[…] National Telegraph […]
Written By Jenn Smith, Posted on April 8, 2021
Abstract: There are important parallels between the 1963 case of the self-immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức and the recent case in British Columbia (2021) of a father who was forced against his will by the court and the state to facilitate the pharmaceutical “sex reassignment” of his teenage daughter. Both cases speak to the desperation of people whose rights were trampled by an invasive all-powerful state and who were ignored by an indifferent and corrupt establishment beholden media.
A Strange and Distant Memory.
“[Civil Disobedience] seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
The story of Thích Quảng Đức and the now infamous photograph taken by Malcom Browne of his shocking act of self-immolation during the Vietnam War has fascinated me from the first moment I saw it. The photo (see below) shows Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk, who lit himself on fire as part of a planned political protest at a busy Saigon road intersection on June 11, 1963. It was truly one of the most visually and emotionally stunning media events of the 20th century. Then-President John F. Kennedy, who would only live another five months himself, said of the photo, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world.” Unfortunately, the Vietnam War would produce many other startling photographs before it was over.
While many disturbing images came out of the Vietnam War, there was something unique and disturbingly surreal about the Quảng Đức image and what it represented. Unlike few other images in human history, the image of Quảng Đức sitting calmly in the middle of an inferno of his own creation caused much of the world to stop and look. Other now famous images from that era, almost without exception, portrayed things being done to somebody, in this case it was somebody doing something terrible to himself. The impact of this photo globally was overwhelming. For a moment people all around the world simultaneously put their hands on their mouths and went silent. What brings a man to do something so horrific to himself and yet with such apparent calm lucidity?
One of the few reporters that bothered to attend the event, David Halberstam of the New York Times, wrote “I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think … As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”
Why would somebody light themselves on fire for a political cause? What could possibly justify such an extreme act of self-destruction? Who was this person and what motivated him?
In order to understand the case of Thich Quảng Đức and how it relates to the case I am involved with today in British Columbia, you must understand the political landscape upon which it transpired. Quảng Đức and his fellow monks had been trying desperately for some time to get a corrupt and seemingly indifferent global media to focus on the religious oppression of Buddhists in Vietnam by the Catholic-dominated Diem government. A ban on the flying of religious flags led to a large protest by Buddhists in the city of Huế on May 8, 1963. Some nine thousand people attended the protest which was eventually rocked by an explosion of uncertain origin followed by police and military opening fire on the crowd, killing 9 and wounding many others, including two children who were crushed underneath the wheels of government armored personnel carriers.
The government blamed the Huế massacre on the Vietcong and the global media either ignored or failed to give the event the attention it deserved. The US ambassador to South Vietnam sided with the Diem government and called government explanations “objective, accurate, and fair,” which was repeated by much of the global media.
The dishonesty and/indifference of the media and government became a very pressing and frustrating problem for the Buddhists of Vietnam. The government was now openly slaughtering Buddhist protestors and the media was either ignoring or spinning it in favor of the government. Indeed, the aforementioned David Halberstam of the New York Times, who would be one of the few journalists to attend the press gathering in Saigon on June 11, had himself subtly implied that the Hue protest might be linked to Communists and that the casualties were caused by an agent provocateur in the crowd rather than government forces.
How could Buddhists get a largely indifferent media to give their situation the attention it deserved? The problem, of course, was solved quite dramatically, but it was not a spontaneous event and only a handful of international reporters were in attendance that day.
The self-immolation of Quảng Đức was part of a strategic plan to force the international media to pay attention. If you look at the photo closely you will see other monks with cameras walking around. This event was carefully staged. The plan did work, the world media did pay attention because it was hard to ignore something so dramatic as a man lighting himself on fire in order to protest injustice. Several copycats immolated themselves later that year as well but did not get the same level of attention and in fact, led to one official in Vietnam saying that she would “clap [my] hands at seeing another monk barbecue show.” The flippant attitude was not shared by the rest of the world, and Quảng Đức’s sacrifice ultimately set off a chain of events that led to the end of the Diem government, but one must understand the key to this event was that it forced the global media to pay attention, and that was what caused a shift in public opinion and ultimately helped bring about change.
