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It certainly seems like the religious, libertarian hard right fringe has made its way from the US to Canada. The illegal occupation of Ottawa and border crossings are prime examples of the profoundly undemocratic/reactionary roots of this ‘movement’.
The police are reacting with a glacial slowness that is exacerbating the situation. Much more needs to be done to protect our civil society, public health, and democratic institutions.
I agree with Tim’s analysis of what is going on in Ottawa and in Alberta. People are circumventing the ways that make a functioning democracy work, and it should be a serious concern to everyone.
“It has been said, often, during this crisis that you can’t live in downtown Ottawa without becoming very, very familiar with protests and demonstrations. They are a regular thing here. It’s the seat of government, after all. For me, they are a feature of the place, not a bug.
Demonstrations and protests (they are different but related, but we’ll save the details this time) are a critical part of a functioning, pluralistic democracy. They allow particularly contentious issues to bubble to the surface, to gain exposure and, potentially, drive change.
Successful demonstrations grab attention but more importantly, they focus that attention on solving a particular policy problem in a particular way. They succeed by highlighting actions that *can* be taken and usually suggest *how* they might be taken.
It should be crystal clear by now that what is happening in Ottawa is not that. The *demands* that are being made are like a ransom note from a B-grade thriller. They are unintelligible in the extreme. Even if a government wanted to comply, where would they begin?
In our system, each geographical district elects a representative who goes to Ottawa and participates in policy development and law-making on our behalf. Once we choose them, they are free to do as they please, governed by the rules and foundational laws of our country.
If we don’t like the job they are doing, we pick someone better the next time. And so on, and so on. But what about mid-term? What if we hate what the government is doing? What can we do? We can get together with like-minded people and demonstrate.It lets the government know we’re displeased and want a change. If the ask is doable, and popular enough, demonstrations can move minds… because representatives want to get re-elected, yes, but also because the willingness of people to protest, en masse, is compelling.
But there are rules. The constitution lays out the form and function of government… including rules on how to change the rules. A protest that demands changes to *that* has a huge hill to climb. It’s complicated stuff. (For reference go read up on Meech and Charlottetown).
Which brings us to where we are. The manifesto of this occupation makes myriad, confusing, incompatible demands. They make no sense at all, really. There is no effective way to act on them, even if we wanted to.
Even the simplest, “end the mandates” (which ones? For whom? Which level of government?) is far from simple. It would require careful policy work and balancing of interests. But there, exactly, is the problem. These occupiers are not interested in balance.
This occupation wants its way. And only its way. Not compromise. They are a large, violent toddler thrashing about on the kitchen floor of our democracy. “Give it to me, or I will break shit,” they are telling us. They don’t care about me or anyone else in downtown Ottawa.
They don’t care about you, or anyone who disagrees with them. They want *it*. And they will smash stuff, people, and institutions until they get it. And that is what they are doing. With each thrash of their chubby, spoiled, toddler limbs, they are chipping away at us all.
Which brings us to the cries for toleration and appeasement. Those cries are cowardly nonsense. It’s basic to democratic principles that you need to be tolerant of widely divergent views. It’s essential. But…
It’s vital to understand that the one thing that cannot be tolerated is intolerance, itself. Democratic governance breaks apart when intolerance takes over. It needs to be stamped out, marginalized, disregarded. It should not be given centre stage and the keys to the city.
Which is what we have done. Almost literally. Our officials have cleared out the kitchen to make as much room as possible for the rampaging toddler. They are fanning the flames of intolerance by giving it deep, rich oxygen. They are failing us.
Our officials are failing us because they do not understand the limits of the system they safeguard. We have reached those limits. They must begin to push back—hard—or we risk losing it all.”
Thank you justdad7 for writing such urgently necessary thoughts.
This is the context we need to make any progress with the gender religious, as most seem to be under the notion that the rights they claim happen to be ‘apex rights’ – in other words gender identity should be given first priority when judging a situation.
