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This letter published in the Scottish newspaper The National.
It is a letter that would likely not see the light of day here in Canada where we seem to be beholden to a small subset of society that demands we disbelieve our eyes and perceptions to order to ‘be kind’ and validate their delusions of gender. I’m tired. Very ducking tired of expending energy dealing with entitled queer males who masquerade as women all the while pleading they are the most oppressed people(?) in society. It’s horseshit from stem to stern. And dangerous horseshit at that, as the lunacy extends to putting predatory males in female prisons and defunding rape crisis centres because they have the audacity to maintain a female only service. Women (adult human females) in Canada have to fight for their rights to spaces, boundaries, and services *again* against this latest queered delusional assault by men. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so detrimental to female rights in society.
This letter highlight illustrates the disconnect from reality that is central to queer theory and identity politics. The corrosive politics of the personal (identity) can only survive in a society that has reality based rights, protections, and safeguards for its citizens. Women in Afghanistan can not identify out what is happening to them. Like all of fucking history if you are born female you are automatically second class in society and no amount of queer pandering to the identity gods will ever change that.
But enough of me, let us get to the letter, which is brilliant.
“In recent years it has become fashionable in predominantly English-speaking “progressive” circles and establishments to feign bewilderment at basic evolutionary facts related to our species. Often, this bewilderment is specifically reserved for only one half of the population. Despite millions of years of mammalian ancestry preceding us, it is only now that the female homo sapiens is apparently a convoluted, nonsensical entity.
A cherished argument to prop up this convoluted, nonsensical entity is that female people everywhere at any point in time do not share exactly the same experiences, therefore a “woman” can encompass any male who lays claim to the label.
It is true that women come from all kinds of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and as a result they will have been shaped as individuals by various experiences over the course of their lives. Women differ in our beliefs, political values, personalities and ethics.
Yet, looking at events unfolding in Afghanistan in recent days, many women around the world feel a shared sense of dread and heartache for the women trapped in such intolerable circumstances. The sickening, sinking feeling is an instinctive one that bypasses all pseudo-intellectualism. Strip away the relatively superficial differences between women and that sickening, sinking feeling is an instinctive one precisely because there are some experiences that only female humans can be subjected to. For better or worse, there is a common reality that no convoluted, nonsensical definition can erase.
Looking an Afghan woman in the eyes, what connects her suffering with our struggles here in Scotland? The embodied reality of womanhood that transcends time, distance and cultures. She is me and I am her. It is a visceral bond that no male can ever identify into and no female can ever identify out of.
It is only by an accident of fate that I live in the UK. I am one of the rare winners in the grotesque lottery of life. Life for women in the UK has been shaped by its own cultural and religious heritage. Its historical trajectory enabled British women to organise and win incredible gains for their daughters in a way that women from many other countries can only dream of doing.
The plight of Afghan women is a stark reminder of the iron fist of oppression that men can wield against women on the basis of our sex. It is an uncomfortable truth that without the majority of men on our side, women truly are at the mercy of the vicious whims and savage violence of men. My heart breaks for the women of Afghanistan – so many of them had a taste of freedom, opportunity and being a person in their own right, and now it has evaporated almost overnight. I know what is happening to them could happen to me too, if circumstances enabled it. The incel attack in Plymouth reveals the deep hatred and desires of subjugation that some men harbour for women.
Far too many women in the UK take their precious freedoms for granted. Yes, there’s much that can be better, but it’s important to realise just how rare it is to live in a time and place where women have so many rights and protections within a stable, wealthy society and where most men view us as worthy of full personhood.
Some women are so intoxicated by these freedoms – freedoms they themselves did not win – that they think it’s great fun to indulge in all kinds of outlandish luxury beliefs, such as biological sex being a social construct, women are not oppressed on the basis of sex, and that being a woman is nothing but a feeling and set of sexist stereotypes. They have feasted at the table of liberty for so long that they think they can ignore reality by chanting mantras and “queering” words.
Bloated by their gluttony, they cheer the erosion of the same rights and protections that enabled their arrogance and ignorance. Their fingers and mouths greasy with the remnants of the fruits of labour of the women that came before them, they sneer at those who understand the precarious nature of our rights and personhood and seek to protect it. They might belch out insults and smears in between mouthfuls, but deep in their hearts they know they would never willingly trade places with Afghan women, because all the queer theory in the world won’t save them from the slaughterhouse.
