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Why Are Canadians Turning Against Gender Diversity? (thetyee.ca)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 9 points 1 day ago (1 child)

I think it is very funny to suggest that Canadians would need to be tricked or convinced into being bigoted. Even if that was why, those values can only be promoted through social media algorithms and other media production because a substantial number of Canadians are already bigoted, and therefore feel comfortable with said influence. Transphobia and homophobia can be promoted that way because they are already legible to Canadians.

The US and Canada are not two separate planets, they're cooperative settler-colonial states with a shared interest in maintaining heteronormative hierarchies the same as racialized, gendered, and class hierarchies. It isn't a coincidence that many white supremacist leaders in the US are Canadian, or that the Canadian state invests a substantial amount of money into "heritage" subsidies to produce media which portrays Canada as anything other than a brutally genocidal, extractive enterprise. When people talk about racism in the US, they don't consider Canadian influences despite their effects.

It's true that Canada is subordinated politically and culturally to the US, and honestly, it would be accurate to describe it as a part of the US empire for many reasons. So, it isn't necessarily untrue to say that the US influences political or cultural developments within Canada, but it is distortive to suggest that this is why Canadians subscribe to preexisting settler-colonial values. Why not mention the UK then? They're as foreign to Canadians as the US is. J.K. Rowling alone is largely responsible for the rise in trans genocide rhetoric in the past decade even if just by merit of the wealth transferred by her into the hands of bigots globally; the UK government has readily integrated that rhetoric into policy.

The US dedicates wealth to promoting these values the same way every imperialistic state does, including Canada, because they need them to exist. Yes, it effects how rhetoric is applied and by whom, but it works on Canadians because the Canadian state already socializes its citizens to subscribe to these values.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    It's strange you wouldn't lead with the premise that it's both.
    There are plenty of bigots here, but the bigot movements are growing. How do they grow? By tricking or convincing people.

    I generally agree with you, though, and those are the mechanisms by which they're tricked or convinced, or primed for it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (2 children)

    Yes, I chose to do that because both comments worked to minimize Canadian bigotry, and state facilitation and investment in the continuation of that bigotry (which you also just did). So, I wanted to make sure it was clear that Canada will always do this anyway, whether as a result of English imperialism, USAmerican imperialism, and ultimately, its own imperialism.

    These movements are also not people who are "tricked," and you sound like maybe you have some unadressed internalized values by perceiving it as a trick at all. In this system, people who are privileged have a material interest in maintaining and strengthening their access to that privilege. Bigots are not incorrect when they say this system is for them, because it is, and they are moving to strengthen their claim to that because they correctly understand that the Canadian state will protect them before it does any queer, racialized, disabled, colonized, or any other politically disruptive groups of people. Why? Because this is fundamentally still a fucking white supremacist settler state. This article emphasizes the growth of trans genocide politics; how many fucking trans people are in positions of power within this system, how many indigenous and First Nations people are? And how many cishet white people are?

    These movements haven't grown because gpaw was tricked by Facebook, we are seeing the inevitable result of decades of liberal appropriation of social justice values and disarmament of their respectively challenging politics. Queer politics used to be about abolishing heteronormativity not coexisting with it, and for good reason. Decolonialism aims to deconstruct the very system of power we are all subject to and its respective social constructs, that is an existential threat to Canada as it exists, and bigotry is not. Any amount of "progressive" policy surrounding marginalized groups is in reality contingent on its benefit to the continuation of this system. As the limitations of liberal capitalism becomes undeniable, it will fall back onto its most foundational and hierarchal means of social control, which is white patriarchy. You fucking think this fascist moment has coincidentally emerged along the visible decline of North American hegemony and worsening climate change? It's incompetence alone that keeps this ideology alive while others are so strategically and effectively disabled?

    No, you and every other person in this country has been raised to understand the world within settler-colonial sensibilities; "primed" in the context you apply it alienates this socialization from the material reality of this way of life. Every white person understands that whiteness gets them something, every cishet person knows that they are "normal," every liberal knows that cooperating with the state will afford them better treatment than challenging it, and they don't have to challenge it when there's less privileged people it will target first. These movements grow because they are honest expressions of what this system is, and they're gaining power within it because this system benefits from their existence more than it does from erasing them.

    If you can't accept this basic concept about the country you are in, I do not think you are equipped to talk about it in any serious way.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Bigots are not incorrect when they say this system is for them, because it is,

    Not really. It's less against them than it is against people lower on the pecking order, and that makes them happy because that means they get to shit on people, but they too get fucked by those above them. Most bigots do not live happy lives. They live in houses designed to make them sad, working jobs designed to make them feel meaningless, interacting with people through institutions designed to make them lonely.

    Maintaining white supremacy requires fascism to get funded and leftist movements to get violently suppressed because people can swap out their social narratives. Bigots can learn to see the advantages of mutual aid, and then quietly bury their bigoted behavior because it would mean they get less aid.

    White bigots are being tricked into believing they're better off getting physically abused by underpaid interns in a privatized care facility than being an elder in a small multigenerational commune where everyone shares their meals and works according to their ability. It takes constant effort to keep them convinced that the first is the best they can hope for; the "only realistic possibility".

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  • [–] 1 point 14 hours ago (1 child)

    Jesus fucking Christ with you people. A great example of a liberal who thinks that people can only see what you show them.

    Material security is a fucking privilege. The fact that people are miserable doesn't mean they aren't privileged. And why do you think they are privileges? Hm? Where did they get the idea that they are? Is here, perhaps, good reason to think that in the white settler state? Hmmm, almost like the entire fucking country was designed to the benefit of people like them, specifically.

    The amount of Canadians in this thread who pretend to not get what this place is is getting on my nerves. They know they're miserable, nobody is having fun, they want to be secure and they know they can get that by being bigoted because that's how they fucking got what they have.

