Cis expectations: Or, why I stopped giving a fuck

I’ll start this by saying there are limitations to who it is safe for me to “not give a fuck” about. In principle, this includes people in positions of institutional authority (parents, legislators, police, schools, doctors, lawyers, judges, etc.) whose opinions can and do have a very real potential to impact me, to a much greater extent then someone who occupies none of those positions (i.e. a “peer”). Similarly, a peer can position themselves in a position of great impact by threatening violence against me, so even in the absence of institutional authority there can be contexts where I really do have to care about what someone says or thinks. Because, you know, violence.

I speak of the contradictory and impossible expectations thrust upon me: As a woman, as a trans woman, as a kinkster, you name it. This particular phenomenon isn’t actually unique to any given identity group, though minorities are disproportionately affected by it. It’s the Catch-22.

Imagine this: I am possessed by an episode of masochism and so attempt to dialogue with two sex-negative TERFs. I admit during this conversation that I enjoy BDSM. One TERF argues that my submission indicates a misguided belief in the supposed inferiority of women (having sought submission and womanhood at the same time); the other TERF argues that my dominance indicates that my gender identity is a ruse altogether cloaking misogynistic attitudes that insist on a woman’s “proper place.”

Here’s the trick: They’re the same TERF. That’s because people in this scenario have started with their conclusion and they’ll work their way backwards to ram their immediate surroundings into their construct. They start with “I’m dangerous” and will torture any circumstances presented to them to get a confession thereof. Without the slightest hint of irony they will predictably contradict themselves, sometimes within the same sentence.

(Setting aside the pseudo-Freudian bollocks altogether, I could write in detail about the nuances of my kink and I assure you it has nothing to do with either of the above scenarios.)

If I’m feminine, it’s obviously because I think womanhood is defined by sex-stereotypes. If I’m masculine or non-conforming, I’m obviously not “really” a woman and just doing the trans thing for attention.

If I’m attracted to women I’m “really” just a straight guy and if I’m attracted to men I’m “really” just a gay guy–“guy” being the foregone conclusion.

If I’m ambitious it’s because I had male socialization but if I’m content it’s because I’ve internalized the helplessness of womanhood.

If I’m stone cold, it’s because I have too much testosterone. If I’m emotional, it’s because I have too much estrogen.

It never stops!

For whatever reason, enough cisgender people think my gender expression–or any aspect of my personal, private being–is a matter of public spectacle. And on top of that, they think this is a fair one-on-one interaction. They don’t realize that they are voice number 1,232,104 offering unsolicited opinions about me and my morally neutral choices.

Ultimately this isn’t about communicating reasonable expectations. If it were reasonable, there might be a way to win.

As there isn’t, I’m not playing. That’s where “fuck off, I don’t care” comes in–at least with peers. That’s why absolutely none of my morally neutral choices are up for debate.

I don’t fucking care about what you think about the way I wear my hair. I don’t care what you think about my glasses. I don’t care what you think about my kink, my dating, my sexual practices, my job, my volunteer work. I Don’t. Fucking. Care.

Because pleasing you means pissing off someone else.

So remember that next time you offer up these sorts of opinions. Even if we accepted the premise that I require constant external validation, such a requirement would leave me mired in the quicksand of ignorance surrounding gender variance and the act of transitioning.

-Shiv

Vocabulary’s got nothin’ to do with it

Content Notice: Victim blaming, trans-antagonism, reclamation of t-word slur

Perhaps it was good fortune that I caught a bug and started drowning in my lungs. I recognized earlier this week that I was very tense from working back-to-back for such a protracted period of time and even though I earmarked some time this weekend to unwind, my body decided an illness was needed earlier to get me back on my ass. During this time I’ve had a lot to fret over regarding the fragile and precarious place trans people are in, as a community, and I’m fairly certain only some of it was a fever dream. I don’t know if this marks my “return” proper, since my schedule is supposed to be daily, but I nonetheless feel compelled to say something in the interim.

Previously our struggle as trans folk was chiefly defined by a life of falling through the cracks. We existed in a constant gray area, largely omitted from laws and policies both good and bad. This omission created structural barriers that denied us access to the machinery of prosperity that Western democracies supposedly enjoy, leaving many of us to survival sex work or chronic poverty in underemployment. In essence, it used to be somewhat inaccurate to call us “second-class citizens,” not because we weren’t subordinate but because we barely qualified as citizens to begin with. It was an apartheid, only not one limited by geography or ethnicity. Just a slow genocide of omission, rather than the grand theatrics of fascism.

It had its disadvantages and I certainly wouldn’t keep things that way or seek to return them to that way. But, at the very least, when the village needed a scapegoat, we were largely overlooked outside of the occasional punchline from dickheaded comedians.

The story of the scapegoat was perhaps my favourite contribution from the Bible. It went something like this: Things would go poorly and this would be attributed to sin. Rather than punish villagers, which would surely create more strife and make the matter worse, the village would agree to burden a goat with all their sin, which would then be cast out into the desert to perish of thirst. I liked it not because I celebrated the inane violence thrust upon an innocent goat; I liked it because it demonstrated the lengths to which a human will go to avoid doing the right thing, as long as “the right thing” takes time and effort and work. The goat, being a safe victim who can’t fight back, represents the easy thing.

So I am disappointed, but entirely unphased, to find a Centrist hit my feed scapegoating gender variant folk for the victory of Trump.

During the “Weekend Update” segment, co-anchor Colin Jost made what may have seemed to many like a routine joke playing off both Tinder’s recent update and Democrat Hillary Clinton loss in the presidential election.

“The dating app Tinder announced a new feature this week, which gives users 37 different gender identity options,” Jost set up the joke, his permanent smirk on prominent display.

Then, the punchline: “It’s called, ‘Why Democrats lost the election.’”

The logic goes something like this: 1) Gender plurality is “ridiculous,” 2) The Democrats were supportive of gender plurality; 3) Therefore, the Democrats are ridiculous.

Haha, so funny. /s

Jost, of course, responded predictably when people challenged him on his “joke.” He carried on to do what all assholes do and I probably don’t have to tell you the rest: Doubling down, gaslighting, yada yada, y’all know the drill forwards and backwards.

“Just a joke” is a weak-ass excuse, and in general I’m glad more people aren’t buying it anymore. What it does is observe what sits outside the boundaries of socially acceptable and then propose an environment where those boundaries are instead moved to accommodate those unacceptable things. That is the function of a joke.