Mel T
This from a major Canadian ‘news’ website.
Forget about ‘just wanting to pee’ wedge issue bullshit – this is what we are in for in Canadian society; this is the upside-down, nothing has any meaning, timeline that trans ideology has in store for us.
Do not believe your eyes, but rather what some individual says about who they are. This is where belief in gender-magic takes us, where male violent crime is somehow called ‘female’ violent crime because the violent male has fucking delusions of gender and we need to respect that.
No. The word must get out of what is happening here and the bald-faced misogyny that is transgender ideology must be stopped.
“She is charged with sexual interference with a person under the age of 16 and sexual assault. Eby is set to appear in a Toronto courtroom on July 21.
In a news release issued on Tuesday, police said investigators believe there may be other victims.
Police are asking anyone with information related to the investigation to contact investigators or Crime Stoppers.”
How in any possible sane world is that person a she? In Canada this male can, and will probably be detained with other female prisoners. Read that again. This sex offender will most likely be housed in a target rich environment lush with captive and accessible female victims. Why (trans rights are male rights)? Because he *feels* like a woman. That is all it takes these days to be seen in the eyes of Canadian law as a woman – a simple declaration and *poof* a woman is nothing more than a set of feelings inside of a man’s head.
No ducking thank you. Women are adult human females and have every right to reject men -especially predatory men- from their spaces and services. You would think that the our prison service and government would be able to understand how bad an idea it is to house male sexual offenders in a female prison.
What? Yeah. This ‘progressive’ trans movement is so evil inclusive that it campaigns and is getting men into female prisons in Canada. What could go wrong?
Meghan Murphy on the issue and and interview with Heather Mason who is leading the charge against having men in female only prisons.
“The Canadian government has been transferring males who identify as transgender to women’s prisons for a few years now, keeping the public mostly in the dark about this, and the impact on female inmates. The harassment and assaults that have taken place at the hands of these males has also, for the most part, been ignored — both by the government and the media. Only a few brave women have been trying, tirelessly, to force this conversation, and force people to care about these inmates, whose rights are being ignored as a result of Bill C-16, and new gender identity policies. Heather Mason is one of those women. Heather Mason is a 31-year old-mother to two children and a first time federal offender. She was sentenced to three years at Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener and is currently on Statutory Release in Toronto. She is an advocate for women in conflict with the law and a prison abolitionist. Heather recently co-founded a nonprofit organization, whose goal is to break barriers for women in social issues that lead to incarceration.”
So, the time to take action was yesterday, but it is never to late to act and to start to speak up for the rights and boundaries of Canadian Women. Call your MP, share this story widely, read up on what is happening in Canada in the name of misogynistic transgender ideology.
Identity politics serves to corrupt the notions of morality, common sense, and what it means to live in a society under the rule of law. This is a brief examination of a twitter thread I stumbled across about the recent cases of Catholic Churches being burnt down as misguided retaliation for the residential school system that was in place in Canada.
” SASKATOON — A former Polish Roman Catholic church in rural Saskatchewan was destroyed by fire Thursday.
The church was located near Redberry Lake, which is about 80 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
Lynn Swystun, who lives about a mile and a half west of the church, says she noticed smoke from her yard around 12:15 p.m. then drove to the area and discovered the church engulfed in flames.”
Now here is where it gets interesting, this is a response to the story.
Wait, what? Where exactly is the conflation happening? Damage to places of worship, in my books, is damage to places of worship. But apparently, in Nora’s world, your identity is also somehow a factor that should be used to categorize the level of violence, determining whether the violence is ‘valid’ or not.
If you’ve been with us here DWR you know that I’m not exactly the biggest supporter of organized religion and all the tomfoolery it is responsible for. But, even being the anti-religious soul that I am, I wouldn’t attempt to order and rank attacks on places of worship into ‘worthy’ and ‘less worthy’ categories.
What kind of internal moral compass is Nora going by here?
The hell? It isn’t a hate crime to burn down a place of worship because of a political/ideological motivation? And, yes the actions of the Catholic Church are indeed pretty horrible, but burning down a church is not how we express our displeasure in a nominally civilized society that values the rule of law.