    It's obvious that many of you warp reality to parse some sense of empathy or understanding for these people, and it shows that you clearly don't care about the people who are victimized. Everyone has bigots in their family, you have to learn to understand they're sad people and also that nobody is going to force them to be otherwise, they're still a threat. This piece of shit country was about to elect an explicitly trans-genocidal PM before Trump stole the election for Carney, maybe you shouldn't say anything about this if these people weren't about to fucking kill you. No, they aren't being tricked, they're adults, grow the fuck up.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 child)

    Neither a Canadian, nor a liberal, nor disagreeing with your general point that Canada is a white steller colonial project in which whites are given the role of Specialest Boys (and my country, the Netherlands, is a white colonial home base that is still enriching itself with stolen wealth).

    My point is that even if they get the privileges of class traitorship, they're still worse off than in an egalitarian society. They have less material stability too than they would have.

    Do you disagree? Do you think most white people are better off in the current system than in what you hope to build?

    I like calling the organized effort to prevent white people from supporting a better world a trick because if not for white people there is no narrative-backed demographic in-group that can save the status quo.

    Like, suppose there was a secret ballot where people could say they would fight in support of an anarchocommunist revolution if X% of the population is also ready to fight in support of it, and where if at least Y% of the population answers Y% or less then all of them get notified. Then white people could just put X=80% and end up with a bloodless revolution (because cops aren't going to fight 80% of the population) that makes their lives instantly better for free.

    Thus the rich need to convince white people that their X should be higher and that Y never surpasses their X. And since setting X at a point where they have nothing to lose while Y is known would be enough to have a successful revolution, it takes a trick to keep white people in support of the status quo.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 child)

    Unreal the amount of liberals who try to claim ownership over values they clearly don't subscribe to; wonder where they'd learn to do that so comfortably.

    Bud, that world does not exist, the one with a Canada in it does. I am not tricking anyone when I tell them that doing exactly what is currently done is going to do with it currently does. You're working backward from a fantasy because you think that's what "socialism" is. No, socialism is about materialism; analyzing the social relations oriented around material needs to generate cricisism and prescribed ideological solutions. These people, including yourself, live in a system where white supremacy is already the norm and is the system of power by which they experience the high standard of living they are afforded by default by being compliant with that hierarchy, willfully or otherwise.

    You seriously have no idea what the hell you're talking about, and your whatever, hypotheticals are irrelevant since they do not actually contend with the reality of what this system is, again (and honestly, shows that you have never learned about any revolutions outside of YouTube and History Channel). Do you actually think you've gotten to the party this late and know better than people who have fought this system for generations? Yeah bud, hey, why wouldn't there be a fucking ballot like that in this system? Why is every major party neoliberal? Almost like there's reasons why the current state of affairs have developed the way they have. And of course you've arrived at the conclusion that you do by not even reading about it, otherwise you would have used these terms that have been normal in polisci and poliphilo fields for fucking sixty years.

    You literally had to invent a convoluted scenario to describe what you think is a "trick" to describe appropriation, which is how libs ** like you** use language to rearticulate preexisting settler-colonial values through the terms of challenging political movements. No, you and every other dumbass colonizer like you is not "tricked" into supporting a system that already produces your material security through these social relations. People act in accordance with their security, bigots recognize correctly that if this system continues to their benefit, it will do so through white supremacy, heteronormativity, and settler-colonialism, as it always has and why they are benefited by it today. People like you do that, but your discomfort with the obvious immorality of such behaviour encourages you to convolute some reasoning where whatever you were taught to believe by the state is only misguided, misused, and not fundamentally incompatible with an empathetic way of life. Whether or not that this system is sustainable is irrelevant to the fact that people benefit from it now and therefore are inclined to maintain their level of material security. The only difference between you and a bigot is that they are far more comfortable with the violence of this system than you are, the values are fundamentally the same; neither of you are free of responsibility or liability for your beliefs. If you do not like the sound of that, maybe take a minute to think about this.

    Go back to talking to your chud uncs at the bbq, that is clearly where you worked through these ideas.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago (1 child)

    So, according to you, it is in my best interest as a privileged white person to support the oppression of non-white people and support the status quo?

    Can't imagine why generations of people like you never achieved anything. You're basically doing fascist propaganda for them.

    Which, considering the amount of trickery going on, is quite interesting. Why wouldn't the state let Marxists whose interpretations empower the status quo just barely dodge the axe while cutting down those whose ideas have teeth? Realistically, any current of Marxism that "has fought for generations" will have had generations of evolutionary pressure applied to it, either domesticating it (labour) or rendering it a relatively harmless pest (far-left radicals).

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  • [–] -1 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    If you're unable to engage people in a reasonable way, then you're just as much of a problem as I am regarding progressing equality. People who mostly agree with you don't deserve a novel belittling them via straw man.

    Im not one for centerism and half measures, and I fully get the idea of the paradox of tolerance; but you're exhibiting conservative purity culture, which is the very real failure to deconstruct our upbringing that causes progressive movements to constantly self destruct.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago

    "You're as bad as them because youre not nice to me." I don't care, people don't have to be nice abour things.

    Bud, we are not allies, you do not have compatible values with me and you don't get to dictate when you do because you wish to claim ownership over anything vaguely "progressive." I was serious when I said that an inability to engage with the very fundamental reality that this is a settler-colonial system disqualifies you from a serious discussion on the topic. That is not purity politics, that is recognition of the pervasive nature of the social constructs that system relies on and the opposing interests that exist between colonizer and colonized.

    Libs like you hate it being pointed out, but you are a fucking colonizer. Either grow up and change or stop clutching your pearls.

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