Most of the time prejudiced people conceal their true beliefs and attitudes because they fear others’ criticism. They express prejudice only when the norms in a given context clearly communicate approval to do so. They need something in the immediate environment to signal that it is safe to freely express their prejudice.

Disparagement humor appears to do just that by affecting people’s understanding of the social norms – implicit rules of acceptable conduct – in the immediate context. And in a variety of experiments, my colleagues and I have found support for this idea, which we call prejudiced norm theory.

Now “tranny jokes” have been popular for decades, and were still popular when people were starting to challenge anti-woman and anti-black jokes. And at the core of all these anti-minority jokes are a number of tiresome themes progressives have been wrestling with for dog-knows-how-long: This notion that the equitable participation of minorities constitutes “political correctness,” implying that it is only by government intervention that We, the Majority, grant access to the machinery of prosperity to those yucky Others.

I just want to make something abundantly clear: I do not believe for a single moment that Jost’s joke has anything at all to do with the ongoing expansion of vocabulary to describe gender plurality; nor do I believe that the people opposed to equal treatment of trans folk do so because they’re called “mean names” like “transphobe.”

That’s because this has never been a debate about which words to use. Language has always been descriptive and is ever changing. For a community as rare and disparate and disconnected as the gender variant community, it makes perfect sense for our community to start organizing with the advent of the internet, a device which allows us to surpass the limitations of geography. It’s only logical that having been omitted from inclusion in broader society and how that manifests in the lack of vocabulary for us that we would create our own language when we came together. This is all predictable and entirely supported by the function and history of language. No one who has even the shallowest background in linguistics is surprised by this.

The opposition to “political correctness” was, always has been, and always will be, about avoiding culpability for one’s own prejudice. They oppose efforts to acquire equitable access to society for minorities not necessarily because they believe minorities are inherently inferior and deserve inequality, but because they refuse to admit inequality exists to begin with*. They don’t want to face the prospect of having at least some of their success attributed to the dumb luck of the station of their birth. They don’t want to admit they are complicit in the continuation of the structures that created this hierarchy to begin with, a hierarchy that they benefit from even if it doesn’t manifest in giant mansions and a coterie of servants at their whim.

That’s why I can write a 2200 word article without once uttering the word “transphobia” and nonetheless have it met with the signature frothy-mouthed resistance of anti-PC types. It’s why I can tiptoe around the word “misogyny” in a post about the ridiculous shit my female Premier is accused of and nonetheless have it met with the desperate flailing of “not sexist” conservatives. The calls to destroy “political correctness” aren’t merely about the elimination of an expanding vocabulary, but moreso represent the restoration of denial regarding inequality to begin with. That’s why you can be nice and patient and diplomatic and nonetheless be accused of namecalling: They aren’t offended by the word “transphobe,” they’re offended by the idea that their inaction has caused harm and continues to do so.

It ain’t about words, meng. Laws that create an environment of legal hostility for trans and gender variant folk only sprang up when we began to gain visibility. They aren’t a punitive response to the words of gender plurality–they’re a punitive response to our demands for equality, designed to punish us for suggesting things were unequal to begin with. Given that we are so badly outnumbered and our “allies” practically evaporated into thin air after Obergefell, we’re a safe victim for this message. We’re the goat onto which the sins of America are thrust. “Don’t ask for equal treatment because we’ll make it unequal just to punish you.” Which, of course, only makes sense if your belief is predicated on the notion that equality has to have existed to begin with.

I suspect this is the sentiment underlying “Make America Great Again.” Go back to the good old days when people were still in widespread denial of inequality. Go back to the good old days when you could coast on the unpaid labour of your wife while working jobs built on the unpaid labour of your black neighbour’s ancestors. Go back to the good old days when words like “sexist” and “racist” didn’t exist because the assumed superiority of white men was simply the air you breathed. Go back to the good old days when nobody compared Thanksgiving to the brutality occurring at Standing Rock. Go back to the good old days when minorities couldn’t even participate in public life, as leaders and politicians and policywriters, because their station never gave them that option.

It’s not the vainglorious, ruckus type of supremacy. No mobs chasing you out of homes or armies marching in lockstep, no smashed windows or broken knees, no torturers or kidnappings. It’s a quieter supremacy. The kind that tuts tuts at protesters protecting clean drinking water, the kind that overlooks police brutality because only “criminals” are targeted by the police, the kind that smugly claims it can agree with our ends but not our means from the safety of an ivory tower. It’s not the supremacy of murder and violence. It’s just the supremacy of inaction and complicity, whispering in your ear that somehow apathy has no moral consequences.

But inaction, too, is a choice.

I don’t think you can logically conclude that the affirmation of 0.6% of the population is what cost the Democrats the election. But I think you can conclude that, if all you’re looking for is a knee-jerk, feel-good answer to failure. Hey, even if we narrow our scope to milquetoast liberals and centrists, trans people are still outnumbered. It won’t be the first time we are blamed for something and cast out from a movement.

Really, our only recourse is that in time, we’ll see you in the desert too.

-Shiv

 

*This sentence was more directed at Centrists or Moderates, the “not-racist” Trump supporters. There are, of course, supremacists of many stripes who do believe in the superiority of one class, and therefore the inferiority of another. Please bear in mind that’s an entirely separate can of worms and is not the subject of this post.

Bathroom Bill Senator Don Plett back at it again

Don Plett is the genius behind the previous Canadian government’s attempt to legislate on trans rights–he proposed the amendment to Bill C-279, which specifically excluded public accommodations and housing protections. An otherwise perfectly good bill was gutted thanks to him, leaving trans women stranded in a veritable minefield yet again.

So, of course, we ought not to be surprised when Plett steps up to the plate to antagonize the 4th? attempt at codifying trans human rights. Check out his stunningly familiar rhetoric below:

Colleagues, last week Bill C-16, gender identity and gender expression, passed third reading in the other place without a recorded vote. This came on the heels of the Justice Committee refusing to hear from witnesses on this legislation. That’s right, colleagues, no public hearings.

Well golly gee, public opposition to trans rights is pretty fuckin’ high when you mention public accommodations, so yeah, no public debate. Probably because we’ve all heard the trans rapist trope a few too many times at this point? What new information could possibly be presented against us that we haven’t already heard?

We should be so confident in the legislation that we bring forward, and certainly in the legislation we pass, that we are willing to have it withstand a thorough and rigorous vetting process.