Just in case if you missed it. This is the moral wasteland that much of identity politics leads to. The level of oppression Catholics face in our society is irrelevant the crime that has been committed. Burning down a church is arson. Arson is against the law, for good reason, in our society. There is no “good” or “valid” arson permissible if one wants to live in a reasonable law abiding society.
Do you see it there? The bullshit notion that there are differing levels of ‘arsonability’ based on your identity in society (of course it comes from a pronouns bio *smh*). Err no. There is no fucking way this paradigm can work if we want society as we know it to work. Past oppression does not mean a free pass when you break the law.
Is protest a part of a democratic society, absolutely. It is our civic duty to keep our political class in check and in tune with needs of the people. Arson, however, is not one of those methods that should not be considered acceptable in society as a path to change.
Happy Canada Day from Edmonton Alberta. :)
Plus information on our nation, just because. :)
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres (3.85 million square miles), making it the world’s second-largest country by total area. Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching 8,891 kilometres (5,525 mi), is the world’s longest bi-national land border. Canada’s capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Indigenous peoples have continuously inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years. Beginning in the 16th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled along the Atlantic coast. As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British Parliament.
Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition. The country’s head of government is the prime minister—who holds office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the elected House of Commons—and is appointed by the governor general, representing the monarch, who serves as head of state. The country is a Commonwealth realm and is officially bilingual at the federal level. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, and education. It is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Canada’s long relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture.
A highly developed country, Canada has the seventeenth-highest nominal per-capita income globally and the sixteenth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index. Its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Canada is part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and the Organization of American States.
Cortana please show me how coherent the gender identity position is.
You get a cookie if you can get past 20 minutes.
Now that school is almost over (got called into a full-time temporary contract for June), I should have more time to write on the blog. I apologize for the sporadic scheduling for the last month or so, hopefully over the summer months we can get back into a regular publishing rhythm.
While perusing the CBC website I came across an article about calls to “Cancel Canada Day” in light of the mass graves being discovered at residential school sites across Canada, and the opinions of five Canadians on the topic.
“Don Amero – Country and folk singer-songwriter, Winnipeg
“I think my own belief is that Canada Day is a thing in terms of how we approach it. I think that’s where we really need to kind of take a deeper look at it. I think to spend millions of dollars in celebration, not sure if that’s what we should be doing as a country now. I think maybe [we should spend] time to reflect and to really educate ourselves.
“It is an opportunity for every individual, every Canadian, to say, ‘Where do I fit in this story?’ And I think if you’re here and you’re in this country, you’re a piece of this story. And I think that you really need to educate yourself. You can be complicit, you can be ignorant or you can educate yourself. My hope is that what we do this Canada Day is we spend more time educating ourselves on our history and who we were, who we are now and who we want to be in the future.”
I think that people won’t bother to ‘educate themselves’ unless it directly effects how they interact with society, or their income. I suspect that when asked, most Canadians will agree on the tragedy that was the Residential School system and sympathize. But not much past that.
I doubt that many Canadians will actually spend time ‘educating themselves’ unless it is job to be in the know. Historians, teachers, and the odd politician yes, but for the average person, most likely not.
If we move toward a society that values past knowledge and wisdom then then numbers may change a bit, but right now, sadly, we are not far behind the ahistorical United States when it comes to learning from history (see our Pandemic response vis-a-vis lessons the Spanish Flu Epidemic had to offer).
“Lynn-Marie Angus – Co-founder of B.C-based Sisters Sage, an Indigenous brand that hand-crafts wellness and self-care products, member of Gitxaala, Nisga’a and Métis Nations
“Honestly I never celebrate Canada Day. I haven’t since I think I was old enough to realize what Canada stood for, what Canada Day is. I’m Indigenous, so I’ve been brought up in a culture of racism. This is just something that’s normal. It’s normalized, unfortunately. But this is something that I deal with day to day It’s really difficult right now for Indigenous folks. So we’re all really suffering and traumatized and dealing with this very publicly through social media.
“There’s a saying that people are saying now: There’s no pride in genocide. And that’s so true. So it’s hard to be proud to be Canadian. I’m proud to be an indigenous person. Our existence Is our resistance. We are still here.”