The story of Thích Quảng Đức returns to me again today because, ironically, a case I have been a part of in British Columbia (BC), Canada, shares some of the same basic features — although not as extreme or visually startling in its outcome as the case of Quảng Đức, the case of a father that has become known by the pseudonym of “Clark Kent” and referred to in court documents under the anonymized initials of “CD”, and who was forced to facilitate the pharmaceutical “sex reassignment” of his daughter against his will and his reaction to that, raises many of the same questions and points to some of the very same motivations and answers.
The Rise of Transgender Ideology and It’s Resistance.
“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest – forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”
– Hannah Arendt
On March 20, 2021, my phone rang and I was immediately greeted by a recorded message from a British Columbia (BC) remand correctional facility, essentially a jail that holds prisoners until they can face trial. A disclaimer was read to me that the call would be recorded and subject to review. I had to agree to the terms before the call would be connected. I did so and the voice of a man I had first met in December of 2018 said, “hello, Jenn?”
It was a surreal experience for me because I knew the man well and I knew he was no threat to anybody, and yet here he was calling me from inside a jail. While it had happened sooner than expected, I was in fact not entirely surprised that this tragic situation had finally come to pass, as I had seen it coming for some time. But to understand the travesty and tragedy that has occurred in British Columbia today — which should echo through the corridors of every legislature and courtroom in the world — I will need to take the reader back to the start for a brief summary of how the now-infamous case of AB v CD came to pass and my direct involvement in it.
A Brief Backgrounder.
First, for readers that may not be familiar with this case or who I am. I should begin by providing some brief background information, not only on this case but on myself as well and the cause I have been fighting for, as I have been directly involved in this story since before it was in front of any judge, and I indeed wrote the very first story on this case in December of 2018. While I do not want to get too deep into all the complicated details, I believe this to be one of the most important legal and political causes in the world today and as such, it deserves some due space and attention.
The case of AB v CD points not only to the most concerning elements of modern transgender ideology and politics but to the complete failure of both the fourth and fifth estates (the media) in alerting the public to injustice and defending the truth. The act of desperation that ultimately transpired in the case of AB v CD can be shown to have been fueled by the same basic frustrations and forces that drove Thích Quảng Đức to his act of desperation almost six decades ago, but that will be illustrated in due time.
I am a 56-year-old transgender-identified activist. I am male. I present to the world in sometimes androgynous and sometimes feminine ways, but I have never claimed my presentation does or could ever change my sex. While it may be true that at one point I wanted to be a female, I was never able to get to the level of physical reality denial that is necessary to reject one’s biological sex, so I settled for playing the gender role without denying reality or insisting others do so. I am okay with just being male and being transgender, with “transgender” simply referring to a pattern of behavior. I believe this is the only healthy way to express transgender identity, not only for oneself, but for society as well, and the following story will illustrate for you the dangers of doing otherwise. We can play any part we want in this world but for the sake of everybody (including ourselves), we must always remain tethered to truth, particularly when it comes to law and the education of our youth.
I became involved in the political debate regarding transgender issues almost four years ago when I began using my academic background to research and write articles critical of what I call “the transgender agenda,” namely, this shift we have seen in society towards claiming males can be females (and visa versa), and the concerning indoctrination and confusion of our children in that process, not to mention the disturbing totalitarian undertones that seem to be driving it and which I discussed in my widely read essay Synanon, the Brainwashing “Game,” and Modern Transgender Activism.
Being transgender myself, I of course have never opposed the right for adults to dress or express as they like in the world, but I believe there are too many pressures and confusions associated with this behavior for minors to fully process and understand, as such I have always maintained that changing gender is something best reserved for adults. I further believe that particularly the medical or pharmaceutical transitioning (“sex reassignment”) of minors should be illegal because it has permanent life-altering consequences. I regard the mass chemical sterilization of our youth via the use of “gender-affirming” drugs as a kind of medical crime, particularly when you understand the demographics of the youths identifying as transgender.
There has been a massive increase in the number of minors identifying as transgender over the last five or six years. This fact on its own is cause for serious concern, but it becomes even more alarming when you begin analyzing just what children are identifying as transgender. According to one study, 52% of “gender dysphoric” youths (minors identifying as the opposite sex) had one or more DSM-listed psychiatric conditions in addition to gender dysphoria. Numerous other studies have made the same basic findings, in other words, these are psychologically troubled youths.
