What a great essay. You are among many decent Canadians fighting the good fight, like Kathleen Lowrey, Meghan Murphy and Eva Kurilova. You're in good company on Substack.
We in NZ are struggling with the combined forces of institutional capture and media silence.
Our law commission has despite the mounting evidence of chaos elsewhere (eg Giggle vTickle) has proposed adding gender identity to a protected characteristics in our human rights legislation without firming up the definition of sex based rights. All our institutions appear to give activists pride of place. Our police, our educators, our medical services, our counsellors. It's been a remarkable successful rights based campaign, which has over riden medical caution, child safeguarding, evidence based medicine andinformed consent.
I see no signs of this changing here in Canada unfortunately. I would love to be wrong on this, but the only leader who has addressed this issue with any sanity is Alberta premier Danielle Smith. And although I agree with her on this issue, she consistently shows herself to be uncaring and callous toward Albertans (i.e. cutting funding for people with disabilities, dividing up our health care system, etc.), which makes it very hard to sell her blanket ban on “gender-affirming care” for minors as sane and caring. But, it is the only sane policy on this set of issues in Canada right now.
I would argue that the same applies in Australia. We similarly regard ourselves as tolerant and 'nice' and there has been the same chilling effect here. Also, our government was very 'inclusive' and 'nice', making 2013 amendments to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act, legally replacing the physical reality of biological sex with gender identity. Many of the arguments made in Scandinavian countries and in the UK around the weak evidence of gender affirming care have had little purchase here, as in Canada.
Thank you for sharing this with us. It makes me so sad.
What a great essay. You are among many decent Canadians fighting the good fight, like Kathleen Lowrey, Meghan Murphy and Eva Kurilova. You're in good company on Substack.
We in NZ are struggling with the combined forces of institutional capture and media silence.
Our law commission has despite the mounting evidence of chaos elsewhere (eg Giggle vTickle) has proposed adding gender identity to a protected characteristics in our human rights legislation without firming up the definition of sex based rights. All our institutions appear to give activists pride of place. Our police, our educators, our medical services, our counsellors. It's been a remarkable successful rights based campaign, which has over riden medical caution, child safeguarding, evidence based medicine andinformed consent.
I see no signs of this changing here in Canada unfortunately. I would love to be wrong on this, but the only leader who has addressed this issue with any sanity is Alberta premier Danielle Smith. And although I agree with her on this issue, she consistently shows herself to be uncaring and callous toward Albertans (i.e. cutting funding for people with disabilities, dividing up our health care system, etc.), which makes it very hard to sell her blanket ban on “gender-affirming care” for minors as sane and caring. But, it is the only sane policy on this set of issues in Canada right now.
I agree with you on that.
Excellent insight -- toxic, dangerous, fatal NICENESS.
I would argue that the same applies in Australia. We similarly regard ourselves as tolerant and 'nice' and there has been the same chilling effect here. Also, our government was very 'inclusive' and 'nice', making 2013 amendments to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act, legally replacing the physical reality of biological sex with gender identity. Many of the arguments made in Scandinavian countries and in the UK around the weak evidence of gender affirming care have had little purchase here, as in Canada.