They, in fact, are not. And we need to start framing issues of gender identity in the proper context of all the human rights we have in Canada and acknowledge that friction and conflicts do exist and must be discussed.
Sex an Sexual orientation are no less important in society, but the current blitz by the gender religious would have us overlook this key contextual aspect of the debate.
No longer. Like the rest of the adults in society Gender Identity proponents are going to have to learn to compromise and accept that not all their assertions are holy writ and must be accepted in their base form.
Did you ever need to see what ignorance and a banal level of patriotism looks like? Here ya be. The Rally for Freedom in my hometown. It is so very disheartening to see this level of absolute farce on display.
These individuals are demonstrating their absolute lack of social responsibility and disregard for others. Sadly, others will pay for their ignorance while they enter the healthcare system en masse pushing scheduled and necessary life saving surgeries down the queue because getting vaccinated and following public health measures is just too much of an infringement on their rights.
https://twitter.com/Jo_Tates/status/1487575992487247872
This is a near perfect clip of the level of malicious ignorance being celebrated. It illustrates not giving a fuck about others (even your own child) while basking in a glorious herd stupidity moment of social irresponsibility. Seems like the perfect video for the anti-vax/anti-responsibility freedum crowd.
Covid has brought the out the very worst of the selfish libertarian impulse in people. It confirms that selfishness wrapped in hyper-patriotic tat wins against the serious responsible fact based response medical science has painstakingly laid out for us.
If the situation were not so fucking dire, the irony on display here would be laughably delicious. This willful malicious ignorance will come to no good end.
I’m revolted to the core.
No topic in a liberal democratic society should be off the table for reasonable debate. Yet here we are in 2022 with a seasoned educator being silenced and suspended for raising safeguarding concerns over ideological transgender literature being made available to children. Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.
The studies regarding medical transition are not conclusive, yet here in select transgender children’s literature everything is a-fucking-okay. This is an issue worth discussing in public and in great detail at the *very* least.
Canada’s National Post has run a story called No Dissent is Allowed:
“An Ontario school board is facing charges of censorship this week after shutting down a teacher’s presentation to the group, saying her comments about books on transgender issues violated the province’s human rights code
Carolyn Burjoski was discussing publications she said are available in the libraries of Kindergarten to grade six schools. She had begun to argue the books made it seem too simple and “cool” to medically transition to another gender when her presentation was cut short by the Waterloo Region District School Board’s chair.”
Ms. Burjoski’s presentation was about safeguarding children from potentially dangerous medical treatments. Seems reasonable right? (Wrong)
“Scott Piatkowski ruled she could not continue and the board eventually voted 5-4 to back up his decision. The fallout has continued since.
Though controversial and opposed by most transgender advocates, concerns have been voiced before — including by leading figures in the movement itself — that gender-dysphoric young people are sometimes pushed too aggressively into medical transition.
Piatkowski latertold a local CTV station , however, that Burjoski’s comments were actually transphobic and “questioned the right to exist” of trans people. Meanwhile, the organization took down its recording of the meeting — a regular, public session of elected officials — and had YouTube remove another copy of the video for alleged copyright infringement.”
Piatkowski and the Board have taken down the meeting off of youtube, fortunately the meeting recording has appeared elsewhere.
Go here and judge for yourself if *ANYTHING* Ms. Burjoksi says or presents is in the least bit ‘transphobic’ or in violation of the Canadian Human Rights Code (nothing is).
Time Stamp Highlghts:
2:01 – Book called ‘Rick’ – That is about why Rick doesn’t think about naked girls. He goes to a ‘rainbow club’ and identifies as ‘asexual’. Counterpoint – Maybe Rick doesn’t have sexual feelings yet because Rick is a child. Also a book that sexualizes and objectifies girls might not be appropriate reading for young girls (ed. or really *any* educational setting)
2:59 – The first warning from Piatkowski directed at Ms. Burjoski on the unfounded basis of her presentation somehow being against the Ontario Human Rights Code.
