gender identity legislation. Almost no outlet would consider it (certainly not our publicly-funded CBC), except, finally, The National Observer, who did me the favour. As a result, I was invited (via a Conservative senator) to testify against the bill at the Senate — I and Pour les droits des femmes Quebec (PDF), a Quebecois feminist group, were the only women and feminists invited to speak against the bill, and I suggested a representative from Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter also make a presentation, to put forward a feminist argument in favour of women-only space.
Our arguments were completely ignored by our left wing political representatives in the NDP, as well as by the Liberal government that proposed the bill, and Bill C-16 passed almost unchallenged. I had suspected as much, but wanted it to at least be on record that there was some push back from women/feminists. The only person who really received any traction on his arguments was Jordan Peterson, who expressed concerns about “compelled speech.”
This trend has persisted ever since. Women’s concerns about the sexism and danger of gender identity ideology have been almost completely ignored by Canadian media and politicians, and the debate has been consistently framed as one of “good, progressive, open-minded people who care about the rights and safety of marginalized groups” vs “evil, religious right bigots who hate gays, lesbians, and trans-identified people.”
This has played out yet again in our attempts to challenge amendments to the “conversion therapy” bill proposed by the Liberals.
Last year, David Lametti, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, reintroduced proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, which would criminalize “conversation therapy,” commonly understood to be the practice of attempting to turn gay people straight. But the proposed amendments in Bill C-6 (which later became Bill C-4) conflated this homophobic practice with the practice of affirming “gender identity.” Lametti told the Canadian House of Commons that “conversion therapy refers to misguided efforts to change the sexual orientation of bisexual, gay, and lesbian individuals to heterosexual [or to] change a person’s gender identity to cisgender.”
By adding “gender identity” to the bill, the Liberals succeeded in conflating homosexuality with the postmodern notion that one can “feel” like the opposite sex, and that this feeling in fact means you literally are the opposite sex. The new legislation will criminalize those who profit from or advertise “conversion therapy,” including therapists and medical practitioners who do not practice the “affirmative model” — which means confirming an individual’s “trans identity” unquestioningly. Because adults do have the right to make their own choices about their bodies and whether they wish to undergo cosmetic surgery, what we are really talking about here are children and teens — individuals who are not equipped to understand the long-term consequences of medical transition on their bodies and lives, and are sent to therapists before proceeding to hormone blockers, hormone treatment, then surgery. Indeed, therapists should encourage these youth to wait it out, not to rush forward on a path to medical transition — this is the responsible thing to do. Instead, they are now obligated to take the opposite approach.
Yesterday, the Senate passed Bill C-4 with no objections, which means it will be essentially illegal in Canada to question or challenge a child’s declaration of transgender identity and their desire to socially and/or medically “transition” to the opposite sex.
This time around, feminist groups (and many other concerned individuals) did attempt to organize and speak against the bill, but were again ignored by the media, and clearly not taken seriously by politicians.
It is already difficult to question the legitimacy of gender identity ideology in Canada, and already practically impossible to access therapy that might allow a teen to grow out of their desire to transition, as so many do. This new legislation ensures it is now impossible to offer therapy that does not approach transition as the best path.
Moreover, the Liberal government is currently working to push through legislation criminalizing so-called “hate speech” online, which would surely include challenges to gender identity ideology and, for example, make it illegal to use correct pronouns to describe someone who prefers to use the pronouns traditionally reserved for the opposite sex.
Essentially, the Canadian government, considering itself ever-so-progressive, is criminalizing not only feminist speech, but free speech and critical thought as a whole. One will no longer be permitted to challenge government orthodoxy in Canada, and dissenters will not only be silenced, but punished under the law.
It is terrifying, and means an end to democracy and civil liberties in Canada.
The only solution is non-compliance — with all of it, though my solution has been to leave Canada, with the knowledge that I can no longer work and exist in my country without persecution. I will absolutely continue to speak and work for women’s rights and constitutional freedoms everywhere, including in Canada, but not based out of my home country. It is difficult for me to envision a free future when so few are standing up and fighting back, and when our political representatives refuse to respect and hear our concerns, voices, and rights. We the people are our only hope — and I hope we fail to comply.’
I like this piece. Going to start working it up.
You can always tell in a argument with the gender religious when you are about to hit one of the many contradictions inherent in the ideology, it’s when the accusations of being a bigot or being transphobic or the slur ‘terf’ is leveled at you.
Here’s a big ‘ole controversial issue: Is being transgendered a mental health condition?
Actually it is, and often presents with a host of serious comorbidities that can drastically affect an individuals well being. But often, we’re not allowed to even get this far, as the word ‘transgender’ is almost always defined vaguely and uniquely in the moment and framing ‘trans’ in terms of the mental disorder literature is met with cries “bigotry & transphobia”. It shuts down conversation because who wants to be called a bigoted transphobe? Just imagine if people who have anorexia pulled the same evasive denial bullshit – you’d be a body-shaming bigot in seconds for rightly pointing out an obvious discontinuity between reality and the anorexic’s self image. The tactic is bullshit in both cases.
