Canadian struggle session

[ArabellaScott]

Independent MLA Jennifer Johnston has been forced to attend re education.

Quite a watch.

x.com/marco_huigenbos/status/1835818141160477015

Or perhaps you think she deserves a struggle session too? 🙄

I quite like a wee struggle session. But not on Wednesdays.

I think a tambourine session of 'Repent! Motherfucker!' should do it.

Arabella isn't defending anyone, XChrome, and it looks ridiculous to keep ramping up the accusations that she is. All the quotes start in the same place - which the audio makes clear is part way through - so it's reasonable to wonder what came before. Understanding is not excusing.

There seems to be an outbreak of such demands recently.

If it's not extreme verbosity, it's alternate universe interpretation of other posters' perspectives and imputed motivations with a few demands for abasement and adherence to behavioural restrictions.

Life's rich tapestry and Bunbury PSA apply.

I don't see that there were personal attacks on anyone. I was bothered that people were defending a creepy person and said so, to multiple people, not just Arabella. I am not claiming there was subtext, just that I could not see a reason that was not distasteful to me. I thought it was perhaps because she did not want to believe some GC people are not good people, but she said that was not it. The other possibilities seemed unpalatable to me. She she has no responsibility to put my mind at ease, so I've dropped it. No offense to her or anyone else was intended.
I despise the UCP and Jennifer fucking Johnson. I will personally attack them all day long. I don't despise Arabella and would not attack her.

I disagree but it is not worth arguing about.

The other possibilities seemed unpalatable to me.

What are you going on about? What "other possibilities"? She's not even defending her. To me this woman's political comments are completely irrelevant. Men should not be compelling her to validate their identity. You are clearly alluding to a subtext you've made up in your head. Don't be disingenuous.

Yes she "admitted what she said". But what she admitted she said did not compare actual people, children, to faeces.

Every reference I could find online was an "Outraged of Tranbridge Wells" reacting to that very small quote and adding their interpretation that this is what she meant. Whatever Global News house position may be, in this case they simply replicated and amplified a biased report.

Having seen this happen many many times, with the worst possible interpretation placed on a small fraction of what someone said and then amplified all over the internet, I wanted to know what she actually said, all of it, before reacting

Now @SpidersAreShitheads has provided more context, while this woman may or may not be a dreadful person, it seems that she did not in fact "compare trans children to faeces", and this is indeed a bad faith representation of what she actually said.

Thats not me "defending her", that is me defending homesty.

What are the 'other possibilities', though? That are so distasteful and unpalatable?

I don't care that you're accusing me of whatever, it really doesn't bother me. What is annoying is that people don't use critical thinking.

Can you not hear that her words have been misrepresented? I've no idea what the UCP is or who this woman is - she may well have views I disagree with.

That's not really cogent here, where we are discussing a concerted effort to shame, smear and 're educate' someone as part of a frighteningly authoritarian regime.

The point isn't identifying who is a Bad Person and then deciding whether they should be shunned or not - the point is the methods used to uphold authoritarianism.

And we know those methods include: 'Don't listen to the bad person and pollute your ears with evil - just trust me that I know they said a Bad Thing'.

Its a tune I've become very familiar with. Hence instant curiosity when things are reported as they have been here, with a bait-and-switch - a verbatim quote mixed with a reported paraphrase that is frankly bullshit. The former lends the latter spurious credibility.

My mind turns to Robert Lifton at times like these.

By chance, I'm reading this thread at the same time as watching a programme about Socrates, which has just said that the opposite of the Socratic method (of improving knowledge by questioning everything) is dogmatism and fanaticism.

I said I do not want to talk about the possible reasons I was thinking of. I recognize that I should not have mentioned my thoughts and I am sorry for doing so. You don't owe me an explanation.

I agree with you that she should not have been forced to accept Victoria as a woman, and about authoritarianism. IMO, that's no reason to give Johnson's words such a charitable (and IMO incorrect) interpretation. That is how I saw it. You see it differently. That's fine.
Can we put this to bed?

You don't need to be sorry for thinking things. Thinking things is the point. Question everything.

But yes, sure, happy to drop it.

Can we put this to bed...

Your wish is my command.

"Honestly, you don't even need to turn up the sound."

I don't see anyone defending her for saying kids are like poo.

Most just don't read her as saying that at all.

It seems like a huge stretch to interpret it that way.

The apology doesn't reveal much, other than that she accepted that if people thought she was comparing kids to poo, she was sorry they felt that way.

And Global is as captured as the CBC on gender issues.

This is how preposterous the blindingly lack of self awareness this type of person has. 'YOU MUST VALIDATE MY SENSE OF IDENTITY BY ERASING YOURS' or even worse... actual rights

It is the lie that these men are perfectly safe, that we should welcome them in all our single-sex places, our rape crisis centres, our DV shelters, our prisons, our sports teams, our changing rooms, showers, toilets, everywhere we are most vulnerable. It is the lie that lesbians should open their legs to men who call themselves women. It is the lie that perpetrators of violence, and particularly sexual violence, are as often women as men.

The issue with TWAW is that it is a lie not just about trans women but about every single woman (female person)'s reality.

It is the lie that the thing that makes men and women different is how they think not the bodies they have.

It is the lie that our minds just happen to come out different and it's nothing to do with how society treats us due to our sex.

It is the lie that our body sex has no impact on our lives but whether we think as a man or a woman does.

It is abhorrent than anyone would believe a man's need to hear he is a woman is more worthy of respect than a woman's need for her own reality.

You summed it up perfectly 👏

Life is an awful lot more complicated than "everything nice people think is right" and "everything mean people think is wrong".

This needs to be a sticky post on every MN board
(Along with "some people's lives are different from yours" and "it's 'etc' not 'ect'")

That video was awful. Just televised bullying of a woman by a male narcissist.

I don't much care who said what about whom - nothing excuses that shit.

Good on Jennifer for refusing to capitulate.

How can you have a discussion when a condition of being allowed to participate in the discussion is that you must agree that the other person is right - without them presenting any arguments.

The breathtaking arrogance of insisting that his beliefs are more important than hers.

We knew this was a misogynistic ideology but that was a new low.

That's a report. What did she actually say?