3:55 – Book called ‘Shane’ – The main character dismisses the very real consequences of being sterilized. The book also makes medical transition seem like an easy cure to emotional and social distress. (ed. it most certainly is not).
4:16 – Ms. Burjoski shut down by Chair Piatkowski for alleged breach of Ontario Human Rights Code.
Watch the whole thing, but like any zoom meeting its disjointed and frustrating to watch especially when those who value critical analysis and freedom of speech are shut down.
A bit of a side bar for you, gentle reader to make the judgement for yourself of what the Ontario Human Right Code actually says and how it happens to be interpreted by Chair Piatkowski. Here is a portion of the informal legal analysis by a Canadian lawyer justdad7 :
“The Board refers to the Ontario Human Rights Code its own policies on human rights and equity and inclusion. There is also a policy on harassment.
There is nothing wrong with the board’s policies. They accurately reflect the requirements of the Human Rights Code and the case law interpreting it. The problem is the Board’s interpretation.
The Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in the employment, housing and the provision of services on prohibited grounds of discrimination which include “race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status or disability.”
It also prohibits harassment in employment or housing. Harassment “means engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.” The board’s human rights policy elaborates on this definition and explains that harassment consists of conduct directed at an individual such as insults, epithets, persistent teasing and offensive jokes based on a protected characteristic. Nothing in Ms. Burjoski’s presentation could possibly fit this definition.
The Ontario Code does not attempt to regulate speech in general. Section 13 prohibits publication of a “notice, sign, symbol or emblem” that indicates an expression to discriminate but it is subject to a proviso that it shall not interfere with freedom of expression.”
Yeah… So it would seem that these ‘human rights violations’ are really just important and valid concerns with gender ideology that desperately need to be discussed in context of their application in Public Schools.
Also Ms. Burjoski was then summarily excommunicated from her staff and students for her heretical statements.
“And then the teacher was given what she calls a “stay-at-home order” and told not to communicate with colleagues or students, though she’s still being paid and is slated to retire soon. On Thursday, she says her union rep informed her the board had appointed an outside investigator to examine her actions.”
Yep. Did you think that freedom of speech is a valued tenet of our society? Try speaking out against the gender-religion and see how far you get. Suspended in Burjoski’s case for wanting to discuss the appropriateness of sexualizing children and child safeguarding against still largely experimental medical gender therapies.
“In her first interview on the affair, Burjoski said she was “flabbergasted” by what happened at the meeting and Piatkowski’s remarks afterward
“I am not a transphobic person. It’s crazy that just because you ask a question, the first thing people do is call you that,” she said. “We do need to have a conversation about the intersection of biology and gender. We’re not having those conversations in our culture because, look what happened to me.”
She said the order to stay away from school was likely meant to make an example of her: “The message is clear: no dissent is allowed.”
No ideology is above reproach and measured critique by members of a free and open society, yet here we are watching a teacher be excommunicated for questioning the transgender doctrine in the context of prioritizing the safety of children.
If you are not asking questions about what transgender ideology is and how it affects children (and society) it is time to start. How many more people are we going to let be silenced in the name of transgender orthodoxy? Thankfully Ms. Burjoski is not going quietly. Support her legal fund as she fights not to be silenced for making valid criticisms of a potentially pernicious ideology.
The demands of people for you as a third party to partake in their gender-fantasy is not a reasonable one.
What other adults think and believe in society is not my responsibility. I believe that society should be based on verifiable facts, evinced arguments, and the willingness to be compromise on contentious issues. We’re all not going to get exactly what we want from society, but through negotiation and Reason, a middling solution must be found. The best way to interrogate the issues that we all face in the broader societal context is to have the ability to discuss social issues without fear in a nuanced and usually complex way. No topic should be off limits in a reasonable discussion – yet an entire class of unreasonable arguments seems to be off that table. Those arguments deal with the ideas of personal identity and how the individual and society is supposed to interact.
