reSee.it - Tweets Saved By @Nick_Decap

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

🧵Alot of people are having a good laugh right now at the antics at the convention of Canada's New Democratic Party (the NDP). I particular, this woman, who has chaired the convention. Her name is Adrienne Smith, and while the clips may be funny, there is nothing funny about her agenda or the influence she wields. 1/9

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

Smith is lawyer from Vancouver BC. She is a woman who identifies as non-binary. Her website makes clear that the practice of law is twinned with activism. Her slogan is "Keeping the Social Just" and her firm is billed as a "progressive Downtown Eastside boutique law firm for underdogs and the organizations that fight for them". 2/9 https://adriennesmithlaw.com/

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

One of the services she offers is training for organizations. Workshop titles include Know Your Rights for Drag Performers and Library Workers, Social Justice Intervention Training (Dismantling white supremacy), and what we all saw on display at the NDP conventions, Anti-Oppressive Meeting Procedure. And of course, her bread and butter: Transgender Rights. 3/9 https://adriennesmithlaw.com/available-workshops/

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

Most of her workshops are done for taxpayer-funded organizations, either government or NGO's. I encountered Adrienne Smith when I was an employee and the BC Ombudsperson's Office. Her presentation on trans rights was a mix of personal grievances (she once had turn down a job because there was only male and female bathrooms, neither of which she could use), radical claims about history and biology (gender roles where imposed on indigenous people by colonization, biological sex is a spectrum rather than a binary). More important to my work as someone who investigated complaints regarding government services, Smith claimed that Canadian law required government to treat people based on self-declared gender identity rather than biological sex. In the Q&A at the end of the session I raised my concern that these were contested issues but any disagreement was stifled by fear of being accused of bigotry. Smith shut me down with a rant that began by stating that "this is not a question about a disagreement of terms or something that can be politely debated. This is a dispute between people who are seeking justice and people who would prefer that we were dead" and went went on from there. Audio of our full exchange is embedded in the linked article. Scenes like this send a clear message to public servants: tow the line or else. And Smith is doing this all the time. 4/9 https://quillette.com/2023/04/13/a-public-servant-stood-up-for-sex-based-rights-at-a-gender-workshop-and-paid-the-price/

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

On the legal front, dig into any of the crazy gender-related cases in BC and there is a good chance Smith was involved. Most people have heard of the recent BC Human Right's Tribunal decision to penalize former school trustee Barry Neufeld. What you likely don't know is that in 2021 Smith petitioned the BC Supreme Court to have Neufeld removed from his elected position, and to prevent him from running again. In a rare win for sanity, she was unsuccessful. 5/9 https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/01/30/bc-supreme-court-petition-chilliwack-trustee/

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

At the BC Human Right Tribunal, Smith broke new ground in 2021 by securing a $30,000 reward for a restaurant employee who was fired for aggressively insisting on being addressed as they/them. 6/9 https://vancouversun.com/news/fired-worker-awarded-30k-after-restaurant-co-worker-used-wrong-pronouns

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

On the advocacy front, Smith's name pops up everywhere. In Hansard, she was named as a supporter of the 2016 inclusion of gender identity in the BC Human Right Code (a change which enabled the non-binary restaurant ruling). She was instrumental in cutting municipal funding to Vancouver Rape Relief, a women's shelter that refuses to admit men. She is the chair of the BC NDP's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee (SOGI). According to the BC lobbyist registry, she has conducted extensive lobbying regarding name changes, in particular to oppose legislation which puts limits on the ability of criminals to change their names. 7/9

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

Smith is also a poet. In this performance she gives us some clues to what underlies her advocacy: pain. She expresses frustration with at her inability to sustain long term relationships, which she blames on bigotry. She states that she binds her chest "because it hurts too much not to" and frames this as a gift to the world to shield us from her pain. It's moving. She is eloquent, and her pain and frustration is sad, but it's no basis for public policy. 8/9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSVZ5TPykP0

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

The upshot: in a public setting like the NDP convention, Smith's ideology looks ridiculous. This is why trans activists focus on gaining control of the levers of power behind the scenes: establishing ideological control in institutions through workshops/struggle sessions. Embedding their ideology into law and policy, not by convincing the public they are right, but by lobbying behind closed doors. Once laws and policies are changed, enforcing public compliance through courts and tribunals. Smith may cut a ridiculous figure, but don't underestimate her. 9/9

@Nick_Decap - Nick Osmond-Jones 🇨🇦

For anyone interested in her tactics, they are laid out remarkably honestly here https://t.co/jfN8Q0rSNx