That’s a strange euphemism for your “fix” last time, Plett. Rigorous vetting process, you mean like the part where trans women are many times more likely to be a victim of violent crime than cis women are? Yet you trotted out tired arguments about women’s safety when you torpedoed the last bill. Is that the kind of thoroughness we can expect?

Political correctness authoritarians

Oh for fuck sake. This was in my government? We have a fucking sheep bleating about “political correctness” in government?! 

have narrowed the scope of acceptable thought and discourse in academia and, by extension, the general public.

YES, YOU ASSHOLE. TRANSPHOBIA IS NOT A RATIONAL RESPONSE.

However, we as legislators and public policy-makers should not be afraid of the difficult conversations.

Aww, Plett’s scared. Poor widdle muffin. Good thing you aren’t living in the constant fear of literal assault every time you pee, you might just melt like the snowflake you are.

Legislation that has serious implications on freedom of speech — and, for the first time in Canadian law, compelled speech — cannot be passed so flippantly without thorough public discourse, debate and consideration.

What? Where the fuck is this even coming from? The boundaries on Bill C-16 are clear! They state which sections of the Criminal Code are being amended: 1) Advocacy for genocide; 2) Public incitement of hatred. YOU’RE A GOD DAMN SENATOR YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS.

As University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson said recently on this issue

Oh fuck off already

Once we decide that we will not engage in manipulation of facts, regardless of the results, if it is based on telling the truth, that is always the best possible outcome.

Manipulation of facts, like this complete fucking fiction that Bill C-16 dictates pronoun use?

Are you terminally incapable of self-awareness??

I challenge my colleagues not to be silenced by the baseless character assassination, not to be silenced by those who want to throw out labels of bigotry and new phobias dreamt up every other week in social science departments in order to silence dissent.

OH MY GOD YOUR DISSENT IS NOT SILENT JESUS CHRIST MY BLOOD PRESSURE WOULD BE GREAT IF IT WERE

Those who find this legislation to have some merit but are afraid to speak in its favour because they find the topic “difficult,” and those who behind closed doors are vehemently opposed to this legislation but are not willing to speak to it publicly, please, by all means, let your voices be heard.

Yes, let those gullible idiots undemocratically appointed to torpedo democratic legislation make their ignorance clear at the expense of trans folk who will be condemned to live in between the lines until you fucking keel over and die already.

We are the chamber of sober second thought. We are legislators and policy-makers. It is our duty to look at fact, at science and at truth. A difficult and controversial topic with profound consequences should not generate less debate; it should generate more debate.

Great! Then I’ll see you when you sign the law! Unless this call for science is what you mean when you refer to Peterson as your “expert.” Is god damn Paul McHugh going to make an appearance? What is this “science” that makes you hesitate? Alice Dreger’s? Please spare me the fucking quackery. I’ll pop a god damn artery.

I want to ensure all of the outraged individuals who have emailed and called our office that the Senate will do a better job. When the House of Commons puts its electoral viability ahead of difficult conversations about policy, it has failed. Colleagues, let’s not fall into the same trap. Let’s have the difficult conversations. Let’s do our jobs. We owe it to Canadians.

Oh yes, I look forward to being publicly defamed as a rapist, again, during the “difficult conversation” you intend to start.

-Shiv

Rethinking attitudes about voting in democracies

“Voting is a chess move, not a Valentine.”

-Rebecca Solnit

So there’s still a lot of postmortems popping up concerning the US Election and one theme that is quite common among all of them is this notion that Clinton was unlikable. Setting aside the hazy malaise that expelled such conspiracy theories as “Clinton is a lesbian” or “Clinton kills kittens” (quoi?), we still see a few criticisms consistently popping up: Her corporate affiliations and Wall Street backers (“The Establishment”), her foreign policy, the emails she “lost” (which were but a fraction in volume compared to, say, Bush Jr.), and Benghazi.

Thing is, I have never once in my life seen a politician that I would want to have as a friend. I’ve definitely never seen a politician I would want as a parent (looking at you, Milo Yiannopoulos). To illustrate why, I present Trump’s shortlist for Cabinet: Corporatists, Wall Street bankers, his own kids*, Evangelicals, and war hawks.

You know, The Motherfucking Establishment.

If the claim that Clinton was unlikable was the reason you didn’t vote for her, I’ve got bad news for you: Everything you hated about her** is going to be worse at least ten-fold under Trump.

It’s not a politician’s job to be your fucking drinking buddy. It’s not a politician’s job to be a weird-creepy-Freudian-surrogate-parent. It’s not a politican’s job to avoid smiling too much or not enough or wave with just the right amount of enthusiasm. All these analyses of Clinton’s likability are so god damn shallow. I don’t care! She could show up to a rally and smear cat shit on her face, I would still vote for her if she said she’d implement single-payer healthcare!

It’s a politician’s job to make policy, and since we (ostensibly) hire them, it’s our job to make sure that policy is both fair and effective.

Hence, Solnit’s quote: “Voting is a chess move, not a Valentine.”

I don’t care how likable someone is or is not. And I wish more of us thought that way. Maybe if we did, policy would’ve made more than 32 god damn minutes of news in an 18-month long election cycle. If two amorphous blobs ran for that election, I still would be sobbing uncontrollably at Republo-blob’s victory because their policy planks were fucking rat poison.

Here’s what I would like to see instead.

We ask ourselves:

  1. What is their policy in any given area of government?
  2. What is the goal of this policy? If I dis/agree with this goal, why?
  3. Will this policy be effective in implementing its goal? If it’s ineffective, what are the consequences?
  4. Of my disagreements, which platform(s) are most likely to be receptive to changing in my direction i.e. can we lobby to have this interest represented in this party?

Guess what, you’re a Marxist or a Socialist? So am I. Within achieving realistic goals outside of violent revolution, I vote in every election not for the candidate I actually want (because that candidate doesn’t exist and never will), I vote for the candidate who is most likely going to inch public policy closer to something I consider an improvement.

Not perfect. No such policy exists. Just better.

Drop this naive idealism that Sanders could’ve fixed everything and play the pieces you actually have. You’re playing a game of chess which means you need to make many moves. Nobody wins a chess game closing their eyes and hoping for different pieces. They win by playing what’s on the board.

Republicans already get this. They’ve been working overtime for the past 8 years to secure every arm in government, and now that they’ve succeeded they get to set the agenda. You may post your “we’ll survive” platitudes but frankly if you genuinely believe that you never had cause to be scared to begin with***.