The problematic identities that are causing friction in society usually involve the nebulous concept of ‘gender’. Gender is the set of socially constructed beliefs and values that are associated with the two sexes of human beings in society. For instance, males are aggressive and good leaders, while females are compassionate and good care-givers are both examples of sex stereotypes (aka gender) that individuals in each sex class are saddled with. Society is constructed around the preservation of these stereotypes and in breaking them there is usually a negative social cost involved.
Feminists, during the second wave, sought to break down these gender stereotypes and move toward an understanding of gender as an often toxic construction of norms and ideas that shouldn’t necessarily be followed. Gender non-conforming behaviour was lauded as the way forward as individuals of both sexes should be able to access and embody the traits and values that were traditionally ‘not allowed’ for them. Women could be aggressive, powerful leaders while men could be caring nurturing and family orientated – and neither would face social censure for acting outside what was considered “normal” for their sex classes.
I consider the refutation of gender norms and gender non-conforming behaviour to be the way forward in society as individuals should be able to embody whatever sex stereotypical sets of behaviours that seem right for them.
All of this is based on the notion that gender is a set of sex stereotypical behaviours that have been arbitrarily (and some times coercively) assigned to the two human sexes.
The Transgender Identity movement we know today takes precisely the opposite view of sex stereotypes and how they should play out in society. Transgender ideology states that the act of performing and identifying with one set of sex stereotypes *makes* you that stereotype AND the physical sex associated with it. So for instance, a man who likes wearing high heels and dresses (both sex stereotypical clothing types) should be regarded as a ‘woman’ (adult human female). Because, in transgender ideology, adopting femininity and feminine affect is what makes women ‘women’.
To reality based feminists and most of the general population this is a preposterous notion. Human beings inhabit a sexual binary. We are either male or female for the most part. What makes a woman or a man is simply being male or female with all the associated physical characteristics. We are defined by the sex class we are born into – the set of stereotypes prescribed for us is based on natal sex. Second Wave feminism correctly identified gender as (usually harmful) sex-stereotypes and specifically rallied against the notion that to be a proper man or a woman one must follow the normative prescriptions of gender identity.
Transgender ideology flips this around and says that people who don’t associate with set of sex stereotypes that are assigned to them must then adopt the stereotypes of the opposite sex and through gender magic the individual ‘transitions’ to actually being the opposite sex. Thus, acting a male acting in a stereotypical female fashion ACTUALLY becomes female.
This is Grade A bonafide horseshit, but it is the tenet that lies at the very heart of transgenderism – by adopting they stereotypes of the opposite sex, you become that sex… Fundamentally, the notion is nonsensical and at odds with the physical reality we all share. But it is also here where the compelled speech becomes and issue for me and the rest of society. You see, correctly observing reality is looked at as harmful and abusive because it does not align with the transgender individuals internalized notion of gender and of which sex they are. The transgender movement argues that subjective feelings of individuals should override the rights of others in correctly identifying the physical reality that is before their very eyes. A male is woman because he has feminine feelings and because he says so, and to contradict his gender delusion is to be bigoted and transphobic.
In polite society, being a bigot or phobic carries serious social consequences which is precisely why the transgender movement subverted these social norms to comport with their inner feelings of gender and the protection thereof. Individuals in society must then carefully consider the social costs to disagreeing with transgender ideology which makes it harder to discuss and grapple with. Sometimes it’s just easier and safer to go along with the gender deluded individual despite the damage being done to free speech and allegiance to material reality in society. It is this chilling paradigm that I rally against.
If we value the liberal foundation that we have based our society on, transgender ideology and those who espouse it should not get a free pass. Transgender ideology must be debated, argued, and its merits and faults examined closely in society. Compelled speech to preserve gender-feelings that do not comport with reality is an unacceptable state of affairs. The current imposition of transgender ideology is a clear and present safeguarding issue to women and children in our society because men who identify as women are gaining access to single sex spaces based on their say-so and that, if we value the safety of children and women, is a problem.
