Marlaina Smith, who goes by Danielle, has a normal one

[sabotabby]

TW: transphobia, misogyny

I know there are even worse things happening elsewhere in the world, including where some of you live. But I am RIGHT PISSED OFF about Danielle Marlaina Smith, the least competent person to be premier of Alberta, which is saying a lot, who is doing her best to turn the province into Florida with much worse weather.

What is happening in Alberta, you might ask? Alberta is plagued by drought, which is only likely to worsen as climate change, fuelled by its dependance on a doomed industry whose value wildly fluctuates, so of course Smith decided to go after the real problem: trans children. The problem I guess is not enough of them are committing suicide so she has brought in a bunch of sweeping changes to ensure that Alberta is the leader in the race between reactionary provinces Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and my own hellscape, Ontario, to be the absolute shittiest place in Canada.

These new laws include:

• No bottom surgery for minors (this was already age-restricted).
• No top surgery either (this is mostly age-restricted with a few exceptions).
• No puberty blockers for anyone under 15 (ensuring that anyone who wants gender affirming care will suffer far more than necessary and have a harder time passing).
• Schools will out children under 15 who want to change their name or pronouns to their parents, regardless of whether this will get the child murdered.
• Children 16 and 17 will be "permitted" to change their name and pronouns, but will still be outed to their parents by schools, regardless of whether this will get the child murdered.
• Every time a teacher wants to teach about sex or gender, parents have to opt in, ensuring that the maximum number of children are sexually abused by family members
• and also this will cause chaos in the school system.
• Further chaos will be caused by needing to approve any "third-party" material on sex or gender by the government censor.
• Trans women won't be allowed to compete in women's sports.

Wait. That last one is confusing! It says "women" not "girls." She is banning adult women from competing in adult women's sports. How does this protect vulnerable children exactly? Also, trans men are not banned from male sports, so it's almost as if she's saying that women are objectively worse at sports than men. Is that the example you're setting for the little girls of Alberta, Marlaina?

And all of this while claiming she's not making it political.

To their credit, lots of people in Alberta are resisting, including doctors, parents, and teachers, all of whom know that the result of these policies will be lots of dead kids. The primary driver appears to be Tucker Carlson, who was so racist that he got fired from FOX News, and disgraced former psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, who was last seen getting into a Twitter fight with Elmo. The little Muppet character, who I think is fictional but whatever.

I am enraged. I have lots of ideas for how to resist if you're a teacher or doctor. You can start small, like clogging up whatever approval system with requests that the Ministry of Education approve a photo that you have of a heterosexual spouse and child, since that can be construed as teaching about sex and gender, or forcing your administrator to call a kid's home because William wants to be known as Billy from now on. But this requires mass mobilization by the teachers' unions, medical professionals, and human rights lawyers, as this is a blatant violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the duty of doctors to provide lifesaving care to patients, and the duty of teachers to provide a safe environment for learning.

Anyway, I hope that Marlaina Smith gets painful hemorrhoids, but cannot get treatment for it because she's drained the healthcare system and the nurses are too busy for her, and then in order to get treatment for them the doctors announce the intimate details of her condition to everyone she knows and the media, and she is forced to live as a person who doesn't have hemorrhoids for a minimum of five years until she's allowed to access any care. I think it's only fair. Also I hope she's premier for less time than it takes a head of lettuce to wilt.

ETA: I have just been informed, courtesy of an Albertan friend, that Danielle Smith is not even her real name! Her real name is Marlaina. As far as I know she hasn't asked the people of this country to go by a different first name than the one on her birth certificate, so I think we should all deadname her until she asks us all permission and we've had a good think about it.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

JESUS HAPLOID BLEEDING CHEIST

[sabotabby]

YUP

[ioplokon]

getting into a Twitter fight with Elmo
lol oh no. but i mean. he is obviously a kermit guy.

everything else is incredibly grim. :(

[sabotabby]

You can like both Kermit and Elmo! I mean they're both Muppets, and we like Muppets. Why fight with them.

Everything is fucking terrible.