I don’t know what it’ll take to light a fire under your ass but dear dog I hope I don’t have to start a frickin church to get there.

-Shiv

 

*Because the correct response to North Korea is “yeah, more of that.”

**Aside from Trump not being a woman, but I’ve noticed any analyses that attempt to incorporate this observation tend to get shouted down. Not like way too many of y’all just elected a self-confessed rapist or anything NOPENOMISOGYNYHERE

***The Family Research Council is on Trump’s shortlist for cabinet. I hope we appreciate what it means if these policies are enacted.

What happens in the US doesn’t stay in the US

The question of what America’s progressives are going to do next is a complex one. There are many US analysts attempting to dissect the bloated carcass of the 2016 election and for my part I’m probably going to take a while to really take stock in terms of action in the United States. I’ve started regular donations to Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union and I strongly urge you to do the same if you have disposable income.

The problem, of course, is that Trump is a symptom–and the disease which caused it knows no borders. Something I do have more direct involvement in is the politics of Alberta and Canada. There are only limited ways I can help in the United States but right here, at home, there’s hot iron for me and other Canadian progressives to strike–because all signs point to our next Trump, too. Most of us will only be indirectly affected by the disaster that is sure to be the Trump administration, but we’re afraid nonetheless. Ideas don’t stick to borders.

After all, I’ve been mocking our very own opportunistic climate change denying xenophobic forced birther Christians-can-do-no-wrong fuck-the-gay-kids alt-right posterboy grifter and conman. This is the same leadership hopeful of Alberta’s so-called “Progressive” Conservatives who got a pat on the back from Michael Gove of all people and who manufactured the niqab outrage in our last federal election. That’s like getting an endorsement from Emperor Palpatine.

The question, of course, is what does it mean for Canadians that the projected winner of the PC leadership, Jason Kenney, is a derivative of Trump-esque beliefs? Specifically, what does it mean for conservative Canadians–the “not sexist/racist” kind who support fiscal conservatism–when at least some of their big tent includes the “proudly sexist and racist”?

If you consider yourself a centrist or conservative in Canada, you are overdue for an honest introspection of who exactly sits in your “big tent.” Like American conservatives, the right-wing has enjoyed successes in the recent past by uniting many different voting blocs under a single banner; indeed, the big tent fracturing is likely one of the largest contributors to the left-leaning New Democratic Party’s (NDP) success. So if you’re one of those more reasonable centrist types, the voting bloc that seems to think Trudeau Sr.’s budgeting was bad but thought he was on to something when he said “the nation has no place in the bedroom,” then you have a problem. Because also sharing space in your tent of fiscal conservatism is, you know, the voting blocs that would put a self-admitted rapist in the White House and bring the government back into people’s bedrooms.

If you’re not convinced, you need only look at how the current race for the Progressive Conservative leadership is playing out. Two centrist candidates, Sandra Jansen and Donna Kennedy-Glans, ran for PC leadership on platforms that fit the bill of fiscally conservative but socially progressive: Jansen in particular was explicit about a woman’s reproductive right to choose and her support of the NDP’s environmental protections. In other words she was just the sort of reasonable voice a progressive could communicate with, since she was less concerned with towing the party line and more concerned with whether individual policies were effective and needed. I don’t think I would’ve voted for her but I wouldn’t be sweating below the collar if she got in.

At the same time Canada was curled up into a ball and crying into its knees as the results of the US election came in, revealing some 60-odd million who actively supported Trump and another ~180 million who didn’t seem bothered enough to vote against him, Jansen and Kennedy-Glans were entering their resignations from the PC leadership. Their reason? Their nomination forms had been returned with misogynistic slurs and rape threats written all over them. I’m sure it’s total coincidence that this sexist harassment coincides with Kenney’s bussing in so-called Bible-boys and signing up youth en masse to PC membership so they can vote for the candidate who just not-so-subtly “incentivized” them. Which, by the way, is breaking the PC charter–you’ll note the PC executives don’t care. All this, by the way, paid for by Kenney’s “charity” dedicated to himself, so he could skirt around election oversight.

Kenney’s playing dirty, and he’s slated to win.

Conservatives of Alberta, this is your big tent. For decades you’ve been able to put respectable conservatives front and centre, courting this other Trump-esque voting bloc implicitly through the use of dog whistles, banking on the fact that the respectables would be able to sit on the trembling Pandora’s Box.

Well, America just demonstrated that the deplorables in Pandora’s Box can break free, and we have the early signs right here in Alberta that the respectables don’t weigh enough to keep the lid on: Kenney just broke a charter rule which requires members to be members for at least 7 days before they can vote, and just had hundreds of youth bussed in from rural Alberta to vote for him after signing them up the same day; he keeps characterizing the NDP’s changes to the education curriculum as “social engineering”–surely you agree the basics of “gay people exist” is not a radical revelation for our rusty and creaky curriculum; Kenney has a long, long track record of voting to erode a woman’s right to choose; women in politics are regularly receiving rape and death threats from his supporters; and he has a soft spot for regressive Christians routinely violating public policy despite pocketing public funds in public contracts. Is that your idea of “fiscal responsibility”–letting scammers who steal from the public purse off the hook because they mumble something about Jesus? How about Kenney grifting national taxpayers to finance his provincial leadership bid? Is that fiscally responsible, too?

You need to soul search, because it’s rapidly starting to look like the fiscal-conservative-socially-progressive types aren’t going to have a party in the next election. Kenney is slated to win the PC leadership and he has been very, very open and forthright about his intention to absorb the Wildrose back into the fold. The problem is that it isn’t the respectables at the helm anymore. It’s the deplorables. The ones who are serious about being socially reactionary. The ones who think death and rape threats are a legitimate vehicle of criticism. The ones Brian Jean has been trying to contain like a beleaguered dog-owner pulling back on the chain of his rabid pup: You know, the ones making targets of the Premier, mocking victims of domestic violence and the assassination of labour-rights politicians, and publicly approving denigrating posts about gay politicians, because there’s apparently not enough policy to criticize?

We have about 3 years to see what damage the deplorables will do under the Republican big tent before our next provincial election. I seriously hope you pay close attention, because here in Alberta the women, trans folk, queer folk, immigrants, people of colour, students, youth, poor, sick, and disabled are all going to be at the mercy of your big tent whose presumed-leadership intends to grind us into dirt. Some of us are even fiscal conservatives ourselves, but our political calculus is tainted by the fact that the party which potentially agrees with our economic policy is bolstered by a highly controlling voting bloc, one that wishes to make life difficult for us “deviants” through a climate of explicit legal and social hostility.

