In British Columbia, Censorship Wears a Pronoun Pin

Lin Robinson-Young isn’t a well-known figure. On social media, the Victoria, B.C.-based social-justice activist self-describes as an “autistic thembo nerd” who seeks to “free Palestine”; but otherwise provides scant biographical information, and attracts few followers. But such is the radicalised political climate in British Columbia’s capital, at the heart of what is sometimes called Canada’s “left coast,” that a single local obscurity such as this can pose a real threat to the free speech rights of everyone else.

On September 15, Robinson-Young posted to a Facebook group called Victoria BC Protests (Activism & Demonstrations), denouncing the local Royal Canadian Legion hall for hosting a group of women that I’d helped bring together for a speaking tour. Our organisation, Vancouver Island Speaks, stands for the propositions that biology is real; that women deserve the right to establish protected spaces that are free of men (no matter what pronouns they care to use); that parents of gender-distressed children should be informed by educators if their children seek to adopt a new identity; and that minors should not be treated with life- and body-altering hormones and surgeries as a means to cope with gender stereotypes and the stresses of puberty. According to Robinson-Young, these positions mark us as a “far-right anti-transgender hate group.”

Our 14 September event at the Legion hall was particularly vexing, Robinson-Young complained on Facebook, because “the cowardly bigots kept the location a secret until minutes before the panel started… they were so scared of peaceful pro-2SLGBTQI+ protestors.”

Given the violence that men have inflicted on women speaking at this type of event in other parts of the world, it’s questionable how “peaceful” such a protest would have been. But one suspects that the activist’s real frustration is that those seeking to shut us down weren’t given a chance to lobby the Legion hall well in advance.

Robinson-Young then exhorted fellow activists to “send the Legion an email urging them to apologize for hosting this event, denounce Vancouver Island Speaks, and make a public donation to the Victoria Pride Society,” helpfully including “template” language that would serve to warn the Legion as follows: “Our 2SLGBTQI+ community must assume that by hosting this event, these far-right, anti-transgender viewpoints must align with that of the Royal Canadian Legion unless otherwise indicated.”

As Robinson-Young was no doubt horrified to learn, my group has now held a total of five events across Vancouver Island, with the support of local volunteers and community members who share our concerns. And one of those concerns is that—as Robinson-Young’s own brand of character assassination attests—Canadians who dare point out the obvious and important biological differences between men and women are now routinely defamed as dangerous hatemongers.

Of course, the vast majority of ordinary Canadians (much like people all over the world) know perfectly well that human sexual dimorphism is real, even as they go through the motions of government- and corporate-mandated pronoun checks. Yet in the current political climate, many are scared to offend self-righteous activists who purport to speak on behalf of what Canadians have now been instructed to call the “2SLGBTQI+ community.”

The Legion hall’s Branch Manger responded to this criticism with self-abasing language that must have been music to Robinson-Young’s ears.

“I am Deeply ashamed and distraught over the group that was in attendance on Saturday, September 14th, 2024,” she wrote. “I understood this group to be a non-profit focusing on current woman’s issue[s]. There are not enough words to convey our deep sadness over this, and [we] apologize profusely to those who were hurt.”

This is a political fight I’ve been waging since 2016, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government passed Bill C-16, which amended the Canadian Human Rights Act so as to add “gender identity and gender expression” to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination, alongside race, sex, religion, and sexual orientation. As in other nations that have implemented such policies, the new law (and others that followed) essentially gave men—whether afflicted with “gender dysphoria” or not—carte blanche to self-identify themselves into women’s prisons, rape-crisis shelters, locker rooms, and sports leagues. Anyone who’s insisted that there’s more to being a woman than putting on a dress and getting “affirmed” by one’s friends is now at risk of being branded, as Robinson-Young put it, a “far-right” transphobe.

This dust-up over our Legion hall appearance offers a representative case study of the kind of fight I’ve had to wage dozens of times over, at venues all across Canada—even if some of the reported details later turned out to be incorrect.

While the apologetic message from the Branch Manager (the same woman who’d originally taken our event booking) was presented by some activists as an official response to Robinson-Young’s campaign, that wasn’t the case. Rather, the message had been sent the day before as a private email to Tressa Brotsky, a self-described “fierce LGBTQ2+ ally… and certified Rainbow Kids Yoga Instructor” (who’s helped run something called “the Kiddos Clubhouse and Youth Clubhouse” at a B.C. “Queer Family Retreat”).

On 14 September, the day of our event, Brotsky sent an email to various Legion hall personnel with the subject line, “Please don’t host Meghan Murphy tonight.” But by the time they’d received it, our event was just hours away, and it was apparently too late for the Legion to act.

This sequence of events helps explain why my group doesn’t typically disclose our event venues—even to ticket holders—until just before audience members are scheduled to arrive: We know that each city we travel to has its own corps of activists eager to shut women up.

While we didn’t have to cancel any of our events outright during this last tour, we did lose our original venue on all five occasions, and so had to scramble for replacement spaces. When this happens, it acts as a double victory for our opponents, who both crow about their success in shutting down our supposedly “dangerous” message, while also holding out the cancellation as proof that we truly are as odious and marginal as they’d claimed. Why else, they ask, would a mainstream organisation such as the Royal Canadian Legion—Canada’s largest Veteran support and community service organisation—wash its hands of us?

The idea that we fool venues into renting space to us by masking our message or identity—as is commonly suggested by our opponents—is absurd. I’ve been a public figure for years, as have most of the other women who appear with me. There’s no mystery about our events or what we plan to discuss.

A common pattern we’ve encountered is that venue staff start off by telling us they’ll stand behind us foursquare, even if some critics find our beliefs controversial. But then comes the barrage of threats, harassment, protests, abuse, and even vandalism. Like many small businesses, these venues typically run on thin margins, and so take a risk-averse attitude in dealing with umbraged members of the community. Not every business operator feels able to act in a completely principled fashion when it comes to supporting free speech.

