Meghan Muphy in the Spectator: The unbearable niceness of Canadians is driving us to destruction

[Malahaha]

spectator.us/unbearable-niceness-canadians-driving-destruction/?fbclid=IwAR1_L8wWAbWPsCxPSgVVLFW5cZQqxcRbzxL5VzrErZ25GKTVqqXIRsI6yzs

Fantastic article, as usual. I believe it's paywalled, so here is an extract. So sorry if this has been already posted, I didn't see it.

More seriously, Canada is currently in the process of pushing through Bill C-6, legislation that, if passed, would criminalize conversion therapy. ‘Conversion therapy’, to most, implies the outdated practice of trying to turn gay people straight. But in this case, Bill C-6 has lumped in ‘gender identity’. This will criminalize therapists and medical professionals who don’t take the ‘affirmative’ approach to kids identified as ‘transgender’. In other words, those who do not ‘affirm’ a child’s newly proclaimed ‘gender identity’ (putting them on a path to transition which includes puberty blockers, hormones and surgery) could be guilty of a criminal offense.

This kind of legislation should terrify you. No child’s life and body should be destroyed in this way; they are too young to understand the long-term consequences of puberty blockers and testosterone treatment. Minors are not equipped to decide that they never want to reproduce, have breasts, go through puberty (a necessary part of developing properly) or enjoy sex as adults — all consequences of the puberty blockers and hormones given to so-called ‘trans kids’.


No child should be told that because they don’t conform to sexist gender roles they must not ‘really’ be the sex they are. No adult should be imposing faith-based ideologies on children, like the idea that it is possible to have a ‘wrong body’ or that there is such a thing as being a male on the outside but a ‘female’ on the inside. But because ‘gender identity’ has been conflated with sexual orientation — folded into the LGBTQ rainbow to position anyone who does not support trans activism unquestioningly as ‘hateful’ and ‘harmful’, many well-meaning Canadians have been duped.

Canadians are famous for being polite, but we have become too polite for our own good. Our niceness has taken a dark turn when we fail to support freedom of speech unequivocally; refuse to stand up against harmful, nonsensical doctrines; and threaten to criminalize professionals who are troubled by a trend seeing thousands of girls across North America cutting off their healthy breasts and taking drugs that sterilize them. Our open-mindedness and fear of causing ‘offense’ has lead us to adopt policies across the country that allow males to be transferred to female prisons, compete in sport against women and girls, and enter women’s transition house and shelters.

Our desire to avoid hurt feelings is endangering actual people. We’ve begun to persecute people for sharing unpopular viewpoints. Perhaps it’s time to stand up for our right to ‘offend’, lest we end up in a society that protects feelings over life, liberty and constitutional rights. The truth is not always polite, but it is imperative.

Meghan Murphy is a writer in Vancouver and the host of The Same Drugs.

[zanahoria]

This kind of legislation should terrify you

it scares the crap out of me

[midgebabe]

Sorry, confused, surely if you start treating children with hormones and things you are changing them? You are forcing them to have a body that looks like what people assume is the default body for their gender identity? Isn't that conversion? Trying to hind their transgenederness?

[MichelleofzeResistance]

It's the endless cognitive dissonance.

Niceness and kindness and not causing offence or hurting feelings is really, really important - but not as a universal value, only for the chosen people in a specific, named group.

It's absolutely fine to not be equally nice and kind to those outside of that group, anything goes in how you speak to and treat them. In fact it's downright virtuous, enjoy yourself in your prejudice and violent threats and dismissal of them while reducing them to body parts. Laws to protect some involve removing protections and rights for others. Niceness and prejudice and inequality all in the same weird package, all somehow stuffed into law.

And absolutely no to conversion therapy which is evil - to the selected group, don't even hint at it, although you have to squint quite a bit to see how conversion therapy actually is conversion therapy in this context as opposed to a usefully borrowed phrase - but that selected group are celebrated and supported in inflicting actual, real conversion therapy type demands and flat out homophobia and threats to LGB people. Who were the ones suffering from it in the first place.

Niceness really is not the problem at all. Buying into branding and advertising without thinking things through or applying basic values and critical thinking may be nearer.

[Imnobody4]

Excellent article.

