Victoria - City of Suppression
In the Park, in the Pub, Disagreeing with Gender Ideology is Not Allowed
My partner and I zipped up to Victoria, B.C. from Washington State on Wednesday to participate in the #MillionMarch4Children events there. Unfortunately, our stay was extremely unpleasant.
Censorship in the Park.
#Million events took place across Canada. They were organized by parents who are fed up with things like Gender identity indoctrination in the schools, and teachers keeping parents in the dark about children’s at-school transitions.
As we began our rally on the lawn of the Parliament buildings, we were swiftly surrounded by a huge mob intent on shutting us down. They succeeded.
Rally organizers had obtained a permit and the police were supposed to protect us. But the mob swiftly breached flimsy barriers as police mainly stood by. Mob members shrieked non-stop making it impossible to hear the speakers, pushing ever closer towards them. “BS” and “Go home” they bellowed loudly without pause as an indigenous leader attempted to speak, many giving her the finger concurrently. Another favorite chant of the counter-protesters was “F&&K you, fascists.”
Soon the thugs began to make runs at the stage, attempts which swelled to fever pitch as Meghan Murphy began to speak. Meghan is a Canadian who has been forced to live abroad because the gender identity mob has made her a prime target. It is too dangerous for her to live in Canada.
A mob of thugs was attacking our peaceful protest. So what did the police do? They shut our protest down. Watch the chilling video at the beginning of Meghan Murphy’s article about the #MillionMarch events. It shows a police officer demanding that the rally be ended, and ultimately pulling the microphone from a speaker’s hands. Instead of protecting us from the mob, the police carried out the mob’s intentions by silencing us. (Read the speech Meghan attempted to give as well, and compare it to the vitriolic charges made against us by the mob.)
We couldn’t hear the first speakers. Meghan made it only part-way through her inaudible speech. And none of the other speakers got to speak at all. The march that was supposed to follow the protest rally was canceled as well.
Censorship in the Pub.
But there’s more. A group of us eventually headed off to the Sticky Wicket pub to recover. We had seats in a room that initially had no other customers in it, we were not at all boisterous or loud, and we chatted about whether there were things that could have been done to better protect us at the rally.
We talked for a short while, and then something truly surreal happened. The restaurant manager showed up to inform us that we needed to no longer engage in our “rhetoric.” What? Was he joking? No, he said, this was a serious matter. His employees need to feel safe. What “rhetoric” was he referring to, we asked. “I’m not going to get into that,” he replied. (Quotes are approximations based on memory.) How can we know what we’re barred from saying if he wouldn’t clarify? “I’m not getting into that,” he reiterated. With the voice of a disappointed principal telling mean-spirited middle schoolers that they needed to do better, the manager again noted that he needed to protect his workers, so we needed to limit our conversations. We could stay if we showed consideration by not talking amongst ourselves about anything that might upset delicate members of his staff.
There was nothing any of us had said that was even vaguely threatening to anyone, including the unnamed staffers somewhere in the pub he was supposedly protecting. It is also quite likely that whoever reported discomfort couldn’t even hear us. (I don’t think our waiter, who was quite cheerful and friendly, was the one who reported us.) I suspect that upon entering the pub, the greeting person noticed something about us—perhaps my “Woman. Adult Human Female Shirt”—and realized we were among the evil #Million people they’d been warned were protesting today. She probably spread the word to other staff. It was our mere existence---people who have concerns about Gender Identity Ideology—that prompted the report to the boss.
The pub didn’t forcefully evict us for our wrong-think, as has happened to gender critics in the UK. They let us off with a warning and a sanctimonious speech about needing to behave ourselves if we wanted to stay.
Needless to say, Victoria’s beautiful façade has lost its charm for me.
Censorship is Everyone’s Business.
Every person reading this account should be horrified by what happened to us at the park and at the pub in Victoria on Wednesday. Freedom of speech is a prerequisite to all other rights. And as discussed in my other posts, what happened in Victoria is part of a much larger reality of suppression everywhere.