[yuuago]

Here via Latest Things. I'm glad to see a post about this. When I read the news about it, I just felt so awful. So it's nice to see that people are talking about it.

We've figured this was coming for a while. And reversing this is going to be hard. In the meantime, I hope Smith chokes on her dinner.

[sabotabby]

I hope so too. I feel like it flies under the radar because no one thinks about Canada other than Canadians, but we're a laboratory for terrible ideas.

[smhwpf]

Agh, that is vile! Tories gave guidance that was almost as bad about outing children. Though they allowed an exception if it would put the child in danger. I think it's being contested, not sure what the current position is. It'll be different in Scotland in any case. But any way, all of them are vile transphobes, and Labour are rapidly going the same way.

Gah, I hope there really is resistance from teachers and doctors. And I think that is an appropriate and just fate you have conjured for Danielle Smith.

[sabotabby]

Initially she talked about exceptions but as far as I can tell the latest announcement is no exceptions.

I would conjure a worse fate but this is a public post.

[blogcutter]

Below is a portion of the e-newsletter I got today from the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity. Their Trans Youth Messaging Guide is pretty good too and possibly helpful for teachers, parents, and other concerned citizens:


Shock. Dismay. Confusion. Anger. Discouragement. Fear. Sadness.

Like you, we are appalled by Alberta’s draconian and harmful anti-trans policy revealed this week.

The Alberta government’s anti-trans policy is a direct attack against trans and gender-diverse youth’s right to healthcare and inclusive education.

We, at CCGSD, condemn the Alberta Government’s dismantling of gender-affirmative care, gender-inclusive school policies, and comprehensive sexuality education for Albertan youth.

We will not let hate get in the way of life-saving education for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth.

On January 31, 2024, Premier Danielle Smith released a video detailing the anti-trans policy orientation of the Albertan government on gender affirmative care, gender-inclusive policies, comprehensive sexuality education, and trans inclusion in sports for youth aged 17 and under.

These sweeping policies are an attack on the rights of trans and gender-diverse youth, 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, and all youth because they:

❌ Promote false ideas about gender identity, gender-affirming care, and education policies.

❌ Add barriers for all youth to access inclusive comprehensive sexuality education.

❌ Prevent educators, parents & caregivers, and community organizations from fully supporting youth, especially 2SLGBTQIA+ youth in education and healthcare settings.

Queer, trans and gender-diverse youth deserve a right to healthcare that meets the best standards of care, 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusive school policies, and unmediated access to inclusive comprehensive education.

We cannot let these lies and misinformation get in the way of life-saving education for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth.

What you can do now to support trans and gender-diverse youth:

✅ Attend a protest in your city. Protests are scheduled this weekend and early next week.

✅ Talk with your colleagues and friends about these anti-trans policies in schools using our Trans Youth Message Guide.

✅ Comprehensive sexuality education saves lives: book one of our workshops in your schools so youth can access the information they need to understand their lives.

For more information visit our website, follow us on social media, and continue to read our newsletter!

[sabotabby]

All good ideas. None of it seems like enough.

[eller]

"it's almost as if she's saying that women are objectively worse at sports than men"

Hate to say it, but there's the one point this person is actually correct about. Looking at world records in virtually any discpline will confirm it: usually, the best women don't even get close to the best men. (They don't even qualify for top competitions in the first place.) An 'open' competition without any restrictions on physical phenotype will always be won by someone in a male body. There are physical reasons for it, and not just the much-talked-about testosterone, but also, like, a more efficient heart, different muscle-fat-ratio, and more sugar storage in the liver (which leads to more endurance because the sugar crash takes longer). Speaking as an athlete: people in male bodies definitely have a huge advantage. The problem, though, is that people like this Ms Smith (who likely isn't an athlete in the first place) don't really give a fuck about finding solutions for fair sports competitions, they just want to get trans people removed from society. -_-

[sabotabby]

I can see that being the case for some sports, but I thought with things like tennis and swimming it kind of equals out.

I know nothing about sports, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't either.

