M
MNathaniel
Guest
I assume the root of it is that he publicly held his ground (including testifying before government) in asserting his belief that Canada should not adopt compelled speech laws regarding gender pronouns. While he never personally refused to call any actual individual by their preferred pronoun, he believed it was dangerous for a government to go beyond banning speech to actively compelling speech (including dangerous for transgender people who might face increased employment discrimination by employers trying to avoid liability – he and a transgender individual actually made that specific argument before the government panel). He’s also indirectly famous for the Lindsay Shepherd case.
I presume it’s this particular refusal to bow to a specific movement of ideological activists, that are at the root of a widespread effort to characterize him as a “mean mad white man” (to quote the televised Munk debate). So there was a huge push among a certain class of media/intelligentsia to publicly discredit him. He can also come off with a certain intensity, and has a deliberate way of speaking, which I imagine makes people roll their eyes if he says something they disagree with while using that tone (he’s only human; I imagine we can all find an example of him saying something we disagree with or think doesn’t justify his declarative tone).
But the man really cares about people (again, to the point of crying talking about them; if you see him cry on video, you realize it’s not put on), and the core of his message is very simple and straightforward: clean your room. Stop doing things that hurt yourself and others. Don’t tell lies. And people who have never been so directly invited and challenged to do better, find themselves inspired and moved to actually make real changes in their own lives, and those people who know they’ve made healthier real life choices because of him, can’t easily be argued into believing lazy media slurs about how we should something something ignore or fear him because something something white males. The man’s a clinical psychologist. Helping people work through their own stuff to move forward is what his life’s work has been all about. The political stuff seems like happenstance: he’s an honest man who found himself in a time and place where doing what seemed right to him made him unpopular. But the core of the ‘movement’ related to him is very much about individuals applying very simple and straightforward advice, from a clinical psychologist, to their own lives.
Not to sound like a fangirl myself. I’ve honestly never bought his book. But I’ve watched him since back when it seemed like his life might realistically be ruined for the principled stance he took; his courage is profoundly inspiring to me. The evil that’s been thrown his way is real and close to me and he has navigated it with far more dexterity and grace than I can imagine myself doing.
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