Studies will vary, but researchers testing gender dysphoric youths have reported autism spectrum disorder prevalence at rates ranging from 8% at the low end to a staggering 54.2% at the high end. These numbers however do not become alarming until you realize that the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in the general population is estimated by the CDC to be 1.7%. For autism rates in transgender youths to average around 30% or even 8% should be shocking to all thinking adults. No serious person would suggest gender dysphoria causes autism, and the only reasonable answer is that these are psychologically vulnerable children that are falling victim to what is essentially a predatory ideology that turns them into lifelong pharmaceutical customers. But it gets even worse than this.
I was a foster child in the province of British Columbia (BC) during the 1970s and went through multiple different homes, and I was thus horrified to learn that BC’s leading gender specialist suggested that half of his 1000 minor patients came from the BC Ministry of Child and Family Development, in other words foster children and youths otherwise in the care of the Ministry. While we will not know how those numbers break down with certainty until we can get the subpoenaing power of a National Inquiry which I have been pushing for now for two years, I found this information highly alarming and it has made this subject extraordinarily personal for me.
The Province of British Columbia had around 6500 youths in its care at the time that this information was released, this therefore suggests that as much as 7.7% of all youths in government care in BC are being treated as “gender dysphoric” (transgender) and under the care of just one doctor. There are many doctors that deal with such youths thus it is reasonable to assume that as many as 1 in 10 youths in government care may be identifying as transgender, compared to just over 1 in 200 in the general population. This is a startling number. Once again it appears as if a highly traumatized and vulnerable population of youths are falling victim to the predatory dragon of transgender ideology. But it gets even worse when you realize 52% of youths in government care are indigenous, which summons memories of Canada’s dark history of deliberately sterilizing aboriginal youths.
As an activist I have been trying desperately for four years to raise awareness in Canada to these alarming facts and to the role our schools have been playing in terms of confusing the gender identity of children (via programs such as SOGI 123 and other similar programs around the world) and putting many of them on a path towards becoming lifelong pharmaceutical customers, which can result in permanent damage to their bodies (including sterilization). I have given countless public talks now explaining how our most vulnerable children are being led astray by junk, conflict of interest-riddled big pharma-funded science, and driven by aggressive LGBT activists who have portrayed my efforts to protect children as somehow indicative of “bigotry” or even (ridiculously) “transphobia,” while they in the same breath portray the chemical sterilization of children as a good thing.
By late 2018 I had been trying to raise awareness to all this for almost two years and had published widely on the subject, and in the spring and summer of 2018 I had been specifically warning residents of British Columbia that the BC Infant’s Act and guidelines from local health authorities now allowed for the trampling of parental rights and the transitioning of children against a parent’s wishes. I will not rehash all of the details of this now as I have written about it previously, but my opponents at that time called me a “fear monger” and that the government would never trample parental rights in order to medically transition a minor. I was unaware at that time that a case in 2016 had already made reference to the Infant’s Act, but that fact was not reported in the media and was unknown to the general public until I acquired and published court documents from the case. But as of late 2018 there was still no publicly documented use of the Infant’s Act overruling parental rights in order to medically transition a child. That was about to change.
AB v CD and all its peculiarities from day one.
In early December of 2018 I was contacted by then Conservative Party of Canada candidate nominee Angelina Ireland. Ireland had read my recent article in the Post-Millennial entitled The Pied Pipers of Gender Ideology in which I went over some of the more startling aspects of modern transgender ideology and how it targets and effects children and adolescents. That op-ed was written in response to Tanya Granic Allen’s struggles trying to keep gender ideology out of Ontario schools. Knowing my activism in this regard and the fact I was a writer, Angelina told me about a father she knew that was resisting his daughter’s pharmaceutical “sex reassignment” to a “boy” and had apparently been told by the BC Children’s Hospital that he, as a parent, had no say in whether or not his child could begin testosterone therapy, a procedure that would totally alter her appearance and life. When I learned of his case I acted immediately as I knew this was almost certainly proof of what I had been warning people about.
Angelina and I went to the man’s place in Delta BC where I was greeted at the door by his large Irish Setter, a friendly dog but apparently oblivious to the fact that in jumping up on me and dragging his claws across my chest he was in danger of stripping from my neck the large number of chains I was wearing and hence turning me into an instant Irish Setter hater (despite my Irish ancestry). Fortunately the calamity was avoided, my chains survived, and love and peace between myself and the dog was preserved.
