Megan Mulls It Over

+JMJ

A Note About Pronouns: In this post, as I have done consistently throughout the course of this blog, I will use pronouns in a way that corresponds with biological and ontological realities, even though this violates standards of political correctness.

One of the most influential men in Canadian politics right now thinks that calling him a man should be considered a human rights violation. Meet Morgane Oger, vice president of British Columbia’s New Democratic Party and self-described “mom of 2.”

Last month Oger offered this brief, along with oral testimony, about the importance of combatting “online hate” in front of a distinguished Canadian body that calls itself the “House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.” And with a name like that, you know there’s going to be a lot of emotional blackmail up ahead. Because who can argue with something that exists to uphold “justice and human rights”? Why do I hate justice and human rights so much?

It appears that Oger realizes that his ideas will be off-putting to many, because he takes a moment to reassure us that the policies he is promoting are not about criminalizing garden-variety meanness or opposing viewpoints per se. Early in the brief he says, “Neither insults or the expression of divergent points of view constitute online hatred.” And if you are inclined to breathe a sigh of relief that Oger has given you permission to hold a viewpoint contrary to his, hold your horses. Because as the brief continues it becomes abundantly clear that he really is saying that it should be illegal to publish something that offends him.

And you also kinda get the impression that he’s looking forward to a day in which Canada (and beyond) will be able to criminalize thinking something that offends him.

Ironically he ends up giving quite a bit of free advertising to websites that have done a great job of exposing the madness that has come to dominate certain LGBT circles. He accuses these sites of publishing “articles aimed at turning public opinion against the transgender community.” The problem with this statement is that a lot of these articles cover trans people such as Jess Bradley, Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv, Karen White, and Tara Wolf who, through their own creepy or violent behavior, have done a pretty impressive job of making themselves look bad without any help from the transphobes.

But since these people fall under the protective shield of The Acronym, if you criticize them and those who would prefer to sweep their stories under the rug, you are promoting what Oger calls “hate propaganda.” And according to him, “Hate propaganda acts by creating anger or disgust towards a person or group because of their identity.” Apparently it has not occurred to Oger that maybe, just maybe, people are angry and disgusted by certain members of the trans community not because they are trans, but because they are creepy, violent, or snowflake-y. Or all three.

And Oger doesn’t just blame hate for the problems of the trans community as a whole. He also has a very personal sob story about how his life has been impacted by the pathologically unwoke. In 2017 while running for a spot in his provincial legislature (a race he ended up losing narrowly), a Christian man distributed flyers that criticized him for promoting LGBT ideology. Oger says that the flyers “urged people not to vote for me because I was transgender and for no other reason.” So what? The distributor of the flyers, Bill Whatcott, believes that living as the opposite sex is a sin and that someone who engages in this behavior is unfit to hold public office. Are Canadian voters not allowed to decide for themselves what sorts of behaviors and lifestyles they will accept in a political candidate?

Fun fact: Oger is Jewish. Whatcott’s flyer includes quotes from the Bible, which was written mostly by Jews. So I think the burden is on Oger to explain how quoting the seminal works of his own ancestors can possibly be hate speech.

Oger doesn’t just have a problem with his own ancestors and their backwards moral standards. He also has a problem with science. (Which is ironic because he’s probably one of those who would shout “Teach science not faith!” when someone like Whatcott says that evolution and creationism should be given equal time in public schools.) One of Oger’s other beefs with Whatcott’s flyer is that it “described me as a ‘biological male.’”

Translation: “Science is mean.”

(Despite his aversion to biologically correct pronouns and the word “male,” Oger is comfortable saying that he has fathered children. Check out 1:41-1:51 in this video, where he is speaking at a “Leading Moms” conference and says, no joke, “So I fathered two children. And people who hate trans people, who are afraid of us, keep on reminding me that I was a father once. And therefore I can’t possibly be a mother.” Those hateful bigots…)

Another of Whatcott’s offenses was that his flyer stated that “transsexuals were prone to sexually transmitted diseases and at risk of domestic violence, alcohol abuse, and suicide.” So does every pro-LGBT publication ever. Seriously, every other page of Out magazine is something about HIV prevention. Are they sowing the seeds of hate, too?