When one takes time to examine the arguments put forward by the gender religious it quickly becomes obvious that past verbal intimidation and name calling, not many debatable points exist.
“That’s the way feminists have used the terms since the 1970s, as they challenged patriarchal claims that men’s domination and exploitation of women is “natural” because of biology. Patriarchy turns biological difference into social dominance. Feminists have long argued that gender is connected to our sex differences but is “socially constructed” in a way that reflects the unequal distribution of power between men and women over the past few thousand years. Anything socially constructed could be constructed differently through politics.
The trans movement flips that understanding, routinely asserting that gender is not the product of social forces but is a private internal state of being, which may be innate and immutable (opinions in the trans movement vary). In other words, transgender ideology asserts that gender is something one feels and has no necessary connection to one’s body and reproductive system. Trans activists routinely assert that “sex is a social construction,” that the biological distinctions of male and female are not objectively real but are created by societies. Stock painstakingly explains why this—again I’ll use the phrase, though it sounds harsh—doesn’t make sense.
In the preceding paragraph, I wrote “routinely assert” not only because there are differences of opinion within the transgender movement (which is to be expected in any movement) but because I have heard trans activists shift arguments when asked to defend a position (which is an indication of a weak argument in any movement). I once asked a trans activist, “If sex is socially constructed, that implies that it could be constructed in some other way. Do you know of any other way for humans to reproduce other than with an egg (produced by a female) and sperm (produced by a male)? By what means would human reproduction be socially constructed differently?” The activist offered no rebuttal to that, but simply dropped the claim, moving on to assert that trans people know what sex they “really” are and that any challenge to this idea was hateful and bigoted.”
This paucity of argumentative integrity has not stopped the gender-faithful from pushing their agenda and colonizing female spaces in society.
Stock also explains why allowing transwomen—again, males who identify as women—to participate in women’s sports will undermine and potentially eliminate sex-segregated activities that create opportunities for girls and women to thrive. Separate athletic competitions for males and females exist because of the physiological advantage males have over females, and those advantages don’t disappear by identifying as a woman.
Does any of this really matter? Well, it matters to teenage girls who may not want to change clothes in a locker room next to a boy who identifies as a girl. It matters to women at a health club that allows transwomen in a “women only” space. It matters to clients in a women’s homeless shelter that refuses to restrain sexually aggressive behavior of transwomen in order to be “inclusive.” It matters to the woman who is bumped from a country’s Olympic weightlifting team when a transwoman is allowed to compete as a woman. It matters to the women who were sexually assaulted by a transwoman who was housed in a women’s prison. It matters to the lesbians who choose not to date transwomen—because their sexual orientation is toward female humans and not male humans who identify as women—and are then called bigots and ostracized. And it matters to the woman who had to fight to get her job back after being fired for publicly stating that she believes “that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity.”
Trans activists’ responses to these challenges vary, but they can be reduced to a trans slogan so popular that an LGBT organization in the UKput it on a t-shirt: “Transwomen are women. Get over it!”
To say the least, the meaning of the statement “transwomen are women” is not obvious, either intuitively or logically. It’s a claim that many people find hard to understand, not because they are bigots but because it seems at odds with material reality. It would be more accurate to say: “Transwomen are transwomen, which raises many complex intellectual, political, and moral questions. Let’s work out solutions that respect everyone’s rights and interests!”
Not the catchiest slogan, but accurate and honest. It’s a t-shirt that I think Stock would endorse. She doesn’t condemn or mock trans people but rather seeks deeper understanding to make public policy choices as fair as possible for all.
The problem is that there has never been a public debate or a reasonable discussion of how we are in include the gender religious into society. It has always been ‘accept every demand, otherwise you are bigot!’. It has gotten them far, but at the expense of female rights, boundaries, and safety, which is clearly unacceptable in a society that values individuals rights and freedom.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…