The Antisocial Socialist

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 ( trigger warning ) 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 ( trigger warning again )
• 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.

I don't know if there's a term for the phenomenon where a well-intentioned, even effective, action gets taken up or co-opted by groups or institutions in a way that either waters it down and renders it purely symbolic, or distorts it beyond its original meaning, but for lack of a better term, I'll call it Franchise Activism.

Some examples:

• Occupy in New York was an effective tactic. It was meant to disrupt business as usual, and it reframed class war in a way that could be easily discussed by people without a grounding in Marxism (which I actually think is useful, even though I'm a Marxist). Other cities took up the slogans. By the time it hit Toronto, it became about camping and using the People's Mic, even though the camp was not in a place that caused any disruption, and the People's Mic was unnecessary, since we don't have the sorts of bylaws here against amplified sound, and to be honest the number of people in the camp was so low by that point that you could just talk normally and everyone could hear you.

 

• The Yellow Vests is about...something??? in France, but I guess one of the demands involves fuel access, so it was immediately coopted by astroturf-funded far-right groups to be about supporting the oil pipelines, opposing any sort of environmental regulation, and kicking out immigrants.

 

• Free the Children harnessed the momentum of the anti-sweatshop movement and tamed it to render it completely ineffective. It took activists smuggling hidden cameras into maquiladoras and culture-jamming Nike billboards and created large binders that could be ordered by every school in Ontario, with a list of approved activities (bake sales!) to raise funds to send rich kids to dig wells in developing countries and "be the change." It holds annual slick events at the Air Canada Centre and rakes in a considerable profit, none of which is ever seen by the 14-year-old girl who makes your clothing in Bangladesh.

Today's ironic example of Franchise Activism is this incredible tweet by—who else?—the Ontario Tory government. For those of you who aren't Canuckistanians, Pink Shirt Day came about because a child was being bullied by homophobes for wearing a pink shirt, and other kids came to his aid and wore pink shirts in solidarity. This is the kind of relatively non-threatening activism that schools adore, so Pink Shirt Day was born. Now, do I always wear a pink shirt on Pink Shirt Day? I do. But I make it clear that it's about homophobia and transphobia specifically, not bullying in general. In some schools, the climate is still so bigoted that you can't name homophobia and transphobia out loud, but everyone is anti-bullying, so the meaning becomes diluted.

It goes without saying that our provincial government is composed entirely of bullies, all of them homophobic and transphobic. They created massive disruption and cost taxpayers a ridiculous amount of money to change a recently updated Health and Physical Education curriculum out of fear that young children would discover that it's okay to be queer and/or trans. You will note that the tweet does not mention queer or trans people or name homophobia or transphobia. But they perform the ritual anyway, as it's expected.

The Ontario government—which doesn't want anyone to talk about queer sexualities and gender diversity—tweeting about Pink Shirt Day without mentioning homophobia is exactly what I can't stand about Pink Shirt Day.

 Listening to some TERF spew TERF bollocks on CBC and I'm struck by how close the TERF (and their buddies, the misogynist right) sound to the arguments of anti-immigration types. You were not born X, therefore you can never be X, etc. Is it then coincidence that the two greatest points of unity on the Alt Reich are the opposition to the human rights of immigrants and trans people?

In lieu of providing actual content (outrage burnout continues at pace), here's what I'm reading this morning.

I won't link anything about Syria, Egypt, or the two Canadians under arrest in Cairo, because those sorts of horrors are above my level of cope right now and there's plenty of more intelligent discussion about it elsewhere.

Rage-inducing:

• Jezebel has a good post on how not to react to Chelsea Manning's announcement that she's Chelsea Manning. I'm lucky enough to be shielded, by virtue of currently being within my little progressive bubble and having a strict policy of not reading the comments since Manning's outrageous sentencing a few days ago, but I'm aware that there's some serious stupid out there. The discrepancy between her treatment and that of rapists, murderers, and war criminals is so infuriating that I can't even begin to put it in words—add transphobia and misogyny into the mix and you have a perfect storm of asshattery.

• On a related note, here's a long read about Manning, American institutions, and the internet. (Written before her sentencing and the official announcement of her gender identity, so the article uses male pronouns.)

“Why wasn’t I consulted?” is the fundamental question of post-network democracy, and the fundamental question of the Internet, to which the state mechanisms have so far replied: “Who the hell do you think you are?”

• Locally, some more on the shooting of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim, murdered by pigs on a Toronto streetcar. One pig (not the one who tased the dying kid after he'd been shot eight times) has been charged, but make no mistake—a pig will not actually be convicted for gunning down a likely-mentally-ill person of colour. This is a concession to the massive outcry following Yatim's murder and is intended, ultimately, to absolve all of the pigs of guilt by finding this pig not guilty.