And what about all the activists who are yelling about how men who identify as women should be allowed to stay in battered women’s shelters? Aren’t they perpetuating a stereotype of trans people as being abusive towards their partners?

And because “human rights” is really just a punchline, Oger was able to initiate a case against Whatcott in British Columbia’s “Human Rights Tribunal” and win. Oger was awarded a total of $55,000 in damages, which consists of “$35,000 as compensation for injury to her dignity, feelings, and self-respect” and “$20,000 as costs for improper conduct.” I quoted directly from the ruling itself so that I could not be accused of making up the part about $35,000 for “injury to feelings.” (Turns out this really is about hurt feelings.)

But Whatcott does not appear to be going quietly into the Orwellian night. According to this article from a Vancouver radio station published in late March, he has refused to pay the fine and has stated that he is willing to go to jail over his refusal. Oger is quoted in the article as saying, “Either paying his fine, having to scramble to pay it or being in debt for the rest of his life, or going to prison for a while to consider his action — whatever the courts decide to do — is the appropriate thing for him to face.” But Oger is really hoping it doesn’t come to that. Not because he is a reasonable person who only wants to lock someone up if it’s absolutely necessary to create a society where everyone is nice to one other. But because it would be, in his words, “awful” to face Whatcott in court.

That’s interesting. I think the women who have had to use their rapists’ preferred pronouns while testifying against them in court feel the same way. Yes, that’s actually a thing. And you can read all about it on some of those hateful websites that Oger considers to be the bane of his existence.

And if you’re still not convinced that Whatcott has ruined Oger’s life and deserves to have the wrath of the Canadian justice-or-something system brought down on him, Oger is ready to use his children in order to change your mind. In his words, “Because of Whatcott’s campaign, I had to teach my children to be weary of people. I had to ask them to keep an eye out for strangers.” First of all, I think he meant to say “wary” rather than “weary,” but I am a strong believer in the prevalence of Freudian slips. And I think Oger’s children are indeed weary of lots of people. Namely Oger and his friends. (FYI – in the audio testimony, he does say “wary.”)

Second of all, what dad waits until he’s been called out by the words of his own ancestors to teach his children about basic personal safety? I guess the same sort of dad who thinks that it’s okay to tell his very young children about his trans identity before he’s told his wife. (Yes, Oger actually did that, as I learned from this article.)

“But Megan, maybe Oger and his children have been physically threatened by people who saw Whatcott’s flyers.” Maybe so. But a candidate worth your vote would be responding to those threats with calls for gun rights rather than calls for criminalization of wrongthink.

And Oger must know on some level that “Some mean people hurt my feelings” is not enough to convince most people that he is shedding light on a real problem. He understands that reasonable people will be swayed by stories of physical violence more than stories of hurt feelings, even if they are hurt trans feelings. In addition to doing “audio and video interviews, a series of social media posts, and a number of articles,” Oger reveals that Whatcott also “came to a church where I was talking while I was there.”

So I know the point of that is to convince the readers that Whatcott’s conduct escalated to some form of physical confrontation. But I’m mostly stuck on the fact that there’s a church out there that offered Oger pulpit time. Notice I said “stuck” rather than “surprised.”

Oger does not offer any details about what Whatcott did when he showed up at the church, so it is only reasonable to assume that that incident was a nothing burger. Because if Whatcott had shown up with torches and pitchforks or anything remotely resembling that, Oger would not have hesitated to tell us all the details. But it doesn’t really matter if Whatcott didn’t actually encourage or perpetrate violence. Because it is obvious that in Oger’s mind, there is no real difference between saying something that hurts a trans person’s feelings and calling for violence against a trans person.

