Experimental The Line podcast episode #0.58: Oh, joy, the trans culture war is here

Your Line editors generally avoid culture war issues. There’s two big reasons for this. There are media personalities and entire outlets that devote their whole careers and output to rage-farming, and we decided early that those waters were being fished enough already. We wanted to do something different. But also, to be blunt, we think culture wars are traps. They’re like nuclear wars — no one wins them, and everyone loses when someone tries to. We understand they’re great business, and that we might be richer if we’d simply declared for one side or another and then hammered away at that without pause. But that’s no way to live, and we think would leave the country worse off. We don’t want that. In our own way, we are trying to do some good here. Good for ourselves, certainly, but also good for Canada. We want this place to work.Sometimes, though, you can’t avoid the culture wars. Legislation (real or proposed) by right-wing premiers has brought some of the kind of culture-war combat that we’d been watching in the United States north of the border. We wish they hadn’t done that. We also think that our federal Liberals, desperate to turn around their lousy poll numbers, are going to sink their teeth into this and run with it, ramping up the rhetoric in an attempt to wedge the rising CPC and portray them as fanatics — in fact, they already are. We wish they wouldn’t do that.But hey, if wishes were horses, right? We truly believe there is a position on trans rights that would be not only humane and decent, but broadly supported. Full legal protections and an expectation of dignity for trans Canadians, and safeguards for minors considering transitioning and reasonable policies on shared spaces and athletics, would win over most Canadians — we are, in the main, reasonable people.We wish the political incentives would lead us to that outcome, but we doubt it will — we think the opposite will happen. So in this podcast, with reluctance and somewhat against our better judgment, we jump in. We hope you enjoy it, or at least that it makes you think.The Line is entirely reader funded. If you value our work and worry about what will happen when the conventional media finishes collapsing, please make a donation today.The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Follow us on Twitter @the_lineca. Fight with us on Facebook. Pitch us something:  [email protected]. Get full access to The Line at www.readtheline.ca/subscribe