Once inside I met the man, who has come to be known in BC as “Clark” or more commonly as “CD” (an anonymized set of initials assigned to him by the court in order to hide the identity of the family), although that moniker would not be assigned to him until a few months later when the court placed publication bans on the case to protect the identity and private health info of the girl and the doctors. For the purposes of this article, I shall refer to him as CD, partially because I am still under court orders not to identify any of the parties involved, and with the exception of the doctors I do not contest those orders.
CD, a strapping middle-aged man, and former Grand Rapids university hockey player, told me that when he tried to intervene in his daughter’s decision to begin cross-sex hormones, he had been informed by the BC Children’s Hospital (BCCH) that he had no say in whether or not his daughter, whom the court has anonymized as “AB,” would be allowed to get the body and life-altering testosterone injections in order to make her look and sound more like a boy. Such changes would be irreversible and CD thus thought she should wait until she was an adult to make such a monumental decision.
I will not revisit all of the details of the exchanges between medical professionals and CD here as I discussed them at length in an article I wrote later that month for The Post-Millennial, and readers can review that story themselves for all of the minutiae. It was the first published story on the case anywhere and set off a chain reaction that would turn this story into a topic of discussion around the world (unfortunately mainly outside of Canada), but a brief summary is probably in order.
AB’s story was one I have heard many times. She is just one of countless thousands of young girls over the last several years that has felt uncomfortable with the changes taking place in her body and the psychological pressures associated with not feeling like she fits in with her peers. After years of troubles with peers and romantic rejections, she began engaging in self harm, cutting, and consuming small amounts of poison, which led to her being taken to the hospital by her parents.
AB was a student at a school in Delta, British Columbia, that was surreptitiously hosting a pilot project for an educational resource/program now known as SOGI 123 (sexual orientation and gender identity), ostensibly billed as an anti-bullying program but which is designed as an all-pervasive (Kindergarten through Grade 12) curriculum saturating program that includes teaching children that “sex reassignment” and gender change is normal and should be celebrated. I have been a long time and vocal opponent of SOGI 123 and other such programs around the world arguing that materials presented in the program are deliberately confusing, particularly to our most vulnerable youths, and could result in schools essentially manufacturing transgender children and teens. AB’s case offers evidence to support my claim (as do other recent high profile cases in BC).
AB watched two films in class that were recommended as part of SOGI 123, one a documentary from Sweden and another entitled Handsome & Majestic which was filmed in BC, both slickly produced using emotional themes and music, and both featuring young girls suddenly identifying as boys, cutting off their hair to look like boys, and changing their names. After watching one of the films in class AB went home and cut off her long hair and began suggesting that she felt like a boy.
Contrary to popular opinion in local LGBT activist circles, CD was not an intolerant bigot. When he first learned of his daughter’s desire to transition he tried to understand and work with her as much as possible. He did not like the fact that the Delta School District had been working behind his back essentially brainwashing his daughter, nurturing and facilitating her new gender identity, and gave her a new male name, all without ever consulting him. But he did not openly oppose her social transition. In fact, he bought her a transgender flag, allowed her to use her new male name and dress like a boy, he did not even complain when she wanted to use one of the most controversial devices associated with feminine to masculine transition (which shall remain private, but it is important to mention as it indicates a strong level of tolerance by CD).
Unfortunately, AB had been referred to a Dr. I.J. (so anonymized by court order), BC’s leading child gender psychologist, who refers more minors to BCCH for cross-sex hormone therapy than any other psychologist in BC (although it should be noted he does not prescribe or give such treatments himself, he just performs the psychological evaluations and determines whether the patient is ready for the next step). The BC Children’s hospital knows this doctor well and thus regarded his recommendations as good as gold, they thus put her on fast track to receive testosterone injections. This is where CD drew the line, because he knew this procedure could sterilize his daughter for life and would permanently alter her body and voice (again, for a full description of negotiations between doctors etc, see my previous article).
CD felt his daughter was going through a phase related to recent romantic rejections by young male teachers, and he felt he knew her far better than any psychologist or judge or doctor could, so he simply said, “no, for the medical and pharmaceutical stuff, you should wait until you are an adult.” He did not want to let emotional teenaged angst decisions lead her into doing something she might later seriously regret and not be able to come back from. And that is where his battle with Leviathan began.