And yes, to head off the accusation that the Left has its own brand of deplorables: It’s true that we have our lunatic fringe as well. The difference is that our Greens bagged 0.49% of the popular vote. Our Communists bagged 0.01%. Neither has a penchant for doxxing their critics, something I can’t say of the right-wing deplorables. Let’s not pretend that radical leftists in this province have a voice. If Kenney succeeds in the creation of another big tent conservatism, that’s well over half the province throwing their weight behind him: And it’s the social regressives at the steering wheel. Your lunatics aren’t a fringe sequestering themselves in Pandora’s Box anymore. The handler’s grip on the leash is slipping, and we’re slated to watch the rabid dog break loose.

There’s two voting blocs this post isn’t addressed to: the capital-P Progressives, and the socially-conservative Conservatives. If you’re the type that has already been convinced by Kenney’s rhetoric that respecting trans kids constitutes an “experiment,” I’m not sure how to communicate with you. We are working with very different data sets and at this point might as well be speaking a different language. This language problem I have no solution for, though if you’re willing to communicate without hurling insults then so am I. We can give it the old college try. And if it fails, you can at least take the liberty of looking me in the eye that my wellbeing matters so little to you that you’d support a reactionary candidate like Kenney. At least be honest about it.

As for Albertan Progressives, I’ll have more detailed plans as we near the 2019 election. There’s too many variables to commit to any given plan just yet, but I am confident I can give you something thorough after the lines are drawn. I know several Pride centres across the province working together with several BLM chapters across the province, so progressives are already teaming up. Start there while we wait for the dust to settle.

To close, here’s the homework for conservative Albertans and Canadians: If it truly matters to you to make a fiscal conservatism that doesn’t deliberately single out minorities for mistreatment, you need to make that clear as your political parties take shape. Albertans, there’s still time to make Wildrose the respectables–Kenney appears to be more-or-less confirmed in taking the PCs hard to the right. And federally? The Conservatives agreed to axe their “one man and one woman” policy on marriage. Push for more of that.

Tonight I attend a federal Liberal party gathering. I intend to raise the spectre of reactionary successes and how the Liberals will almost certainly do what the Democrats did and take the progressive vote for-granted in their next election. Results of that coming soon.

We all have a responsibility to cast informed ballots in our upcoming elections and there’s far too much at stake for minorities to have the respectables become complacent as the deplorables take charge of the conservative apparatus. If you want to be branded as the politics of personal responsibility, then make sure your tent doesn’t have deplorables in it. Denying they exist and are in your tent is anything but responsible.

-Shiv

Staring Contests

Content Notice: Self harm.

Semi-open thread here. Comments changed for now not to require manual approval, so as long as you’ve got at least one comment somewhere on my blag you can get through.

Again, list of help lines here. Please, please call if you have to. There’s no shame in it. I had to, too. Although mine was Canadian.

 

There will be plenty of postmortems in the coming weeks that will hopefully provide valuable insight for those of us who are not garbage human beings.

I’m not sure I care.

Black lives don’t matter.

Trans lives don’t matter.

Gay lives don’t matter.

Women’s lives don’t matter.

Only disaffected white voters. That’s it. That’s who matters, to the expense of everyone else.

So few people seemed to actually read the policy manuals in this election. Will it make a difference to those Americans who are about to become explicit (rather than implicit) second class citizens whether someone voted Republican despite their policy or because of it?

Are we going to give a shit about your “economic anxieties” when our employment is imperiled by the Religious Freedom bills that make it legal to fire us for being who we are, as long as our former employer remembers to mumble something about Jesus?

Are we going to give a shit about your “economic anxieties” when our marriages are rendered null, when our spouses die alone in hospitals because we don’t “count” for visitation rights? Are we going to give a shit about your “economic anxieties” when the ensuing medical bill thereof renders us bankrupt?

Are we going to give a shit about your “economic anxieties” when we’re being murdered in bathrooms and in the streets because of all the paranoia surrounding our bodily functions?

That’s the lesson cemented today. Our lives don’t matter. We’re acceptable collateral in service to the perceived grievances of white voters. The USA was topping the charts of its own performance in nearly every civil sector, but nope, the motherfucking feelings of America’s beckys won the day.

 

Most people answering the question “what does it all mean?” didn’t arrive to my conclusion. Certainly my staring contest with the edge of a razor gives it context. I don’t think it’s mere depression telling me this. The Republican platform is an absolute human rights disaster. No legal apparatus is available to us to challenge it. The Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. No checks and balances before. It’s all united this time, unless enough Republicans find their back bone and break party ranks. Riots is pretty much all we have left, and all that will do is get us sequestered in prison.

No wonder the razor stared back.

 

John Green‘s postmortem suggests something profound, something I will likely fixate on as I regroup and reorient my political activism here in Alberta and Canada. My transcript:

Good morning Hank, it’s Wednesday. We were going to have a video from the DFTBA.com [don’t forget to be awesome] warehouse today but I thought I’d make one instead.

So it appears that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump in the US Presidential race but the Presidential race is decided by Electoral College votes and Donald Trump won most of them so he is the President-elect. Most–though certainly not all–of the people watching this video wanted Hillary Clinton to become President. I know I did, and for many of us the results of the election are devastating.

I think part of what makes so hard for some people is that Donald Trump has often attacked not what his opponents believe but who they are: Their race, their gender, their religion and more. And it is painful and scary to be called dangerous or less-than by a man who becomes President-elect of the United States and I don’t want to minimize that fear or trauma because I believe that it is real and important.

I also want to say that I’m sorry. I am sorry that we have let our political discourse become so hateful. And I’m sorry we let our echo-chambers become so sealed off that it is as unfathomable to me why someone would support Donald Trump for president as it to many Trump supporters why I would support Hillary Clinton.

I spoke with hundreds of undecided voters in the days before the election and what struck me most was how different our information was. In many cases we had the same concerns–the environment or healthcare or tax policy–but we were working with completely different data sets.

Our community, by the way, is also an echo-chamber–just 4% of the Nerdfighters who filled out the census this year said they would vote for Donald Trump. But I don’t know how to make our community more inclusive without opening it up to cruelty and hatred. We have to get better at listening to each other and challenging each other constructively and generously but I worry that the very architecture of the social internet might make that impossible.

