Gender Ideology Reaches PEI

I’ve never paid much attention to gender ideology. When all this fuss about pronouns first started appearing on the news many years ago I was already well past my university years. I looked over it quickly and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything of substance behind it, and so I concluded that eventually this movement would die off once enough people were exposed to it. Looking back now I realize I made a serious mistake, I underestimated them. This gender ideology/woke movement has only gotten bigger in recent years and infiltrated itself deeper in Canadian institutions. The current Prime Minister certainly seems charmed by it, and in PEI the Green Party has gone out of their way to show their support. I was certainly not paying attention to it until members of this movement started to freak out on Twitter about a flyer being distributed around their neighborhoods.

Contents of the Flyer

This now infamous flyer was distributed around the Charlottetown area sometime around the June 4th date. The contents (here) of the flyer are centered around parental rights and bring attention to guidelines released by the Province In December 2021. These guidelines are meant to bolster support in schools for gender identity issues and foster inclusion. The flyer in particular focused on two sections which would allow teachers to keep the gender identity of students as well as any preferred pronouns a secret from their parents.

The back of the flyer mostly recounts a presentation given to students at school from members outside the school system. The author of this flyer describes the content of this presentation and states that many students felt uncomfortable.

Many members of the LGBTQ community and sympathetic allies took to social media to denounce this flyer as spreading misinformation and hatred.

As of right now I will only be speaking as to the front of the flyer regarding the guidelines. I reached out to the group responsible for the flyer and received a response, but when I followed up asking for details I did not receive a reply. I have seen several posts from parents stating this presentation did take place, but certain details are conflicting. Therefore until the Minister of Education can either confirm or deny that this event took place, it’s best to play it safe and not speculate. For now I will just discuss the guidelines on the front of the flyer. 

I was unaware such guidelines came into effect in schools, and it seems many other parents were as well.  Therefore, calling for an honest and rigorous debate on these guidelines seems like the sensible thing to do. I skimmed these guidelines quickly, and honestly there are other sections just as troubling as the ones highlighted on the flyer. These guidelines pave the way to allow boys to be included in girl’s sports and allow boys to use the girl’s bathroom and vice-versa.

It’s likely in the near future that I will devote a whole article to exploring these guidelines in detail but for now I wish to set that aside.

Response to the Flyer

The flyer is repeating almost verbatim certain sections of the guidelines, so the charge that this is misinformation is blatantly false. As to the accusation that this flyer is spreading hatred, again I just don’t see it. The flyer is asking basic questions such as “Do you believe it is your right and responsibility to educate your children according to your values?” Have we really descended so far as a society that asking such a basic question is now enticing hatred? I urge readers to read the flyer for yourself and make up your mind as to whether it is hateful or not. People should not be relentlessly attacked and unjustly labelled as bigots just because they hold a different point of view, no decent people or society does this.

I suspect the reason why the LGBTQ community is so eager to label these parents bigots is because if they can make this label stick, it becomes a lot easier to remove the rights of these parents. I’ve seen plenty of instances of people on social media promoting the idea that the government should find the people responsible for this flyer and impede them from further distribution. Lucky Fusca, an executive director for the PEI Transgender Network, seemed particularly displeased there was no actual law preventing parents from distributing this flyer (here). No worries though, there is always the PEI Human Rights Association that Fusca can work with. For anybody not familiar with this organization, it’s like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, the organization works to promote ideas and causes that are directly in contrast to what the name of the organization implies. Seeking to take away people’s right to free speech is a tactic usually reserved for those who are afraid to hear the truth, no just and free society has use for these types of tactics.

The other accusation from the LGBTQ community is that this flyer was spreading hatred, but when I asked members why they believed this I could never get a straight answer. The whole process resembled the answers Matt Walsh received in his documentary when he asked the trans community what is a woman? Not all my interactions went like this, but far too many resembled something like this:

Q: What is hateful about the flyer?

A: Well it’s written by bigots.

Q: Ok why do you say that?

A: Well it’s just hateful!