Tell me I'm wrong, people.

• Quebec's proposed religious symbols ban, WTF? Though maybe the Jewish and Muslim communities there, not exactly accustomed to holding hands and singing Kumbaya, will find some common ground in opposing this bullshit. Proof that New Atheism is a continuation of White Man's Burden imperialism by other means.

Amusing:

• I'm getting some lulz out of the food poisoning at the CNE. I mean, isn't the point of eating these things to get food poisoning? The receptionist at my physio place, who is approximately my height and much thinner, apparently eats this kind of shit and announced her intention to try the Cronut despite everyone getting sick from it, and despite a job where she works with health professionals.

Happy-making:

• What, you mean that community-building is actually more effective at stopping crime than putting cops and surveillance cameras everywhere? You don't say! Will you just check out this lady making community housing better for everyone:

“We go up to the crack dealers, face-to-face, and we say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ says the 56-year-old woman, who uses a wheelchair. “‘It’s a beautiful night out. I love your coat. May we sit with you?’”

• Someone wrote a book just for me, apparently. Industrial music, Marx, and the Situationists. I of course immediately placed a hold on it.

• Baby Nautilus!

Useful:

• The title of this article, Anti-Fascist Fitness, made me hope that there was a training regimen to get in shape in order to beat up neo-Nazis, but it's actually not so much about that as about the politics of the fitness industry and the OMGBEESITY panic.

• This article, on how to be an ally to people with illness, chronic pain, and invisible disabilities, is quite a good read. I don't like the random capitalization or Tumblr SJW-style language, but the advice itself is useful and certainly would have been worth distributing to certain people *cough*co-workers*cough*. Especially the bits on being "the doctor," "the parent," and "the worshipper," all of which I've had to deal with in abundance.

Read, discuss if you find 'em interesting.

Okay, kids. Let's a have a discussion about the way Old Media is covering the details of Russell Williams' crimes. There's a lot there, both said and unsaid: The violation of the dignity of his victims, the emphasis on fetish and cross-dressing as a factor in his murders, the de-emphasis of state-sanctioned violence as a potential factor in his murders, the gory, voyeuristic relish to symbolically reenact the rape, torture, and murder of women that the Dead Tree Papers revel in.

I see some talk happening on FB, none here.

So. Discuss.

Virginia governor declares Confederate History Month. What? Really?

The Catholic Church knowingly dumped pedophile priests in remote native villages in Alaska, because, hey, who could stop them?

The Afghan torture hearings continue, but don't think that you get to hear about it.

Speaking of which, remember when we invaded Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban and bring in democracy? LOL.

The Ontario government continues not to do anything about the mercury contamination in Grassy Narrows, the result of the Dryden Pulp & Paper Co. dumping 9,000 kg of mercury into the Wabigoon River.

This is just chilling to listen to. Some radio asshats making jokes about starvation in Haïti.

The same high school that cancelled prom rather than let Constance McMillen bring her girlfriend did something even worse to another kid. 16-year-old Juin Baize was kicked out on his first day of class, and his family was eventually forced to relocate to Florida to protect his safety, just for being transgendered.

Cats at the Toronto Humane Society are in danger of being euthanized if homes are not found for them by April 12.

• Six-year-old Desre'e Watson was inducted earlier than usual into the American prison-industrial complex—for throwing a temper tantrum.

Link requires a subscription, so ( cut n' pasted under here: )

• In immigration news: How about reviving the Asian Exclusion Act? (Link via Pandagon.) The proposed legislation would take away the right of immigrants to sponsor their families.

• Just plain fucked up.

• Finally, can we have a moratorium on transphobia expressed using feminist language, particularly when it involves using single-sentence paragraphs in a very pretentious attempt to sound strident? (Good response here.)

Oh for fuck's sake. I hope these people and most of these people aren't trying to call themselves feminists, at least. Because they're sadly deluded if they're determining who's a woman and who isn't by what bits someone was born with.

I could go on about these privileged, self-congratulatory hippies and how disgusted they make me. Or why this is ridiculous and arbitrary. springheel_jack covered that more eloquently than I could.

I ask, instead, for anyone who thinks that this is perfectly groovy to ask themselves the following:

• Who else talks about gender and sexuality in terms of "natural" and "unnatural"?
• Who else likes to define people on the basis of genitalia?
• Who else is freakishly obsessed with other people's uteri?

Yeah, that's right, you bigoted nutjobs. Your ideological allies are the Christian Taliban. Put that in your clay pipe and smoke it.