I’m not sure that Canada is all about the genocide, at least these days. Canada as a minor power in the world does limited work on the world stage and mostly follows the lead of the US (like we have much choice in the matter). The successive governments that have ignored indigenous concerns is certainly not a record to be proud of, but one can hope we can improve on our political record regarding the treatment of indigenous Canadians.
“Scott Clark – Executive director, Vancouver ALIVE, director of the Northwest Indigenous Council Society
“I’ve never been a supporter of [Canada Day], recognizing the ongoing process Canada is doing to our people. But [calls to cancel Canada Day] are starting to shed light on the history of the relationship between Canada and Indigenous people. I would say that if anything [cancelling] is going to bring light to the historical and the contemporary relations between the Indigenous people, I would support that.
“I think [that] the uncovering of the the unmarked graves … for some reason, this has taken off with the Canadian public. I think they’re empathetic. I think they’re shocked.
“I do not identify as a Canadian citizen. That’s been imposed upon myself at birth. And that’s a result of the Canada Indian Act. So this is why I say there’s a lot of unfinished business that Canada has yet to do. So I don’t consider myself a Canadian, let alone a proud Canadian.”
Well, you happen to live in the political boundary of the landmass we like to call Canada, so there is that, but as with all self identification, you do you. Again, an appeal to shed light on our history. Once this news cycle is over, I’m not sure how much light will be left shining on the issue.
“Parry Stelter – President, founder of Word of Hope Ministries, originally from Alexander First Nation-Treaty Six Territory in Edmonton, Sixties Scoop survivor
“I feel that this Canada Day should not be cancelled. We should be standing at attention … but standing at attention.in fully acknowledging the full history of Canada and all its atrocities and the genocide and the residential schools.
“I think it’s a matter of changing your total perspective on the whole celebration, because many people go straight to ‘Why would I want to celebrate the past? Why would I?’ So now it’s a matter of changing perspective and saying, as I celebrate Canada Day, I’m not going to celebrate it for what it has been in the past. I’m going to celebrate it for what I want it to be in the future.
“The fact of the matter is that we still all live here. And so we have to make the most of it and move forward and not just be resilient and not just survive, but learn how to thrive in our lives. But I totally understand if my people or anybody else don’t want to celebrate. I totally understand because we all grieve in different ways.“
Parry has a great line in there – I’m going to celebrate it [Canada Day] for what I want it to be in the future. If we actually learned from our past mistakes Parry’s comment would resonate much more clearly. Unfortunately, the way our society is structured, just keeping our head above water and getting some time away from the rat-race is always fully centred in our consciousness. Historical reflection is a luxury many Canadians simply don’t have.
” Aziza Mohammed – Consultant for the World Bank, Toronto
“I don’t think it should be cancelled.I realize we’ve had some very troubling revelations, but the way forward is not to stop aspiring to be a better country, and it’s not to try and erase the existence of a country or erase history. It’s about acknowledging it and and trying to do something better.
“While acknowledging the pain of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, there’s lots of suffering throughout Canada’s history and even today. I’m a Muslim woman, I’m a racialized person. We have our places of worship burned down, vandalized with swastikas. I’ve been driven out of the first home I bought, which was in a small town in Canada, because the racist locals made my life so unbearable, I had to flee.
“There’s a lot for me personally to be upset about when it comes to our country, our history and fellow Canadians. But I still want to look forward. I still want to be positive…. Life here can’t just be suffering. It’s also a little bit of community and fellowship and joy. That’s worth celebrating to me.”
Tackling the more discriminatory elements in our society is a laudable goal.
What I think we should celebrate in Canada is the fact that we can (for the most part) state and freely share our opinions and thoughts. We still have a social rights framework in which the common people can safely hold a myriad of political thoughts and opinions and be able to disseminate them in our society. Without the freedom of the intellectual commons, Canada would be much diminished. I’m guessing that most Canadians take for granted the rights and freedoms that we have, since we have been exercising our freedom of thought and speech for so long now.
All of the diversity of opinion expressed here goes away if we lose our superstructure of guaranteed rights and freedoms. So, I think I’ll spend a little time reflecting on that fact that I live in a liberal democratic society that allows me to dissent from the majority and share opinions without deleterious consequences to my personal well being. And for that I am proud and grateful to live in, and be Canadian.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…