Comments Off on Re: Bill C-279 (Special Rights for Transgendered Persons)
Dec092012
Dear MP Sweet
I wish to be very clear about this Bill C-279 which will provide ‘special’ rights for transgendered persons.
I personally am acquainted with a transgendered adult for whom I hold high regard and compassion.
He was born with Klinefelter’s syndrome which occurs in the womb prior to birth and according to reading I have done, exists in between 0.1 to 0.2% of the population. Klinefelters syndrome results in males having an extra ‘x’ chromosome and often a very low rate of male hormones among other complications. A very discouraging condition without a doubt. I hold no malice toward those who suffer from this condition.
Having said that, I am a supporter of equal rights, not special rights.
Special rights not only create classes of people with special sets of rights, special rights also are often used to trump one worldview over another when conflicting worldviews collide. This trumping is often used by various human rights commissions to prosecute those who do not subscribe to commission worldview.
In the case of special rights for transgendered persons, Ontario passed Bill – 33 which is now being used to defend biological males to enter female washrooms with the very real potential to permit the same to enter female change rooms and shower facilities. According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, biological males may enter female washrooms and do so with out question as questioning one about their actions would be against their human right. This special right opens the doors to sexual predators and other sexual deviants.
The right of biological males to enter their washroom of choice trumps the right of our grandmothers, mother, sisters, wives, daughters and granddaughters to be and feel safe in an area where disrobing is necessary.
Enough said. I urge you to not only vote against Bill C-279, but also to inform other MP’s why you are doing so.
I have tinnitus. Some call it "ringing in the ears", but that's just too cute a description for such a horrible affliction. A parakeet's bell, wind chimes, little silver dinner bells…
Some describe their tinnitus as crickets in a field, or chirping frogs, or a constant wind. How pastoral. Not.
Some describe it as musical tones or electric humming. How melodic.
But for some of us, it's like a jet engine revving up and down in our ears, from the left, the right, and both ears at once. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month… We can barely hear through the noise. We're deafened by a racket you can't hear at all, and we have no way to turn it off.
It makes me a little testy at times. I've approximated what I hear into this video's soundtrack to give you an idea why.
Tinnitus is a relentless sound that only the sufferer can hear. And don't say you sympathize unless you actually have it. Sympathy requires some degree of understanding, and you just wouldn't understand unless it happens to you.
It keeps us awake at night because we can't turn it off, and "masking" it only means trying to drown it out with more noise. It blocks out the sounds of birds chirping and cats purring and babies cooing and lovers whispering. It makes us incompetent on the phone and clumsy in face to face conversations. We can't think straight. Our heads hurt. Our stress level skyrockets and our immune system crashes. We get confused, and we can't remember simple things. We pound our heads and pull at our ears in frustration. We're nudged closer and closer to the edge of sanity by the relentless noise.
You know why Van Gogh cut off his ear? Yep, tinnitus.
How many suicides are the result of tinnitus? How many diagnoses of madness, Alzheimer's, ADHD, autism, etc. are actually tinnitus? How many developmentally challenged children have tinnitus? How many divorces are caused by tinnitus? How many homeless are on the streets because of tinnitus? Authorities can't hear the noise, so they probably don't even consider the possible tinnitus factor.
Doctors can't help. I don't think they really try. There are known causes for a fraction of the cases: brain tumour, auditory neuropathy, Menier's disease, hearing trauma, drug side effects… but for many of us, they don't know the cause and they sure don't know the solution. Yeah, plenty of "sure-fire" cures are offered – mostly by CHARLATANS who prey on the desperation of the afflicted. But nothing cures tinnitus.
Management is the best anybody can offer. Smoke and mirrors to trick your mind to look – or rather, listen – elsewhere. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, melatonin, copious amounts of alcohol, relaxation tapes, white noise, expensive customized hearing aids – anything to help get us through the next hour and to possibly give us a decent night's sleep.
Doctors say that tens of millions of North Americans have tinnitus – which is true – but the very statement is a cold, callous dismissal of our condition as if the sheer number of victims is supposed to make any single one of us feel any better. Maybe we have to wait for enough doctors to get tinnitus before there's serious research into this affliction.
And maybe a forward-thinking researcher will look into possible causes like stress, wifi, chemicals in our water, GMO foods, untested vaccinations forced on us, smart meters, allergies, cell phone radiation – or how about all of the above? I'd give it all up and live in a cave just to get rid of this infuriating noise. You would, too.
Sometimes the noises stop all by themselves. Rarely. But until it happens to you, it's an elusive dream.