In Nanaimo, a B.C. city on the east coast of Vancouver Island, a private business that had been broadly supportive of our message and rights felt forced to abandon us after details of our upcoming event were leaked, as the owners determined it would be financially ruinous to continue. The venue we found by way of replacement, a small community hall run by volunteer seniors, supported us even after the building was vandalised and staff were inundated with angry calls. Fortunately, time didn’t permit the activists to mobilise in sufficient numbers to intimidate these senior citizens, though they did do their best.

When protestors showed up, we invited some inside to share their views. We did this because we believe everyone should be open to hearing the opinions of others. Ironically, it is those who yell loudest about “inclusivity” who insist otherwise.

Last year, when we booked a room at the Cowichan Community Centre (CCC) in Duncan, B.C., we shared our poster and promotional materials with the management so they could post it on the “upcoming events” section of their website. We signed a contract, and—in a departure from our usual practice—announced the date and location almost a week beforehand. The CCC was bombarded with calls and emails, which communicated the usual specious accusations that we’d be peddling hate speech, and that our appearance would violate the B.C. Human Rights Code.

The suggestion that our event might somehow be against the law—however nonsensical—was enough to get us cancelled. The facility’s Administrative and Facility Booking Coordinator, Maaike McCooey, told us that

Given the likelihood that the purpose of this event is to promote, or would have the effect of promoting discrimination, contempt or hatred for any group or person on the basis of sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor, it is determined this rental must be cancelled.

McCooey’s language was so over the top that we decided to investigate our legal options. And thanks to help we received from a group called The Democracy Fund, the CCC backed down and let us re-book. We successfully held our event this past June. Protesters did their usual thing, and I imagine the administration didn’t have an easy time of it. But freedom of expression did prevail.

At another event space in Victoria, known as Ambrosia Banquet and Events, the management threw us under the bus with a statement that read, “we stand for inclusivity and respect for all individuals… We recently became aware of an event that does not align with these values. As a result, we have decided to cancel the booking.”

But the idea that managers had suddenly “become aware” of new information was nonsensical, given that we’d already held a successful event at that same location a few months earlier. Supportive venue staff had been in attendance, and had even encouraged us to book with them again.

In advance of our second Ambrosia event, we made the mistake of revealing the venue details beforehand (though with Ambrosia’s encouragement and support). We’d warned staff of the expected backlash, but they hadn’t realised how relentless and fanatical British Columbia’s transgender activists can be.

These incidents serve to refute the claim that such activists are “marginalised.” What kind of “marginalised” individual is capable of getting a pre-planned women’s event cancelled simply because the speakers refuse to pretend away human biology in a manner that aligns with activist hashtags?

Our opponents often prevail because they’ve become well-practised at playing the victim, conjuring up a fantasy world in which (as Lin Robinson-Young puts it) “transphobic rhetoric, violence, and legislation” pose a constant threat to transgender people. Playing to the desire of ordinary Canadians to be seen as caring and empathetic, Robinson-Young’s template letter condemned the Legion hall for “betrayal” and broken trust, asking piteously, “How are we meant to trust an organization that is willing to host a panel promoting hate speech against our transgender siblings, parents, and children?”

It seems almost poetic, in a maudlin sort of way, until one actually takes a moment to think about the meaning of these words. I’d not formerly been aware of any sacred bond of trust between veterans-support organisations and “thembos” who suffer fainting spells when anyone mentions that only women can give birth.

That said, my feelings about the business owners and staff who give in to activists is somewhat complicated. On one hand, I feel angry when I see them tear up our contracts. On the other hand, I know how difficult their lives get when activists come after them—because I’ve endured the same treatment for years.

Moreover, sometimes these people are just following orders passed down by others. Last week, Bryony Dixon, a member of our group, called the Legion, and asked the aforementioned Branch Manager why she’d denounced us in her email to Brotsky. To her credit, the manager took the call, and implied to Dixon that, contrary to what she’d written, she didn’t actually feel “ashamed and distraught” about our event. Rather, she was responding to “what happened after,” when “we had a lot of the LGBTQ reaching out in anger that we would host this group.”

The manager added that she “had repercussions from the [local] navy base, as well as our [regional] command and Ottawa,” and was told by superiors that she was to issue an apology to the effect that if the Legion “had hurt anyone’s feelings… I am completely distraught and ashamed that anyone would think that of our Legion.”

The email was not an official statement from the Legion, the manager said. She also added that what she’d written in the email had been misrepresented as saying the event “was a hate crime,” or constituted “hate speech… which is not what I said.”

“I fully support everybody’s right to have an opinion, it’s just… [they] came down really hard on our Legion and it was coming at me [from everywhere].”

It was bullying, in other words. And even when the manager explained to her higher-ups that our event wasn’t some kind of hate rally, she was effectively told to give the bullies what they wanted because—by her description of what superiors told her—“it’s the perception” that counts.

The manager’s account is credible because we’ve heard some version of it from others. In truth, almost no one we’ve dealt with is actually invested in “standing with the 2SLGBTQI+ community” if such a posture requires them to gaslight women as transphobes simply because they stand up for their sex-based rights. The fake rituals of self-abasement coerced by trans activists aren’t sincere. And on some level, these activists likely know that. The real purpose of their harassment campaigns is to demonstrate power, not spread “inclusion” and “tolerance.” To shut women up is to show them who’s boss.

It’s the kind of treatment that women have been enduring since the dawn of time whenever they’ve attempted to speak out in public. And the spirit behind it hasn’t become less toxic just because it now comes wrapped in a rainbow flag.