Oger also recounts how in 2017 a man showed up at his house and told him to “leave Whatcott alone, and that his church had been discussing the situation.” If this really happened and this man was as menacing as Oger suggests, I will be the first to say that he was in the wrong. Righteous anger doesn’t justify trespassing. And even if you believe the Holy Spirit is calling you to trespass, the trespassee still has the right to shoot you. (It’s all part of that whole “In this world you will have trouble” thing.) But I do not believe that we have to enact unjust laws against saying offensive things because without them people may be emboldened to break just laws against trespassing.

Oger goes on to tell us how in 2018, Whatcott himself took to Facebook to do what Oger construed as threatening to shoot him. He describes the incident as, “…Whatcott announced in a Facebook video shot while hunting that he was coming back to Vancouver to distribute more flyers, boasted about his shooting skills.” So maybe that was an actual threat. Or maybe it was just a cringey but harmless “Look at me, I’m a man’s man defending Canada against a weirdo in a dress. Mine is bigger than his.” And Oger responds with, “Because of the video, Vancouver police warned me and my children and I upgraded our security measures.”

Translation: “No, mine is bigger than yours.”

In all seriousness, I do feel sorry for Oger’s children and the fallout that they have had to suffer due to their father’s actions and possibly due to the actions of some who oppose his ideology. But I do not accept Oger’s conclusion that everybody who opposes his ideology is a threat to his family and that the solution to this problem is to restrict speech.

I also have to wonder how many of the “threats over the phone…and countless threats online, some of them explicit” are coming from Whatcott and friends and how many are coming from shady people within the LGBT community. There is a photo (safe for work) floating around the Internet of Oger with Hailey Heartless, a man who calls himself a “transsexual dominatrix” and tweets under the handle “@SadistHailey.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that such a fellow is not the sort who shrugs off rejection. So maybe, just maybe, some of Oger’s harassment troubles could be alleviated if he were more discerning about the company he keeps.

And if you’re tired of hearing about Oger’s troubles, don’t tune out just yet because he’s got a friend waiting in the wings to break up the monotony. Meet Stephanie Hayden. The first thing you need to know about Hayden is that, if facial expressions are an accurate indicator of someone’s internal state, Hayden makes Chelsea Manning look like Joel Osteen. He is a British attorney who is, in his own words in the subject brief, “a transgender woman holding a Gender Recognition Certificate. This means the law in the UK recognises me as a woman and my birth certificate has been amended to reflect this.”

Translation: “I am a woman. This piece of paper says so.” Which doesn’t stop his chromosomes and what’s left of his sex organs and secondary sex characteristics from giving that piece of paper some major side-eye.

According to his submission for the Hurt Feelings Committee, Hayden’s troubles started with what he describes as “doxing.” He explains that “anonymous Twitter accounts began posting details of my former male identity, where I had lived, who I had dated. Photographs of me as a man were posted and even photographs of extended family members.” It is not clear whether these pictures and details were obtained through hacking or simply through reposting publicly available information, perhaps information that had been posted by Hayden himself or his family members or friends. “But Megan, doesn’t ‘doxing’ refer to information that is obtained through hacking or some other nefarious means?” Well, I used to think so. Until I learned that many in the “Agree with me or you’re a Nazi” camp sometimes use the term “doxing” to mean “reposting stuff that I myself have publicly posted.”

And it gets worse. Hayden tells us, “Every day I would wake up to yet more abuse.” Abuse is a strong word. He must be talking about tweets that called him names that were actually mean or told him he should kill himself.

Oops. I spoke too soon. The very next sentence reveals that one of those mean names was “man.”

The police (which, in the subject brief, are referred to with a capital “P,” which totally isn’t creepy at all) got involved and gave a “verbal warning for harassment” to one of the meanies. And Hayden tells us, “At this point I became a public figure.” The implied remainder of that thought is “when all I wanted to do was lead a peaceful, quiet life.” Yeah right.

But wait – there’s more. And some of it actually sounds like a something burger. Hayden says that in November 2018 someone posted “details of my confidential financial and medical information. The account was also abusing me because of my gender identity. A suspect was arrested in December 2018 and the High Court imposed an interim injunction on the suspect restraining her from a range of conduct. This included misgendering me as a male or man or using male pronouns to reference me.” Hold it right there. The financial and medical stuff, if accurate, is bad. But by lumping that in with “misgendering,” Hayden seriously jeopardizes his credibility.