Honestly I feel lost and I’m looking to you for guidance and clarity as I have for almost a decade now.

But the world doesn’t end today as Saladin Ahmed wrote last night: “It’s our job to fight those in power and stick up for the powerless. That stays the same no matter who’s president.” As Lin-Manual Miranda wrote: “I love this country and there’s more work to do than ever.” And as Kamala Harris said: “This is a time to fight for who we are.”

I think this will be a tough time in US history–I hope it won’t be but I think it will be. But I also think our nation is and always must be bigger than any of its leaders and that our leaders are and always must be answerable to the people.

So it’s always our job to stand together and make sure the government does its job, that it affords equal protection under the law to all citizens, that the rights of all are protected, and that our government’s policies are fiscally sound and carefully considered.

Change doesn’t only happen on election night and it doesn’t only happen in the Oval Office and it is up to us to find the places where our skills and talents meet the needs of our community and the world and to do the hard work to make life better for all. And on that front, I am hopeful.

So ten days ago my nephew Oran was born and bringing that baby into the world was an act of hope on the part of his parents. I am glad for their hope and I am heartened by it and I do not believe it was misguided. That child was born into an America that is better than the one his grandparents were born in. And it was made better by people whose hope, from restaurant counters in Alabama to the beaches of Normandy, helped them to stand together and hold the line in circumstances vastly darker than anything I pray most of us will ever see.

I don’t think hope is idealistic or silly, I think it’s the founding emotion of our species. And it’s not naive to hope we can bend the arc of American history towards justice because we’ve seen our ancestors do that in the face of unimaginable difficulty. As the great American poet of the human heart wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”

Take care of yourself, and take care of each other.

This observation resonates:

I spoke with hundreds of undecided voters in the days before the election and what struck me most was how different our information was. In many cases we had the same concerns–the environment or healthcare or tax policy–but we were working with completely different data sets.

Here’s my takeaway. Something we can do that doesn’t require a movement or any kind of organized plan is to up the ante on the need for evidence. Where did you hear that? What makes you think it is accurate? How do you know that to be true? Have you considered the other opinion and if so why is that opinion inadequate? These need to become the bread and butter of every single statement of fact asserted by every single person in our lives. We need to challenge people to truly examine not just what they believe but why they believe it. Then when they’ve given us their canned answer for why they believe it, we need to challenge them to relate that to what the evidence says.

Do this to me. Put me over the motherfucking coals. If you are not convinced, get the specifics. Interrogate. Investigate. Do it to your parents, your peers, your coworkers, your community leaders and most of all, do it in public with your political candidates. Do it when the camera’s rolling. Put cracks in the echo chambers. This needs to be second nature.

There will be a need to agitate and organize and educate in the coming years. Those of you who have the privilege to escape the worst of a Trump presidency: This is on you. QUILTBAG people are going to be preoccupied navigating a legal and social culture of naked hostility planting landmines under our right to exist openly. Moderate and progressive Muslims are going to be busy dodging Christofascists. Black people have their hands full with the KKK (and, you know, the police). Indigenous people are on a permanent back foot with the oil industry. Disabled people are already scrounging just to feed and house themselves. The poor will be battered by their union-less jobs and “choosing” to die of preventable disease. The homeless will have no services to turn to. The youth more than ever will be at the mercy of their parents with no legal recourse under conditions of severe abuse. Women will flood the black market in desperate bids to plan their families. Journalists will twist around a President who threatened open violence against them for quoting his own words.

We’re going to be busy. Us minorities have a full agenda, and all it says every day is “Survive. Somehow.” Those of you who still have room in your agenda, it’s on you to work over time.

 

Semi-open thread here. I’ll return proper after some time.

-Shiv

 

Reactionaries really don’t need to benefit from humanization

It must be the International Month of False Equivalency because by golly the articles attempting to humanize Trump supporters came out in spades. Whether it was The Advocate trying to delicately explain how and why the white rural voter was disenfranchised in ways that were real or perceived such that it justified a Trump vote or whether it’s Aiden, that trans guy who was turned into a meme by clueless cis folk, trying to say we should “check ourselves” when we see a Trump supporter and think “idiot,” the theme prevalent in these numerous works is that we can’t judge Trump supporters because they’re probably just ignorant.

Okay, so here’s the thing: Hitler had a dog and painted beautiful portraits, Mussolini tucked in his kids at night, Pinochet played a mean game of football (soccer for you yanks), Stalin was an astute scholar, and Pol Pot found a niche in radio electronics. Every mass-scale human rights abuse committed in recorded history has at its helm someone who, if you look closely enough, has entirely ordinary–sometimes supposedly redeeming–qualities.

This does not mean that we should model the eras of Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, Stalin, or Pol Pot, all of whom are responsible for stomach-churning atrocities in both depth and breadth. Again, saying we ought to humanize a Trump supporter seems to be operating from the assumption that his critics have been dehumanizing him to begin with.

Because here’s the thing: Good and Evil ought to be understood as things you do, not things you are. If someone tells us we have spinach stuck in our teeth, we do not bristle and say “How can that be? I’m a hygienic person!”

I’m not dehumanizing a Trump supporter when I point out that they are, AT BEST, indifferent to the Republican platform, which features some of the most rabidly anti-woman, anti-black, anti-queer, anti-immigrant, pro-big business, fuck-the-little-guy policies in recorded history. And I’m definitely not at all interested in excusing ignorance in an election like this. The unfortunate truth is that an ignorant vote is equivalent to an informed one, but that doesn’t mean we’re all compelled to stick our head in the sand when it comes to policy.

I don’t support this. I don’t support patting Trump supporters on the head and giving them the permission they so desperately seek to be not be called racist. Motherfucker, you vote for someone whose policy reiterates racial injustice, then you is fucking racist. I’m not giving you that wiggle room. And it won’t make a difference to Trump whether you voted for his racial injustice policy planks or whether you voted in spite of his racial injustice policy planks, the effect is the same: You threw your weight behind him, he potentially gets in office to enact his policy. The ballot doesn’t know the difference. It only knows who you voted for.

The least you can do is pull up your big girl socks and fucking own up to it.

Yes, that applies to Clinton’s supporters. Yes, progressive Americans will need to work overtime to have their interests represented in all levels of government. Yes, Clinton will need to be held accountable to her actions and you ought to strive for that, even if you vote for her. That’s what owning your vote means.

