The Jenn Smith Debacle
Irony and Bullying were the themes on display at the lecture that never happened in Oak Bay last week, due to the negligence of the police force that so daintily serves the boutique citylette on Victoria’s doorstep. “No call is too small” is its motto. It ought to go on, “But some are way,way too big.”
The bullies were a yelling, screaming and intimidating gaggle of young ruffians of all genders and their target was small group of mostly senior citizens who had come to hear a lecture by Jenn Smith on SOGI. SOGI stands for the Sexual Orientation Gender Identity component being inserted into public school programs.
The irony is that the bullies were full of hate as they called anti-SOGI lecturer Jenn Smith a “hater” and his audience “white supremacists”. The double irony is that SOGI’s ostensible purpose is to prevent bullying. The triple irony is the pro-SOGI protesters were using violence and fear tactics to prevent the lecture. The quadruple irony is that the young screamers frequently screamed that SOGI would save the lives of children.
However, people are opposed to SOGI motivated by sincere concern for children. First, they believe that SOGI will achieve its goals by normalizing homosexual behaviour and transgenderism. Transgenderism is the conviction that a person born male physically can actually be a woman, can so declare himself or herself, and demand that the world treats her or him as if this were so. SOGI will encourage children to believe themselves transgendered.
Second, opponents of SOGI believe transgenderism is dangerous to the person with this belief, which used to be called gender dysphoria. This delusion, similar to anorexia, used to be treated with psychotherapy. Now doctors, psychiatrists and leftwing judges scramble over each other in their rush to remove body parts and fill the child’s body with wrong-sex hormones. Gender dysphorics are akin to anorexics. But we do not leap to encourage anorexics to starve themselves.
Gender dysphoria is similar: an underlying mental illness such as depression or severe anxiety expressing itself in self-body hatred. Critics of SOGI believe that encouraging tolerance for transgender children will also encourage their peers to interpret their own emotional distress as being born in the “wrong” body.
Male to female transgenders may opt for castration, with plastic surgery to mold the remnants into semi-functional female genitals. Female to Males will have their breasts removed and their own genital surgery to create a much less functional facsimile of the male organ.
So the final irony: what is the greater danger? Mutilation or bullying. But the bullying could lead to suicide, cry the LGBT advocates. The evidence is in from long-term studies of Scandinavian men who have had so-called sex-change surgery to appear as women. They have far higher suicide rates than those with gender dysphoria who do not opt for surgery. An higher than the general population.
Almost certainly this is because their underlying mental condition—depression, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia—went untreated while they put their hopes for relief in changing their sex.
You can look it up at womanmeanssomething.com, a Canadian Christian clearing house for dissenters from the transgender ideology.
As a postscript some vignettes. As I took pictures of some protesters carrying signs, a little female protester imperiously screamed in my ear: “You can’t take their picture without their permission.”
So I patiently explained that a protester at a public event was fair game for a photographer. She made the “blah, blah,blah” sign by repeatedly opening her hand and closing it to indicate that my words didn’t matter. “You mean, in one ear and out the other,” I responded. She yelled, “Get the f***k out of here.” There were a dozen conversations going on around the room like this. It was like trying to explain the UN Rights of the Child to , well, a child.
SOmeone I know in her seventies said to a young but quiet protester next to her, “I appreciate that you are keeping quiet so I can hear the speaker.” The woman responded, “F***k you.” And so it went.