[nepeta]

This is frightening, given that the medical profession cannot tell who might desist and who might not, and the fiercest trans activists have made sure that researchers won't even study the question as that might mean, depending on their findings, lifelong harassment for them and their families.

It's also frightening for the speed with which all these extremely important decisions are pushed through without the activists apparently not being concerned about what happens if they are wrong in their assertions.

Isn't something similar also happening in Australia?

[TweeBree]

It's the same as in other progressive countries: 98% of the population have no idea what these laws mean because it's not being explained in mainstream news.

[Gncq]

If Canadians are so "nice" why are they pinning dead rats to a woman's shelter?

Why did a well known Canadian politician shape a whole career out of trying to close down a women's rape crisis cente?

Why is JY supported by the Canadian state in JY's targeting of immigrant women providing services to women?

Why is RMcK (VI) enabled by the Canadian state to take world records in cycling from women?

Why are women in Canadian women's prisons now needing the morning after pill whilst inside?

Canada identifies as "nice" but is an extremely typical patriarchal society, only nice to a select (male,) few.

[2Rebecca]

Hurray. MM always writes and speaks brilliantly

[HecatesCats]

Oh Canada.

The point about the education programme:

This program is framed as a means to fight discrimination and bullying, making SOGI difficult to challenge on the surface

...seems similar to the way gender ideology has permeated schools in American states. Tag it to bullying and it's harder to notice/challenge. Stealth again.

[Goosefoot]

@Gncq

If Canadians are so "nice" why are they pinning dead rats to a woman's shelter?

Why did a well known Canadian politician shape a whole career out of trying to close down a women's rape crisis cente?

Why is JY supported by the Canadian state in JY's targeting of immigrant women providing services to women?

Why is RMcK (VI) enabled by the Canadian state to take world records in cycling from women?

Why are women in Canadian women's prisons now needing the morning after pill whilst inside?

Canada identifies as "nice" but is an extremely typical patriarchal society, only nice to a select (male,) few.

I don't really agree with that.

The thing is that very few people are aware of any of these things you mention. Most would find them shocking. Especially outside of BC or Toronto.

In fact I think even many in politics are unaware, they may know some pieces, but not in a way that paints a picture.

Sometimes niceness can be rather passive, and Canadians also have something of a "mind your own business" quality about them. So you don't ask people intrusive questions, or put your oar in. But it results in something of a personality that steps back where they don't feel they have enough experience to know about things, and they tend to accept what experts say. There has been nothing like the anti-covid measures backlash in the US, or even the questioning that has gone on in the UK, for example.

There has also been a tendency among liberal or progressive Canadians to accept that answers to problems around rights, or really any cntroversial topic, are very simple, and that's pretty deadly IMO.

[DidoLamenting]

If Canadians are so nice why are they doing nothing about the plight of its indigenous women?

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/31/canada-missing-indigenous-women-cultural-genocide-government-report

[Goosefoot]

[quote DidoLamenting]If Canadians are so nice why are they doing nothing about the plight of its indigenous women?

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/31/canada-missing-indigenous-women-cultural-genocide-government-report[/quote]
What do you think they should do, Dido?

The reason there have been so many indigenous women missing, in particular, is that they are more likely to hit a lot of the at risk categories - poverty, family abuse, addiction, and prostitution.

Why? A lot of that comes down to communities which were alienated from their livelihoods, in some cases are quite remote, the residential school system and ensuing loss of culture and family connection, and perhaps a higher biological propensity to alcohol addiction.

None of these are things that are easily solved, certainly no one can change the past. Throwing money at problems of this kind has limited effect for all kinds of reasons. Often attempts to fix one problem are stymied by another problem without clear solutions.

It's not really a situation that has much to do with nice, or even not-nice.

[Goosefoot]

What that particular report is good evidence of though, is the kind of government bs that would rather use identity issues to show themselves as good and moral, rather than actually trying to describe real causes and mechanisms.

It's very much like the government line of gender ideology, very carefully not asking any real questions.

[TweeBree]

[quote DidoLamenting]If Canadians are so nice why are they doing nothing about the plight of its indigenous women?

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/31/canada-missing-indigenous-women-cultural-genocide-government-report[/quote]
To say they are doing nothing is false. The US, Australia and New Zealand all have similar issues. It's complicated AF. At least Canada actually owns up to it.