Dear Alberta NDP, There's Nothing "Moderate" About Radical Gender Ideology
You don't get to paint yourselves as the sensible ones
As I was watching the Alberta election results yesterday, one thing that struck me was the narrative that the NDP party was the sensible and balanced option. This, indeed, was the tone that the NDP tried to set for the entire election: Danielle Smith and her party by extension are radical, unreliable, extreme, and often homophobic and transphobic to boot, while Rachel Notley and the NDP presented the moderate choice for majority moderate Albertans.
I don’t agree with this characterization at all, but I do respect that other people can have different opinions. What I won’t back down from, however, is pointing out that many in the NDP, including Notley herself, have bought wholesale into gender ideology right down to sticking pronouns in their Twitter bios.
I understand that “pronouns in bio” seems like a small gripe—but this is precisely the problem. This foundational practice of a radical and extreme ideology is completely unchallenged and seen as merely a social nicety.
But there is nothing normal and moderate about telling others how to speak about you—it is an exercise in narcissism. Worse yet, this particular narcissistic exercise signals allegiance to a child sterilizing cult. No, I’m not being hyperbolic. The idea of a “trans child” is a complete abdication of adult responsibility and care that is stealing the future fertility and sexual function of a generation of children, often because they are autistic, gender non-conforming, or struggling with mental health issues.
This particular narcissistic exercise has also demolished any semblance of women’s rights to the extreme extent that it champions the placement of deranged and sexually violent male prisoners into women’s prisons if they claim a “female” gender identity. No, it really does. And the imprisoned men who claim they are women are actually more dangerous than the general male prisoner population, according to the Canadian Government’s own statistics.
This is a scandal of proportions of epic that most useful idiots who stick a little “she/her” or “he/him” in their bio have barely begun to grapple with. I’m not saying that the NDP MLAs who have done this are actually vocally supportive of these atrocities. In fact, I bet most have little to no idea what is going on or that there is even a debate to be had here. And that’s the issue. This radical ideology has been brought in by stealth, and the threat of crippling accusations of transphobia puts anyone who might oppose it instantly on the back foot.
And don’t think I’m letting the UCP off the hook. There has been zero pushback to the bills the NDP passed while in power that brought gender ideology into our human rights act and enmeshed it into our schools. This is an issue Danielle Smith doesn’t seem to want to touch, and for understandable reasons. I do believe accusations of transphobia could have torpedoed this entire election for her. So, I get it. But I hope that when public opinion sways enough on this issue, she and the UCP will take the necessary stance while the NDP expectedly doubles down.
At the end of the day, any party that offers even tacit support of gender ideology through the mild act of virtue signaling with pronouns in their bio is not moderate or sensible—it is providing a cover to an ideology that is directly harming women and children, and this debate has been going on far too long to claim ignorance.
This election was not a referendum on gender ideology—there was much else that I and many other Albertans cared about. But the issue is simmering just below the surface, and the NDP does not get to normalize it. Alberta NDP, you are the radical ideologues on this issue, and I will hold your feet to the fire over it.
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