This returns to another one of the fundamental problems with transgender ideology – the absolute lack of definitional clarity. The terms “trans” and “gender-identity” are nebulous. Who qualifies as an authentic transgender person? Who the fuck knows? The person in question often doesn’t know. Does being trans require having gender dysphoria (sometimes)? Is it autogynephilia (in many cases)? It is a crap-shoot, but almost always you never get to the point to where you can nail down what being ‘trans’ is.
The evasiveness isn’t helping anyone, especially the people who call themselves trans as said earlier being trans comes with a host of linked conditions that can severely impact an individuals mental health. Yet here we are stuck arguing over definitions while people are injured.
Why? Because a small subset of the trans community demands that society renounce the physical reality we all share and adopt gender religious mantra’s like ‘trans women are women’. If you respect science, and material reality, then the previous mantra must be regarded as patently false.
Human beings cannot change sex. Men, cannot become women, no matter how much genderfeelings-magic they invoke. But rather than have a real conversation about how trans people fit into society the low road is taken and any questions or concerns with transgender ideology are shouted down and the person making the inquiries personally attacked.
A lose/lose situation for everyone involved.
A recent study from Denmark looked at 359 transgender patients. In 75% of them, cross-gender identification was interpreted as a byproduct of other psychiatric illnesses, notably personality, mood, dissociative, and psychotic disorders. Major mood disorders, dissociative disorders and psychotic disorders were reported in 79% of transgenders.
Likewise in Sweden, a separate study found that “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior”
In fact, 30% of transgenders commit suicide. Suicide.org says that 90% of all suicides are the direct result of untreated mental illness. A 2013 U.S.-based study showed 90% of transgenders have mental disorders consisting of depression and anxiety–known causes of suicide.
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that transgender people often experience disproportionately high levels of mental health conditions.
The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS) is the largest survey specifically looking at the experiences of transgender people in America. 27,715 people responded from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and U.S. military bases overseas. 39% reported serious psychological distress. Only 5% of the general United States population reports the same. Alarmingly, 40% of the transgender survey respondents indicated they had attempted suicide at some point in their lifetime.
The 2019 Trevor Project National Survey was the largest survey of LGBTQ youth mental health ever conducted. It had more than 34,000 respondents. The results indicate more than half of transgender youth have seriously considered suicide and that nearly 70% of transgender youth show symptoms of a major depressive disorder.
Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, says that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment. He also says that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder, rather than treating it. Dr. McHugh is no casual observer. He is the author of at least 125 peer-reviewed medical articles and six books.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines transgenderism as a mental disorder.
The American College of Pediatricians joins other experts in condemning gender reclassification in children. They mince no words, making the bold statement that transgenderism in children amounts to child abuse.
As a result, ThinkProgress, a left-wing activist group, labeled The American College of Pediatricians as a hate group. They aren’t a hate group. They are medical doctors who treat and speak with children every day. Their opinion, like this column, is not transphobic; they don’t fear transgender individuals.
I certainly don’t advocate bullying transgender individuals or anyone for that matter, and I’m sure the American College of Pediatricians doesn’t either, but as a society, we can’t look at a group of folks clearly exhibiting mental illness and ignore it. We can’t pretend it’s normal. It’s not. Any condition with sky-high incidents of suicide must be given care and concern, must be treated and must be corrected. Not bullied, not dismissed but most certainly not ignored under the pretense they are just fine.”
This excerpt from Paul Street’s essay over on Counterpunch.
Mr.Street tends to write in a hyperbolic manner, but this analysis by Gellman should raise concerns about the integrity of the next American election.
“Trump’s next coup has already begun. January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election. Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect…The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already. “The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me in late October. Hasen prides himself on a judicious temperament. Only a year ago he was cautioning me against hyperbole. Now he speaks matter-of-factly about the death of our body politic. “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said, “but urgent action is not happening.”
For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft. Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject. They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.
By way of foundation for all the rest, Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response…Even in defeat, Trump has gained strength for a second attempt to seize office, should he need to, after the polls close on November 5, 2024. It may appear otherwise—after all, he no longer commands the executive branch, which he tried and mostly failed to enlist in his first coup attempt. Yet the balance of power is shifting his way in arenas that matter more.
Trump is successfully shaping the narrative of the insurrection in the only political ecosystem that matters to him. The immediate shock of the event, which briefly led some senior Republicans to break with him, has given way to a near-unanimous embrace…Trump has reconquered his party by setting its base on fire. Tens of millions of Americans perceive their world through black clouds of his smoke. His deepest source of strength is the bitter grievance of Republican voters that they lost the White House, and are losing their country, to alien forces with no legitimate claim to power. This is not some transient or loosely committed population. Trump has built the first American mass political movement in the past century that is ready to fight by any means necessary, including bloodshed, for its cause.’”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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