I would be the last person an NDP organiser would ever listen to, but here’s a goodwill hint: Drop the trans thing. Danielle Smith has got it.If you keep on, you'll get killed.Here’s why: You can hate Smith, and you can like drag queens and love unionized health care just to spite her.But even people who’ve voted for the NDP forever don’t necessarily think it’s wonderful having their little Johnny come home as their little Jenny… and without even a heads-up from his home room teacher that he’s been wearing skirts for three months and changing in the girls' washroom.Make no mistake: Some of the most conservative people you’ll ever meet — as in small-c conservative — are actually NDP. They haven’t changed their minds about anything since 1961, when the NDP was actually New.So while these folks may (unknowingly) take Smith's libertarian approach to adults switching genders, they will not take kindly to people who insist that children who are not even old enough to babysit, must be coaxed, encouraged and facilitated into switching sexes. They know that kids think all kinds of weird things. Give them time. They’ll get over it.And I’d bet my next paycheque that no blue-collar peasant or worker — you know, the type venerated in socialist-realist art, with arms as thick as other people’s legs — thinks men should be able to compete with women on equal terms in sports. Why? Because they’re not equal in strength and speed. What does winning prove?.And they won’t think it’s a human rights issue either, as Calgary’s egregious Mayor Jyoti Gondek thinks it is. (Seriously, how would the free-speech trampling Gondek know what a human right was?)If it has anything to do with rights it’s this, per Danielle Smith: Top and bottom surgeries, as we now charmingly call them, are permanent and define the individual for the rest of their days. You only get one chance to get it right and her view is that puberty is not the best time to take that chance. Speaking at a press conference earlier today, she said, “Making permanent and irreversible decisions regarding one’s biological sex while still a youth can severely limit that child’s choices in the future,” she said. In other words, if the discussion is to be couched in terms of children's rights, kids also have a right to make these choices later. That’s a right, too.So, not anti-trans. Nothing to be heartbroken about. Not conjuring up dark forces. And not genocide... seriously, this person said that. And kids are not going to be killing themselves in droves because they have to wait until they’re sixteen for the pills and eighteen years for surgery.The Smith policy is not hateful… it’s actually the exact opposite. If the NDP politicize it, it will backfire.
I would be the last person an NDP organiser would ever listen to, but here’s a goodwill hint: Drop the trans thing. Danielle Smith has got it.If you keep on, you'll get killed.Here’s why: You can hate Smith, and you can like drag queens and love unionized health care just to spite her.But even people who’ve voted for the NDP forever don’t necessarily think it’s wonderful having their little Johnny come home as their little Jenny… and without even a heads-up from his home room teacher that he’s been wearing skirts for three months and changing in the girls' washroom.Make no mistake: Some of the most conservative people you’ll ever meet — as in small-c conservative — are actually NDP. They haven’t changed their minds about anything since 1961, when the NDP was actually New.So while these folks may (unknowingly) take Smith's libertarian approach to adults switching genders, they will not take kindly to people who insist that children who are not even old enough to babysit, must be coaxed, encouraged and facilitated into switching sexes. They know that kids think all kinds of weird things. Give them time. They’ll get over it.And I’d bet my next paycheque that no blue-collar peasant or worker — you know, the type venerated in socialist-realist art, with arms as thick as other people’s legs — thinks men should be able to compete with women on equal terms in sports. Why? Because they’re not equal in strength and speed. What does winning prove?.And they won’t think it’s a human rights issue either, as Calgary’s egregious Mayor Jyoti Gondek thinks it is. (Seriously, how would the free-speech trampling Gondek know what a human right was?)If it has anything to do with rights it’s this, per Danielle Smith: Top and bottom surgeries, as we now charmingly call them, are permanent and define the individual for the rest of their days. You only get one chance to get it right and her view is that puberty is not the best time to take that chance. Speaking at a press conference earlier today, she said, “Making permanent and irreversible decisions regarding one’s biological sex while still a youth can severely limit that child’s choices in the future,” she said. In other words, if the discussion is to be couched in terms of children's rights, kids also have a right to make these choices later. That’s a right, too.So, not anti-trans. Nothing to be heartbroken about. Not conjuring up dark forces. And not genocide... seriously, this person said that. And kids are not going to be killing themselves in droves because they have to wait until they’re sixteen for the pills and eighteen years for surgery.The Smith policy is not hateful… it’s actually the exact opposite. If the NDP politicize it, it will backfire.