[ioplokon]

I do think we need to separate out elite sports from like, 4th grade soccer (and part of the reason this has started kicking off now is bc of the professionalization of children's athletics, which I think is bad; but also, if a kid's going to be a scholarship athlete, she's on a club team anyway & not the normal school team...). But I also think school sports should have rules for like, equal play time and so on, bc it should be more about having fun with your peers & getting exercise. I guess this is my perspective as someone who is NOT AT ALL an athlete and who felt excluded from school sports because of how hyper competitive it was.

Mostly, I think what comes out of this is that we need more disorganized sports. Like, there are governing bodies in the UK demanding that recreational sports leagues to do blanket bans on trans women & this seems super misguided. (Also on the truly ridiculous end, people arguing trans women should not be involved in women's professional wrestling, where 1. doping is legal bc 2. it's basically theater)

But anyway, as someone who thinks a lot about women's sports, I think you're right about the top end of elite athletes, except for ultra endurance events, maybe ski jumping (how do we talk about sports w/ judge scores...), roller derby, and probably some others (I think roller derby is pretty interesting bc it's an example of how you can use rules and, I guess culture?, to diminish size & other advantages), where there's not really a gap. However, I think the current gap is artificially large bc of the disparate investment in men's vs women's sports & the way sports science lags for women.

BUT comparing cis male athletes to trans women on hormone suppression, and/or who never went through androgenic puberty, isn't really fair (also the fat ratio and liver stuff is governed at least in part by testosterone, so testosterone suppression will mitigate or eliminate that advantage). And that's where it comes down to a bit of a sport by sport thing of deciding where there is an advantage & whether it's unfair enough to ban someone from competing (also I wish the discoourse around excluded trans and intersex athletes wouldn't be about them 'cheating', especially when these women complied with existing rules, which were often changed after the fact specifically to target them for exclusion). Bc when you get into pro sports, it kind of is all about making arbitrary decisions to balance fairness, depth of field, inclusion (otherwise the Olympics would be way smaller!), marketing, fan engagement, etc.

[dewline]

I hope for Danielle Smith and company to be hauled off in handcuffs for assorted crimes, or at least for them to be voted out of office for this attempted atrocity.

[sabotabby]

Abolish the carceral state except for putting Danielle Smith and her accomplices in prison.

[misyachnakvitka]

AFUCKINGMEN.

[springheel_jack]

that's approximately as bad as it is here, except the bans on minors accessing care are total and don't stop when they're 15. They have to be 21.

this stuff is horribly dangerous. the climate for trans people is scary. terrifying, really.

[sabotabby]

That's grotesque. I know a lot of people who accessed gender-affirming care earlier vs later in life and it's massively easier for the former group. It's not like the latter group stopped being trans, it's just far more disruptive to their lives.

[greylock]

Not to argue on a minor point, but ol' Tucker got mostly fired for his election lies (allegedly as part of the Dominion settlement), and not so much for his unabashed white supremacy.

It's not like he hid it. And, anecdotally, as far as Twitter can be trusted, it seems a lot of people are buying what he's selling, among his many, many unhinged products (ideological and physical).

Also I hope she's premier for less time than it takes a head of lettuce to wilt.

Aka one Truss. I am not sure how many Mooches that is.

[sabotabby]

Did Truss outlast Mouch? I forget.

Anyway ahaha of course I was too idealistic in my comments about Tucker.

[misyachnakvitka]

Why must we have idiots like her in office? WHY??????????? *uheaddesk* I'm right there with you on the aggy train. Holy fuck. :(

[sabotabby]

People elected her for some reason??? I think because it's easier to promise that the oil will run forever and taxes will always be low than to have to live in Grown Up World.

[lynnenne]

I just CANNOT with these people. I hope there are five dozen Charter challenges filed already, because all of this shit is a COMPLETE violation of security of the person. Even minors have human rights.

[sabotabby]

Well, but she'll just do the Notwithstanding Clause like Moe did. The Charter might as well not exist. There are times I wish Trudeau were the jackbooted commie that the right says he is to crack down on the provincial fuckery.

[radiantfracture]

Thanks for writing about this. I just can't.

[sabotabby]

I think this is one where cis people have to stand up and say absolutely fucking not.