IWD 2024: caWsbar's first annual "Reality Based Women" event
An overview plus my talk on free speech
This March 8, caWsbar hosted its first annual “Reality Based Women” conference on International Women’s Day. The event was also sponsored by The Democracy Fund. I was delighted to attend as a speaker and have the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people. The room was packed with 200 guests, and I’m told another 100 were watching online. Thank you to Heather Mason, and Maureen, for organizing and pulling off such a smooth event.
I’ve got to single out April Hutchinson for giving a powerful and touching speech on addiction, sexual abuse, survival, and the power of sport; the champion powerlifter—currently banned from her sport for referring to men as men— garnered a standing ovation and had many of us in tears. She’s a champion in every sense of the word.
And kudos to the rest of the women for their excellent speeches! Here was mine:
Happy International Women’s Day!
As much as I have to say about women’s sex-based rights, I mostly want to talk about free speech today. Because while the reason I’m here to begin with is related to my advocacy for women’s rights—which started years back with writing and event planning—I learned very quickly that there would be no gains; that we’d not get a foothold in a cultural climate that is hellbent on silencing the voices of dissenting women—unless we fought a dual fight for both our rights and our speech. First speech, then rights.
If we can’t speak about what we deserve or what we’ve lost; if we are censored and threatened and publicly tarred and feathered and have to risk everything just to hold the line on women’s rights; if we can’t utter the very words that give meaning and shape to the things we are describing—then there is no way to gain them or to recover them once they are lost.
It’s rather dark in Canada right now. This is a country where state-funded media does the bidding of the ruling Liberal party that is run by a man who by all appearances loves power as much as he resents reality; and where our national intelligence agency wants the public to know that they will watch us—as if we are terrorists—if we question the ethics of sterilizing and mutilating children, or question the humanity of enabling predatory males and rapists to infiltrate women’s safe spaces. All of us could reasonably expect to end up on a CSIS watch list for being in this room today.
CSIS has named us the “anti-gender movement” and deemed that we pose a “violent threat” to the LGBT community. They said we might “inspire extreme violence.”
This is also a country where unserious people start unserious organizations, like the “Canadian Anti-Hate Network,” and receive government funding to monitor political dissidents like us—but, hilariously, they’re such delicate souls that their organization and its leaders will block on social media the very people and organizations (like caWsbar) that they claim to need to monitor in the first place.
The timing of the CBC feature story on CSIS and the anti-gender movement was no coincidence. The Alberta NDP MLAs, like Janis Irwin, barely had time to post TikToks of themselves sobbing over premier Danielle Smith’s trans legislation before CSIS and their Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre ponied up an internal report about what dangerous terrorists we all are and sent it off to the CBC. And the CBC claims that they had to do a freedom of information request for the report. Sure thing, CBC.
All of this is to say that it sure feels like there is a coordinated, multipronged attack on the Canadians who reject today’s prevailing, and highly delusional, orthodoxy.
And then the kicker was the Liberals tabling Bill C-63, which is heading for a second reading in the House of Commons. They’ve cleverly packaged this bill under the guise of protecting children, but it’s an obvious trojan horse for sweeping legislation to criminalize and chill our speech.
In effect, it allows the government to decide what constitutes “harmful speech”; it allows judges to hand out life sentences for said speech—and even to seriously consider meting out sentences if someone simply FEARS that we MIGHT engage in harmful speech—we can be punished without even opening our mouths. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has described the proposed bill as one that blurs the distinction between speech and actions—something that should never happen in a free society.
C-63 would also enable Human Rights Tribunals to fine you $70,000 for your online speech – 50 of which goes to the government and 20 to complainants, who could very well remain anonymous throughout the process.
It will be an Orwellian nightmare if this bill passes.
Some believe, should it pass, that it will be weaponized by Liberals and Conservatives alike. Some have suggested that the outrage over the proposed legislation is overblown, or that we are being paranoid. I don’t see it that way.
A previous version of C-63 was struck down by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper because of the vague language that made it clear that the bill was intended as a tool to censor unpopular speech. Harper himself made this argument. And while I could be wrong—god I hope I’m not—I do think that Pierre Poilievre, likely our next prime minister, would do the same.
I think that C-63 is the last and desperate attempt of a failing government to crack down on its enemies; and that the enemies of Trudeau’s government are the Canadians who’ve decided they can no longer ignore the way our culture has been highjacked by an anti-reality, anti-woman, anti-child cult.
Our prime minister thinks that lesbians can have penises and that children can consent to infertility and having their sexual organs lopped off. He thinks that it is hateful to challenge these bad ideas. And that makes him a dangerous man for this country.
Free speech has been in peril in Canada for many years, but not as much as it is today.
Our woke and whining class has a favourite tag line for me whenever my own free speech battle catches the media’s attention: You have free speech, they say, just not freedom from consequences.
Which has got to be just about the most asinine argument one could make—but again, don’t forget that this spews forth from the same people who, like Trudeau, fervently believe not only in the female penis, but also in the bizarre delusion that it is an appendage of great feminine beauty and heroism.
In any case, free speech does indeed entail freedom from consequences. If you’re living in fear that Canada’s legal system or institutions will persecute you for years on end, ruin your financial well-being, take your job, potentially throw you in prison, and smear you as a hateful bigot via their state-funded propaganda machine—then my god, you certainly do not have freedom of speech.
Where do these people draw the line? Is your speech only under threat if you are hauled to the hangman’s platform five seconds after referring to Dylan Mulvaney as a man on Twitter? How violent and oppressive do things need to become before the average Canadian realizes that their own right to express themselves is in peril?
Speech will not be free in Canada until women have sovereignty over the word “female” in legal, medical, and social contexts, and until we can all stand up and say—without the very legitimate and reasonable fear we currently have—that us women have every intention of excluding males from femalehood. If we cannot say that we are females, that we are women, and that males unequivocally are not—then we stand no chance of upholding our charter enshrined sex-based rights. First speech, then rights.
It’s near impossible—and maybe entirely so—to fight for a group of persons that cannot be named. Or, if named, only with a word that has lost any coherent, reality-based definition. And when used, places the speaker in very real danger of losing their liberty, their dignity, and everything they’ve worked for in their lives.
A week ago, I had the pleasure of hearing a talk by British journalist Douglas Murray. He said something that really stuck with me: he spoke about the power of gratitude to keep ourselves grounded, and he suggested that we should have gratitude over the fact that we still live in a Canada where people care if other’s rights and freedoms are being infringed upon.
People do care. And they do stand up for their fellow Canadians. I’ve personally been overwhelmed with care and support for the past three years during my own free speech battle. And I don’t want to lose sight of this.
Yes, things are dark. But we also haven’t lost this fight; and we are strong in numbers. So many of us care about the rights of the persons sitting beside us. While there is a lot to feel disheartened and angry about, there are also plenty of reasons to not get lost in that darkness.
There is still a Canada worth hoping for and fighting for.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Thanks for reading!
xo
Amy
A fellow BC resident here (Salt Spring Island is fully captured :( Thank you for this - and for sharing Douglas Murray's comment - I've become more politically homeless over these last few years, and have embraced more and more of the points of view of brilliant people like Douglas Murray. I am fully on board with fighting for free speech now more than ever!
TERF of the Norf!! TERF of the Norf!! TERF of the Norf!!