Even if you disagree with what we gender critical protesters advocate, you need to take a stand against mob rule and Stasi-like control over what people can discuss. The winds of change can be swift, and it will be you and your beliefs that are crushed next.
If you disagree with us, are you sure about that?
Gender Identity mobs employ a despicable two step strategy. First step: yell and scream about all sorts of horrible things as if these reflect what we gender critics are saying. Second step: get our events canceled, get us canceled as individuals, and basically make sure no one hears what we actually have to say. They do this because their claims dissolve in a second, when exposed to the light of public discussion.
For example, lots of counter-protesters in Victoria held signs pleading with us for “Acceptance” and “Inclusion” of trans-identifying children. “Stop teaching your kids to hate and hurt other kids” one of their signs demanded.
But we who protest what’s happening in the schools are 100% for accepting, including, loving, and protecting each and every child. We agree that bullying, denying some children access to school programs, and other exclusions and rejections are intolerable. We teach our children and grandchildren that hating and hurting any classmate is not okay.
What we object to is schools imposing the tenets of the Gender Identity faith on school children. Schools are presenting those tenets as facts, requiring students to agree that some people are born in the wrong body and that “woman” is now defined as “anyone who identifies as one.” They are teaching children that everyone has a so-called “gender identity” that may or may not “align” with their sexual anatomy, that everything a person does “expresses gender”; that it’s good to go on a “gender journeys” to figure out if we are a female, male, both, or some mythical third sex; and other anti-science extremely harmful nonsense.
When a child announces that he or she is “trans” or “nonbinary”, teachers and administrators immediately agree with the child’s self-declarations, and they force everyone at the school to do so as well. All children must disregard the evidence of their own eyes, engage in compelled speech referring to males as female and vice versa, forfeit sex-based privacy in bathrooms and locker rooms, and say goodbye to female-only sports. This is not “accepting” and “including” trans-identifying children. It is imposing their belief system on everyone else.
The harm to trans- and nonbinary-identifying children from this approach is huge. So-called “affirmation” locks them into body dissociation. For skyrocketing numbers this leads to sex change medicalization: puberty blockage, being put on hormones in concentrations meant for the other sex, double mastectomies, and yes, for some children, even genital surgeries. In a vain attempt to have the body of the other sex or to have a “nonbinary” body, children are forfeiting their fertility and sexual function, and signing up for huge medical problems and lives tethered to doctors. Multiple systematic reviews of the evidence underlying so-called “gender affirmation care” have all found that evidence to be of very low quality, and that the supposed mental health benefits are therefore iffy at best. In fact, there is significant evidence that medicalization results in a decline in mental health and an increase in suicidality. The UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are all reversing course, leaving pediatric sex change behind, because of those reviews. Read some of my previously published articles for more on this and watch for a major new posting here within the next two weeks.
The signs held by counter-protesters in Victoria loudly asserted that sex change medicalization saves children’s lives, and that we protesters want to hurt trans-identifying children. By silencing us, they ensure that their faulty assertions remain unchallenged.
“HRT Saves Lives!” a sign declared, using the term “hormone replacement therapy” to refer to giving boys high levels of estrogen and girls high levels of testosterone. “The queer/trans/gay agenda is stop kids from dying” declared another sign. Some signs went so far as to describe us protesters as promoting trans genocide. One young woman proudly held a sign featuring the emotionally manipulative false framing used ubiquitously to persuade parents that medically altering their children’s perfect healthy bodies is a good idea: “RATHER HAVE A HAPPY SON THAN A SUICIDAL DAUGHTER”
We protesters were described as sticking our noses in other people’s lives where they don’t belong. “Not UR body, not ur business” one sign declared, for example. But the sole focus of the protesters was children. What happens to a child’s body is indeed the business of his or her parents. They have a duty to protect their children from harm.