I'm offering no solution here. There are none. But you'd think with the motivation of curing a condition that afflicts hundreds of millions of people in the world – not to mention winning a Nobel Prize in medicine – some doctor somewhere would try to figure this out.
Meanwhile, you now have a clue why some people may seem a bit cranky or distracted at times, a bit less polite, less tactful, less patient.
It might even explain the trolls on YouTube.
Parting thought: how would you sleep if this was all you heard at night? …
Does anyone other than a dwindling minority of Procrustean traditionalists recognize evil anymore—personal evil, that is? Oh, sure, there’s plenty of the geopolitical variety to go around these days, especially in North Africa. And there’s more than enough being identified on the national stage by perpetually outraged critics within this country too, most notably by those on the political left, who eagerly attach the E word to everything from corporate profits and free trade to the oil sands and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s piano playing.
But we rarely hear about individual Canadians doing “bad” things, exhibiting sinister behavior, acting wickedly, or carrying on immorally, let alone sinning.
Instead, there’s always some sort of exculpating explanation for bad behaviour. Shoplifters suffer from kleptomania; corrupt officials have succumbed to stress or have manifested a previously undiagnosed psychiatric disorder; prostitutes are victims of the patriarchy, poverty or both; juvenile delinquents are the recipients of inadequate parenting; inner-city gangsters are victims of racial discrimination; and thieves are impoverished or addicted, and, if the latter, are surely not responsible for the burden of the illness under which they are labouring. You get the picture.
Look at the website promoting the recent Pink Shirt Day/anti-bullying campaign—a cause that should easily give rise to descriptions of bullies acting wickedly, etc.—and you’ll see therapeutic twaddle aplenty along with much vigorous exhortation to get to the root of the problem, etc., but nothing about the plain and simple fact bullies are acting immorally.
Which brings me to Exhibit A, otherwise known as the spark that gave life to this particular column. You might have heard of a horrible hit-and-run accident in Coquitlam, B.C., two weeks ago which left two young women dead. In covering the aftermath of the crash, which included the laying of several charges against a suspect, including two counts of impaired driving causing death, a local newspaper turned to a clinical psychologist from Simon Fraser University for some “insight” into “what might lead someone to flee the scene” of a serious accident without giving help.
Dr. Joti Samra is quoted thusly: “Assuming that it’s a true accident, the reality is… even from the perspective of the person that caused the accident, it can be quite traumatic and cause an acute stress reaction.” Got that? Acute stress reaction.
The good doctor goes on to explain that the brain could be flooded with information and emotion that would cause a person to act unusually. “The fight or flight response is something we’re exposed to when we are faced with extreme traumatic events,” Dr. Samra concludes. “Our body kind of goes into a shock, it doesn’t know what to do.”
Notice the focus on the culprit’s body and not his mind? I suppose it’s true that this human-as-hormonal-machine answer is what you’d expect from a clinical psychologist, whose business, of course, is to produce exactly this sort of pseudo-scientific analysis. But there’s no excuse for the news media to limit their probing into human behaviour to “experts” such as Dr. Samra. Why not someone with some grasp of the profundity of human existence, someone like a novelist, a moral philosopher or a religious leader– someone who recognizes we’re more than just pre-programmed biological machines?
To my mind, it would be a welcome relief—and far more enlightening—to hear some real insights into moral character, the dark origins of personal cowardice, or the nature of evil in circumstances such as these. And so, for example, when asked why a driver might flee the scene of an accident in which he had struck two innocent people, a priest might comment that such a person had become alienated from God, had too easily succumbed to temptation, and had become a sinner in need of redemption.
This would be really useful information as far as I’m concerned, and might also help many readers reflect more deeply on their responsibility—indeed, their duty—to act in a moral fashion.
But, of course, in this secular, humanistic era of ours, we see very little serious discussion about evil in the public square. Perversely, one is more likely to find scintillatingly descriptive words, purring about the concept of evil, in advertisements attempting to induce a consumer to indulge in some sort of deliciously sinful wickedness for an affordable price. Moral inversion to sell chocolate pudding.
A recent full-page newspaper advertisement for Volvo is a perfect example of this lamentable trend. Emblazoned above an image of a shiny red S60 model, the ad copy informs us, “There’s more to life than a Volvo. Like raising a little hell with 300 horses, spanking corners with your all-new sport-tuned chassis. And feeling a little dangerous in a car tricked out with safety technology. That’s why you drive the all-new naughty Volvo S60.” (Emphasis added.)
A 16th-Century proverb holds, “Evil doers are evil dreaders.” Today, however, evil doers are either the next patient for the couch or a target market.