But I charge that Trump supporters haven’t been dehumanized, at least not to a comparable scale to say, black people or QUILTBAG people or disabled people. Me refusing to give them that pat on the head they’re so desperate for is not the same thing as gutting what little social welfare the disabled need to live, or fostering unchecked police brutality to ensure the disproportionate imprisonment of black bodies, or reifying second-class citizenship for QUILTBAG people. It’s me saying “I don’t care whether you consider yourself racist, homophobic, or ableist or not. I care whether you support a political party that intends to dismantle what little progress the country has made in service to vulnerable communities.”

I’m well aware that Trump supporters have dogs and paint paintings and tuck their children to bed and volunteer for homeless shelters and play mean games of chess and pen thoughtful articles in academia. I fucking know, man. The point is, that favour isn’t being returned. It’s the minorities who are being dehumanized to justify or excuse one of the most monstrous Republican platforms in recent memory. It’s trans women being depicted as rapists, it’s black people being depicted as thugs, brown people depicted as terrorists, and cis women being depicted as murderers for exercising bodily autonomy. A single observation from Clinton–that Trump has the support of some seriously questionable characters–is not equivalent to a nationwide sustained smear campaign the way these various groups have been enduring.

And through all this, we have to pat his supporters on the head and assure them they’re not doing harm?

Fuck that shit.

Nobody says we don’t study the terrible atrocities of the 20th century because all of those figures did ordinary human things in their day to day. In fact, we explicitly study those atrocities to learn just how much an ordinary person can do. How much violence we’re willing to tolerate, as long as we’re not the immediate victim. How easily we’re persuaded when we’re in a crowd. How easily we can be persuaded to support the erosion of our own rights.

This is the part the Trump crowd denies. You want to think you’re good people, then start by dismantling this idea that good is something you are, that this simplistic black-and-white thinking is nothing but snake oil salesmanship.

Good is something you do. 

Good is something you can start today.

-Shiv

Americans, please don’t fuck this up

This is a friendly reminder to my neighbours in the south that tomorrow is a very important day for you to vote, assuming your vote hasn’t been sabotaged by Republican voter suppression. I don’t have much to say about your election except that it has directly impacted my mental health to see a microphone given to reopen the debate on a thousand and one topics that were supposed to be settled. Apparently we haven’t agreed on the basic of humanity of anyone who isn’t cisgender, heterosexual, white, or a man, so. You know.

As a freethought network we ought to be concerned with trying to steer our votes towards candidates who we think are likely to govern using evidence based policy. I would hope that at least eliminates Trump from your options. I needn’t say much about him that he himself hasn’t already said.

Don’t stay at home, if your vote is eligible (*snort* “fair and free,” right.) Don’t protest vote. Definitely don’t joke vote. Trump’s platform is an unprecedented assault on the civil and human rights of anyone who isn’t the royal flush of privilege.

You’re the leader of the free world, or so your government likes to claim. Make sure that definition of “free” doesn’t come with too many strings attached.

-Shiv

31 questions to ask me before you ask about what’s in my pants

Henry Giardina introduces part of “The Trans Experience” in an excellent post over on fourtwonine. In addition to signal boosting his post, I am going to answer his suggested 31 questions.

So here’s the crux of what he’s trying to convey: As fucking violent as transmisogyny and trans-antagonism are, some people’s sense of empathy doesn’t shatter upon contact with gender variant people. The problem is that in their bid to try and relate with a trans person, they ask a lot of invasive and really personal questions (which we sometimes try to answer anyways–see the comments section of his article).

Now I don’t want to antagonize efforts to humanize trans folk, but nor am I particularly interested in letting up on the privacy to which I am entitled. Thankfully, Giardina proposes many questions that do the trick of humanizing without me having to answer the frankly ludicrous question of “cock or pussy?”

1. What was the first time you remember feeling like you were doing something wrong by being you?

I knew from the strict, patriarchal confines of the masculine role assigned to me that donning make-up is treated a bit like taking a chainsaw to school. Nowadays I’m not super in to make-up, at least not all the time, but I can still distinctly remember a very intense duality, a shame that burned alongside a defiant rush, a little voice that told the world to fuck off because I definitely wasn’t going to stop here no matter how much it wanted me to. It was a bit of powder and paint but people acted like I wanted to play with matches.

2. Where did this guilt come from? (i.e. religion, community, social beliefs of parents, class expectations etc.)

It cannot be understated that this guilt was sourced from literally fucking everywhere. Advertising, TV, caregivers, parents, teachers, peers, pastors, neighbours, books. I went the first 19 years of my life not knowing the word “transgender” because the world never at any point wanted me to know that was an option. So every time I tried to voice this periodically crippling disconnect with my sense of self, I was inevitably met with a silence that said more than any screaming or cursing ever could.

3. When was the first time you realized it might be okay to be you?

About the same time I started to improve my mental health by limiting the amount of fucks I gave regarding other people’s opinions about me. Not transitioning or asserting my identity was something I only did to please everyone else. Once I stopped pleasing everyone else, the choice became obvious.

4. What was the reason for that?

In general I was beginning to be persuaded by a lot of movements and arguments that we currently call social justice. I noticed a lot of people didn’t know or didn’t care that these movements were doing good, incredible work, they were just buying in to the smear campaigns uncritically. To be a feminist was to be a bra-burning man hater. That opinion just seemed incompatible with what we were actually doing.

5. Describe the first friendship you made as ‘you’ (after you came out)

Kay, which isn’t her real name, but if she’s reading this she knows who I mean. She will always have a very dear place in my heart despite the difficulties we had in the latter portion of our relationship. She had a great sense of snark and could direct it to the numerous dipsticks that raised my ire. God damn did she know how to hug when I needed it. She saved me… which is too much damn pressure for someone who isn’t ready to rescue anyone. Not fair to either of us.

6. How did your friendships change once you came out (both friendships you made and friendships you’d had before)

Prior to transitioning I overcompensated on my personality to try and make up for my debilitating insecurity. After transitioning my confidence is less boisterous and more assertive. I’m probably less annoying.

7. Who disappointed you the most when you came out to them?

My friend D, also not his real name. We aren’t friends anymore. I kinda wonder why I kept him around considering years before my transition he legitimately tried to argue that homosexuality was bad because the Bible said so. That really should’ve been my first hint.

8. Who disappointed you the least?

My friend C. She responded in the exact correct way: “Okay.” She knew better than to transgress on my boundaries and allowed me to come to her if I needed any tutorials on femme stuff.