And despite the fact that he claims to be so reluctantly in the public eye, Hayden can’t help but tell us “This was the first injunction in English legal history restraining misgendering.”

And his pride in this is proof that the American Revolution was not a mistake.

And no article about the troubles of trans people would be complete without a dig at Trump. Hayden claims that the story of the arrest “was grossly misrepresented” and tells us that “Donald Trump Jnr intervened and made adverse remarks about my case on his own Twitter feed.” So basically Hayden had all the wrath of #MAGACountry brought down on him. And while he doesn’t say anything about being accosted outside Subway by men carrying nooses and bleach, he does tell us that he has “become a global figure who is subject to abuse and harassment on an almost hourly basis.”

Notice how he’s gone from calling himself a “public figure” to a “global figure”?

And telling us that he is a “global figure” is still not enough. In the very next paragraph, Hayden states, “I am now known throughout the world.” But he also explains how this is a burden rather than a blessing. “The Police have put in place security measures on my home address in case I am attacked or threatened.”

Wait a minute. What’s this “in case” business? I thought Hayden is attacked and threatened all the time.

“Don’t be glib, Megan. He obviously means in case he’s physically attacked or physically threatened.” But yet he and his friends have been trying to convince the rest of us that there’s no difference between verbal insults (including scientific facts that contradict one’s sense of self) and actual violence. I guess all the harassment has been so tiring that Hayden has forgotten his convictions and made a distinction between words and violence. Oops.

And lest you are tempted to think that this insanity will stay firmly within the borders of our neighbor to the north and our former overlords across the pond, let me direct your attention to the section of the brief entitled “The MLAT Problem.” MLAT stands for “Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty” and is the mechanism by which “Canadian law enforcement accesses user data on US-owned social media platforms.”

And you have probably guessed by now that, according to Oger, the problem with MLAT is not that MLAT is even a thing.

Rather, the problem is that the United States government isn’t eager enough to trample on the rights of its citizens whenever Canadian law enforcement makes a request under MLAT. According to Oger, “long delays when using MLAT” are a huge problem. In fact, “One hate-crimes investigator reported delays of up to two years to be commonplace.”

Shout-out to all the readers who, like me, are feeling a sudden burst of patriotism.

Oger explains that there is currently a discrepancy in Canadian law regarding printed hate speech vs. online hate speech, that “there is this gaping hole that something you publish in print that is impermissible under provincial legislation, is allowable under federal.”

And because Oger hates liberty more than he loves charity rightly understood, he thinks that reconciling the two laws should be accomplished by making federal laws stricter rather than relaxing provincial laws.

And it takes a while, but eventually Oger whips out the Holocaust Card. Quoting from a 2013 human rights ruling, he says, “Hate speech lays the groundwork for later, broad attacks on vulnerable groups that can range from discrimination, to ostracism, segregation, deportation, violence and, in the most extreme cases, to genocide.”

So the moral of the story is never disagree with anything Morgane Oger says. It’s the only way to ensure that you’re not promoting genocide.

And if the section about MLAT didn’t convince you that Oger wants the whole Internet to be bound by Canadian law, check out the very last of six policy recommendations at the end of the brief (emphasis is mine):

“When an individual or organization publishes material or allows it to be published, or when the consumer is in Canada, Canadian hate laws should apply.”

So yes, Oger really is calling for legal action if a Canadian feels triggered after reading something that was written by a U.S. citizen in the U.S. on a U.S.-owned platform. And if you think that this is disturbing, you might be a fascist or an enabler of fascism.

As confusing as this whole journey has been, I am grateful to have found out about Oger, and I think he’s going to replace Comrade Angela Davis as my go-to authority on what opinions are safe.

And if anybody thinks that reeks of white privilege and male privilege, why do you hate trans people so much?

Verso l’alto,
Megan