Before the rally and the mob’s screaming got underway, one of the counter-protesters told me that I was a bad person and assured me that he was extremely well-informed. I asked if he had read the Cass review or was familiar with any of the systematic reviews of the evidence underlying gender affirmation care. What was his take on why other countries had reversed course regarding sex change in children based on those reviews? This gentleman had no idea what I was talking about. Not only had he not read the materials I referenced, but he was also completely unaware of their existence. Nonetheless he had come to yell with the others at the top of his lungs to shut us down.
Some will doubt my statements above regarding schools imposing Gender Identity Ideology on everyone. They will assume that schools are just “mentioning” or “discussing” gender identity issues, and protesters are making a mountain out of a molehill, as counter-protesters and incompetent journalists indicate. But schools really are engaging in full-blown indoctrination. See my article The Anti-Science Disaster of Gender Ideology in The Schools. Although that article focuses on K-12 schools in the U.S., the same stuff is happening in Canada. (See Chanel Pfahl’s series of “exhibits” entitled “Nobody is indoctrinating your kids”. See references to books like I Am Jazz, on this BC government website. Also read Eva Kurilova’s article: Why I’m Glad My School Wasn’t Covered in Pride Flags. Kurilova was one of many lesbian and gay people who participated in the #Million events, as a supporter not a counter-protester.)
No space for hate. That was an overwhelming theme in the mob’s chants and signs. According to the counter-protesters, we protesters are all about hate, whereas the people who won’t let us speak, the people who shout “F&&K you, fascists”, they are all about love.
The #Million protesters were racially and culturally diverse, and they were peaceful, even when faced with a hateful mob stomping on our right to assemble and speak. I witnessed countless moments in which #Million protesters reacted with words and gestures of love and compassion rather than anger as very hateful and yes, bigoted, counter-protesters yelled at them. I use the word “bigoted” because it means “obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.” That meaning describes well those who shut us down. To them, anyone who doesn’t agree with their religion and their agenda is an evil right-winger (regardless of our actual political bent) worthy only of being silenced. In their view, the only appropriate response to our presence is to shout: “F&*K you, fascist” over and over again.
The good news.
The good news is that it was apparently just in Victoria that the voices of suppression won out on Wednesday. And that’s because the turnout of #Million supporters at events elsewhere all across Canada was huge. Those challenging Gender Identity in the schools vastly outnumbered those who sought to shut them down. Victoria was the exception. Some have declared that “the turning point is here” based on how well things went in other locations. See this, this, and this.
When we stand up together in large enough numbers, the forces of suppression cannot silence us. Hopefully, the dam has begun to break and rational caring people will take to the streets in even bigger numbers at the next protests. Even in shameful locales like Victoria our numbers will be too large for the bullies to suppress us.
Keep fighting back everyone!
That sucks! I'm sorry you were victimized. None of it is surprising in the least unfortunately, if you've been paying attention to what's been happening at Let Women Speak (LWS) events in the UK and elsewhere, and to Billboard Chris.
There are solutions! Firstly, make sure you document everything on quality video, extensively, the way they do at LWS. Did anyone film the restaurant manager? Multiple people should have. Not only does that provide great PR for the cause, but also evidence to back up your claims of harassment and abuse when dealing with the police and the courts.
Next, get tough! Be prepared to stand strong for yourselves. Politely but firmly insist that your rights be respected. DO NOT BACK DOWN, EVER. Insist that the police do their jobs and protect you, both beforehand when you planning your events, and during your events. If and when they fail you, document it. Document everything. Put it online. Be prepared to file complaints and if necessary, lawsuits.
If you're not willing to stand up strong for yourselves, you will just get pushed around by everyone else involved, as you experienced this time.
Next, make sure you recruit stewards to protect the event area, stage and speakers with their bodies, like they do at LWS.
Plan ahead of time with the police. Politely insist that counterprotestors be kept far enough away that they will not be disruptive to the event, physically and sound-wise.
Remember that most of the population is in agreement with you. Recruit, recruit, recruit! Good luck!