It’s just a circular argument, needless tautology meant to exhaust the other side. If supporters of these guidelines can just repeat enough times that their opposition is hateful, with enough time and enough voices that becomes the truth. When I was going to school this would be considered a poor way to argue for your beliefs, now almost everyone pushes their political agenda this way. Considering the political climate we live in, calling people hateful can be extremely harmful. You better damn well be sure that you can back up your claims with solid evidence, otherwise you’re the one spreading hatred.

The PEI Transgender Network

The PEI Transgender Network(PEITN) was founded in 2017, and since then a large part of their mission seems to have been to promote divisiveness and intolerance on the Island. Fusca has accused segments of the Island as being bigots, having positions of privilege, and of course being hateful. Now I don’t deny people like this are present in PEI, but is it really such a disaster? When I grew up on PEI I did not feel like hatred was present on the scale Fusca is suggesting. But ever since Fusca has moved to PEI, it seems like the Island is overflowing with bigots.

If anything, it seems like the Island has been particularly welcoming of Fusca. On their website the PEITN claims that roughly 1 in 300 people are either trans or non-binary. That means the PEITN is representing somewhere near 500 people at best, and yet, Fusca is given continuous news coverage. The CBC has article after article printed about Fusca and what Fusca(yes I know it’s weird,but can’t risk using the wrong pronoun) has to say. This one article by Sara Fraser in particular shows almost fanatical devotion (here). To me this massive over-representation in the media is not at all what hate looks like.

There is probably more than one reason to explain this disconnect between the support the PEITN receives and the narrative that suggests certain segments of the Island are actively hateful to them, but I wish to focus on a point nobody seems to have brought up. My area of concern is the government funding the PEITN receives. I haven’t been able to find out how much government funding the PEITN has received yet, but I intend to. Regardless, it seems to be enough to keep more than one member of their staff working, and they are looking for more funding with the support of the Green Party. Has anybody stopped to think that perhaps the reason why there are suddenly more bigots in PEI is because organizations like the PEITN are paid to find some? PEI is pretty much broke and healthcare has failed, the Province cannot afford to fund political activism. That should be enough of a reason to cut all funding right there, but if that’s insufficient, does anybody honestly believe there will ever come a day where the PEITN will proclaim they stamped out bigotry on the Island and give back the money they receive? Of course not, it’s in their interest to always find new monsters to slay. I for one do not believe that political activists should receive money from the government. We would never see conservatives receive government funding for activism in PEI, so why should leftists get it?

Calls to Action

On more than one occasion Fusca has urged people to support Fusca’s network via “allyship” and answering calls to action. Which at first glance seems to be a call to affirm everything Fusca says, but regardless, allow me to make a few calls to action of my own for any conservative/freedom minded individuals. As I mentioned before, there are few conservative voices on the Island and pretty much zero representation on the political level. The Premier just recently denounced the flyers as harmful and cowardly. Either he is woke himself, or he does not have the courage to stand up for his political beliefs. Either way as of right now I don’t see much of a reason to have confidence in his leadership. In the coming months, conservative inclined voters should give some thought on how they can best gain representation in the legislature.

My second call to action would be to take time and carefully examine these guidelines on gender identity. There is lots to go over, and we have all seen how the Trans agenda is playing out across the country and the US. It is now just beginning to take root as policy on PEI with these guidelines. If we don’t push back it will make more gains.

My third call is to demand the de-funding of groups like PEITN and PEERS Alliance. These groups are dominated by leftists and marxists; who are fundamentally opposed to conservative values, so how is it right that a supposed Conservative party is taxing their members and giving it to these groups to oppose their interests? It doesn’t make any sense.

These are some of the thoughts I have on these issues. There is a lot of work to do, these groups already have several years of a head start, but it’s not too late to combat some of the inroads they made with policy. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know it’s worth fighting for, I won’t lay down like the Premier seems to have done. I hope you join me.

Edit #1- Based on criticism I received, I decided to change the tittle of the article from it’s original which was “Gender ideology and Wokeism Reach PEI” to what you see now. I used wokeism as a pejorative and some people took offense, fair enough. My aim is to create discussions that bring greater understanding, which is hard to do using pejoratives. Will try to do better going forward.