9. Who surprised you?

My Dad. I was devoured by the fear that he’d disown me. In reality, he caught up to speed faster than my mom. I think he’s one of my readers, too. Hi Dad. Thanks for having human decency. It’s in shockingly short supply lately.

10. Has your identification changed since you’ve come out?

Yes. I’m more comfortable with ambiguity now. I don’t need to fit in a box. There’s some squiggly-lines in my identity, and I am at peace with that.

11. What about your ideas about gender?

Of course I was indoctrinated into the cissexist belief system and much of my mental health improved when I disentangled that mess. I had a TERF phase during that process which thankfully wasn’t recorded.

12. When did you learn about trans history?

TransAdvocate does a lot of work on that. I got about as far back as 1970s during Janice Raymond’s campaign to have transition services removed from healthcare. She succeeded. I try not to think about how many trans folk died between then and now because of it.

13. Did someone tell you about it or did you seek it out yourself?

During one of my gender frustration rants a friend sat me down and asked me point blank. My kneejerk response was “No, of course I’m not trans.” A week later I phoned him to admit I’m totally trans.

14. What was the first violent event you associated with being trans (the first suicide you heard of, movie or tv show you watched, book you read)

The first trans support group I ever attended, the facilitator said he had an announcement to make about one of the regulars. One of the other women asked “who was it this time.”

This time.

And two more times since.

15. How did it affect you?

It generated a lot of resentment towards people who don’t know about the extent of the problem. You have cisgender academics howling brimstone and hellfire from the safety of their gilded towers, talking about gender variance as if it were a distant, alien theoretical. Meanwhile my community was getting stabbed in the street. Must be nice to have requests for gender-neutral pronouns be the most pressing issue in your life.

16. Who was the first trans person you met?

A group, so I don’t really have a single person to remember.

17. What was (is) your relationship?

They were a support community.

18. In your current life, do you have to tell people you’re trans?

“Have” to? No. But I have the privilege that I can disclose on a regular basis without too much worry, so I do.

19. If so, how does the relationship change afterward (if at all?)

With respects to dating, people get scarce quickly. I’m used to it. I think most people are a lot less likely to turn tail and run in other contexts.

20. If not, how does it affect you?

n/a

21. As a child, when and where did you feel the most safe?

Watching Veronica Mars. Mars was a powerful counter-example to the docile, meek femininity I so often saw depicted in other media. It helped me realize transitioning didn’t have to mean being polite or demure, that my ambition and my femininity as I understood it were not mutually exclusive.

22. As an adult, when and where do you feel the most safe?

…Watching Veronica Mars. I’m also trying to straighten out my money so I can go back to music lessons for this reason.

23. If you could have picked a perfect time to ‘come out’, when would it have been?

I came out without using those words at 6, 14, and 19. What would have been perfect is being believed the first time.

24. What was your first experience with suicide or a suicide attempt (your own, or someone else’s)?

I made a plan to jump off a very high bridge. Called the crisis line the moment I realized what I was planning, and have kept vigilant about suicidal ideation since. Every year or so someone from the support group doesn’t reach out for help, and we never see her again.

25. When was the first time you felt you had established a chosen family (if at all?)

This is going to be a bit sad but my abuser convinced me her & her web would be that chosen family. At the moment, I feel a bit like a stray.

26. When was the first time you felt someone really got you?

My relationship with Kay.

27. What was your first positive mental health experience (if any?)

Coming to terms with my gender identity did wonders all by itself.

28. What was the first representation of transness that you saw that made you angry?

A rape victim shared a post on Facebook about how including trans women in women’s spaces meant introducing rape threats in spaces she otherwise considered safe, which made me double angry because 50% of the people who’ve raped me were cis women.

29. What was the first representation of transness that you saw that left you feeling positive (if any?)

If we’re counting non-fiction, Janet Mock is the on point-est person ever.

30. Do you feel like you had a childhood?

Not really. I felt like my childhood was spent watching a tape projected onto a screen of someone else’s life.

31. What’s something you hope to do for a young trans person growing up that you wish someone had done for you?

Give you the vocabulary to name yourself. Had someone given me the word “transgender” at age six I would’ve started this shit a lot sooner.

-Shiv

Debates, duels, and disagreements

Remember the Good Old Days when disagreements were settled with a duel? When disparagement of character could be challenged by the superior marksman, or swordsman, whichever the case may be? It coasted on a perverse sense of honour, predicated in the belief that the only reason one would put their life on the line to defend an idea is if they thought that idea was true enough to risk it.

The actual matter of accuracy or lack thereof, however, was not investigated by these duels. They may have proven that the idea–whatever the idea actually was–was important to the dueling participants. That’s it.

Debates are no different.

I can’t help but roll my eyes to near fatal degree when I hear debate proposals being positioned as acts of truth and discovery. They’re not. Just like the duels of yore, they simply illustrate that two people care enough about a topic to make a public spectacle of their disagreement, and in the absence of a corpse the “winner” is simply whoever the audience liked more–an attitude influenced no doubt by whether or not either speaker pandered to their pre-conceived ideas and prejudices.

After all, if debates were about discovery, the questions would focus on actual research findings, and not reductive buzz words inevitably miring us in the swamplands of linguistic nihilism. It’s not a demonstration of acuity or accuracy of belief. It’s a pissing contest to see whose stream reaches farther. It’s a format that rewards theatrics and melodrama, not logical structure or thoroughness of fact-checking.

So here’s a prediction: Jordan Peterson will win his debate. He will win his debate because suspicion of trans people is the activity du jour of hand-wringing reactionaries. His premises will not be accurate and his conclusions will not be valid, but it won’t matter. His detractors already know he’s full of shit and all the debate is likely to do is contribute to his weeks long gish gallop, his supporters will accept his flawed reasoning because transphobia is the Soup of the Day (but only as long as you call it free speech rather than transphobia). No one will learn much except for whether or not their disdain for one idea or another is represented by one of the parties present. His supporters, confirmed in their prejudice by a fancy academic (hey I guess those fuckin’ nerds are good for something, as long as they agree with me), will carry on with their lives heads firmly planted up their asses. The addresses and phone numbers of his detractors will remain on the internet forever. Fact and reason will fall by the wayside, buried ironically by a man who claims to wear the very concepts as his banner.

Nothing will change. Not from this debate. Not from any debate. Educators will carry on educating despite the ditches Peterson tries to dig for us.

-Shiv