[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

LGBTQ+ asks aren’t really extreme in any way. At the end of the day, it’s access to the same rights, freedoms, opportunities, and comforts that the dominant culture doesn’t just enjoy regularly, but expects.

Rights and freedoms are easy to identify. Opportunities are far more difficult.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

You don’t have to create entirely new athletic divisions or prison systems (something I saw suggested in another thread) for trans people. You don’t have to wait until society shifts away from identity politics and towards “universalism” or whatever before you do anything.

You have it completely backwards. For most of the last century, it was liberal universalism that drove progress in Canada. The idea that people should not be treated differently by law and by our institutions due to their sex, religion, or race. We changed legislation and reformed institutions. We saw massive gains in women working and going to college, in minorities pursuing higher education and engaging in culture and media, in striking discrimination against homosexuality from our laws. All of those gains were made by universalism - treating everyone the same, instead of treating them different like we did in the bad old days.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

These are just make-believe solutions designed to give the impression that somebody is “thinking about it” without ever having to do anything actionable or think of anything relevant.

What actions do you think liberal-minded people in Canada should be taking today that they aren’t?

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

These ideas, along with the whole concept of patiently waiting for an equality that comes over time once society deems itself “ready” to grant it, is the kind of privileged speak that only comes from people who don’t have to face any of the problems they’re trying to solve.

Presumably, you’re calling for imposing equality of outcomes across our institutions and culture. That’s an entirely different ideology, with different assumptions about how society operates, different aims, and different methods of changing society.

It’s fine to subscribe to this progressive equity movement (or whatever you want to call it). But it’s a break from the rights movements of the 20th century, and it’s fundamentally at odds with many liberal values. And those values are not held only (or even mainly) by the privileged. Most minorities do not support institutional equality of outcome. Two-thirds of Black Americans say the only thing that should factor into college admissions is grades. Asian-Americans are launching lawsuits against institutions that practice affirmative action because they’re usually on the losing end of quotas. And despite a big advantage in money and campaigning behind it, Proposition 16 in California (a minority-majority state) failed.

The progressive equity program is not popular. It’s a movement mainly championed by educated, upper-middle-class white people (unsurprising given its roots in academia).

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

People who already enjoy the luxuries of being part of the dominant culture.

This kind of rhetoric is spectacularly wrong-headed. You’re never going to convince a dude who unloads Sobey’s trucks that he enjoys the luxuries of being part of the dominant culture. Actors, HR professionals, and sociology professors calling people who have high school educations and work ####ty jobs to reflect on their privilege and feel guilt about their culture is among the most bewildering own goals by the political left in modern times. You couldn’t come up with a more effective way to drive the working class into the arms of the populist right if you tried.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

All while, in the real world, people are actively working against those small goals. By doing things like raiding gay clubs, or shooting up drag shows, or protesting outside of libraries, or vandalizing places where Pride events are held (the last two in the faraway land of Alberta).

We don’t need identity politics or equity ideology to combat people shooting up drag shows or vandalizing Pride events. Those are illegal activities, regardless of who is carrying out the actions and who they’re targeting. As for protests, as long as they’re on public property, and aren’t threatening anyone or committing hate crimes, it’s one of the prices we play to live in a liberal society. It sucks sometimes. But it’s preferable to authorities picking sides on contentious issues and shutting down speech they don’t like. Because any tool you give authorities to control speech is guaranteed to be used against you when your opponents get into power.

I get that some people think treating everyone the same isn’t enough (cue the cartoon of the kids standing on different sized boxes to see over a fence). But it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than legitimizing race, gender, and sexual orientation as our most important civic identities.