“Open Letter: Artists Against Anti-Trans Legislation in Canada" Released by Tegan & Sara is Propaganda
Opinion
By Justine Deterling
The Tegan and Sara Foundation released a petition called Open Letter: Artists Against Anti-Trans Legislation in Canada to commemorate "Trans Day of Visibility”. 400 Canadian musicians signed it. It focuses on politicians such as Danielle Smith and others who have enacted laws protecting females from the loss of sports opportunities to invading boys and to acknowledge parents, not the state, have a right to guide and protect their children.
The document never intends to address ramifications of removing age of consent laws for medical body modifications on minors and sex-based protections in law, of which there are many.
We all deserve the freedom to be ourselves, to be safe and treated with dignity. 2SLGBTQIA+ people are our friends, family, neighbours and coworkers. But far right groups are tapping into fear and pitting us against each other so they can create a Canada where we’re afraid of difference. Right now, they’re using trans people as their punching bag, but the truth is that this community is their convenient scapegoat. Their agenda is the same it’s always been: for people in power to retain that power at the expense of the most marginalized among us.
This statement is typical of “LGBTQ+” propaganda. It paints the conflicts about consequential trans policies as a culture war between the very loving people, the very inclusive people, the people “just” wanting to be themselves, versus the nefarious, scheming, fascist bigots. “Queer” activism enjoys being as self-centered and melodramatic as possible, unable to care about others or to admit to any harm.
Here is what Smith said after passing parental notification policies and sports protections:
As premier of this province, I want every Albertan that identifies as transgender to know I care deeply about you and accept you as you are. As long as I lead this province, I will ensure you are supported and your rights are protected…
People who oppose contemporary trans activism range from Marxist lesbian feminists to far right-wing Christians and people from many backgrounds. The letter’s statements are tactics to manipulate and control messaging to their progressive fans, liberals, and same-sex-attracted people in order to continue to secure support for transgender policies that harm some of these populations. Enabling male sex offenders to assault women in prison and medicalizing kids who are likely pre-gay and lesbian are not in the interests of women and gay people. I am not saying that Tegan and Sara know this is what they are doing. They likely haven’t bothered to research and consider the implications of what they advocate for. It doesn’t make them less culpable.
Everyone deserves access to crucial healthcare services that affirm them.
If affirmative medicalized body modification is the measure of healthcare, this means publicly funded facelifts and steroids for muscle gain. Self-actualization desires are not more precious or profound just because a rainbow identity is attached. This worldview impacts the public coffers. This is why the public gets to have opinions. This is one reason why trans rights are not merely individual rights.
The government should never put themselves between parents, their kids, and evidence-based healthcare and supports.
Yes, people are still defending putting kids on chemical castration drugs, sterilizing them, and impacting their brain maturation after several countries have done systematic reviews that found a lack of evidentiary justification for doing this. They still defend pediatric transition despite the fact we know it destroyes the sexual function of tweens, harms bones, may impact mood and intelligence, and that gay adults were sometimes "trans kids". They do it despite one of the better studies of suicide risk reveal there is no evidence medicalization reduces mental health problems. Progressive "queers" will die on this hill. There will never be enough damage to make them change their minds. It doesn't matter if LGB youth are victims of the damage.
I highlight the quote below to represent the differing worldviews at hand between “2SLGBTQIA+” activists such as Tegan and Sara and healthy-puberty, biology realists:
Months before, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan announced that they will require parental consent before schools can honour the chosen names and pronouns of gender-diverse children under 16.
There has never been more freedom, affirmation, and obsession with individual rights (and for children/teens) than now. Yet mental health in Western countries, particularly for liberals and “LGBTQ+”-identified people, is very poor. Pro-healthy puberty advocates believe youth need grounding in reality, not offered histrionic narratives and quick-fix, unhealthy medical solutions while they are growing. Anyone can look at the common meltdowns of screaming trans-identified young people to understand something is fundamentally wrong with what is happening. Research on trans/nonbinary-identified people shows high rates of comorbid mental illnesses and personality disorders the current environment appears to exacerbate.
As artists, we know the danger of a social and political environment that restricts expression, exploration, individuality and self-determination.
Self-determination is not publicly funded. The progressive left wants all the demands for individual expression without any responsibilities. Trans-identified people could be doing their own thing if they were not demanding pronoun validation and public-healthcare-funded hormones, breast amputation, and genital surgeries.
Tega and Sara and 400 signatories of this petition are examples of how you can get many people to champion something horrible by pushing the right buttons. In this case, the buttons are warm feelings about "affirmation," "individuality," "healthcare," "inclusion," and "rights." Evidence is not emerging that trans-identified youth are significantly benefited by the “affirmative model”. At this point, this is a cultural war. And no, Tegan and Sara, you don't care more about gender-distressed young people than Canadian politicians or others skeptical of your youth social and body modification experiment. You may care less.