CD’s battles with the establishment began in the form of a letter sent to him by the BC Children’s Hospital telling him that neither he nor his ex-wife had any say in his daughter’s decision to begin testosterone injections. The doctors and staff informed him that according to section.17 of the BC Infant’s Act they had deemed that his then 13 year old daughter was a “mature minor” “capable” of making the decision, and that the “right to consent to treatment belongs to the child alone… [and] the parent cannot veto that decision.”
CD was outraged by this and frankly had a hard time believing the hospital or the state had the power to override parental rights in this way. He immediately filed documents in court to stop the procedures, and agreed to a meeting with Angelina (who was a friend of his girlfriend) and myself as I was the leading opponent of child medical transitioning in Canada (please see my video call for government inquiries). At that time he was confident he would be able to overturn the decision in court, I laughed nervously and said I was not quite so confident. This led to over two years of court battles and a series of extreme and bizarre restrictions, that would eventually see me in the defendant’s chair as well.
Suffice it to say the court ruled that, consistent with the provisions of the BC Infant’s Act, the girl and the doctors had adequately shown that she had a right to begin the treatments without parental consent. Two years in court including appeals in BC’s highest court failed to change anything and resulted in publication bans being instituted to protect the identity of his daughter and her private health information, and, controversially, the identity of the doctors involved. In the latter case, the doctors had received death threats and cited a case in the US where an angry evangelical man murdered an abortion doctor. The court found their concerns to have merit and placed a publication ban on their names as well.
During the Vietnam war, Thích Quảng Đức and his fellow Buddhist monks had basically the same problem that I had during my activism and which CD would encounter as well, at least in terms of the mainstream media in Canada. Despite massive efforts and countless attempts to draw media attention, the monks could not get corrupt intelligence-saturated media to pay attention to their plight. They had an important message about a real injustice, but the media would not cover it. Efforts to raise awareness to the mass sterilization of vulnerable children in Canada via the transgender agenda encountered similar indifference, hostility, and dishonesty from the media.
During my activism in Canada, which involved countless interactions and presentations to School Boards, battles with political leaders, public talks all over the province (some greeted by large demonstrations against me), time in Supreme Court and the Human Rights Tribunal, rallies staged on the steps of the legislature, and a push to get a national inquiry, I in that process dealt extensively with members of every kind of media: left establishment media, right establishment media, and alternative media left and right (including Christian media). I found almost all of these media sources to be either indifferent or outright hostile to covering the subject.
The largest right-leaning media newspaper chain in Canada, Postmedia, actually refused to publish ads for one of my talk tours as did the largest left-leaning media outlet in Canada, Black Press. Over and over again I and the people I was working with were either completely ignored by the media or totally misrepresented. Outright lies and fabrications were told about me and I was almost never interviewed myself, only my opponents were interviewed and whatever they said about me was treated as truth. As a bisexual transgender, I was called an anti-LGBT transphobic bigot for suggesting we should not be facilitating the sterilization of young people. Reporters over and over again failed to mention that I am transgender as if that detail made no difference when calling me a “transphobe,” and simply pretended I was some bigoted “cis” woman.
Five colleges and universities, including my alma mater Simon Fraser University, either cancelled or refused to host my talks. Two cities refused to rent facilities to me. After a small press event in Victoria where I called on the government to launch an inquiry into child “sex reassignment”, I was harassed afterward and chased down the street by what essentially constituted a kind of LGBT pitchfork mob, who ran at me and screamed for me to get out of town. It was just another of many bizarre episodes in which I, a transgender person, was demonized and run out of town by people promoting love and inclusion of transgender people. None of this was covered by any of the major media, right or left. I cannot possibly recount all of my battles with the media and this is not the place to do that now, but it is important to note that CD whom I remained in close contact with watched much of this from the sidelines as he fought for attention himself.
I am a gender critical feminist. I wish I could hug you right now. I hope you have found peace and happiness in how you present yourself. And for staying “tethered to reality.”Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Jenn, Wow, what an incredible article! Such a great overview of almost everything that’s happening! Truthful reporting and journalism , as I was at some of these venues! You’re an excellent writer! I see a book in the future! Thanks for the work you’ve done and are doing! It all matters and your tireless strength to go on in the face of such adversity and standing for and with Rob(CD) makes me want to weep. You’re work will be rewarded! Love and gratitude, Bev
A long article and well worth the read. Children’s lives are being destroyed.
Intriguing that in your perception, Justice Tammen didn’t take you seriously (until you spoke), but he orders CD to take seriously that his daughter is a ‘he’.
And in relation to that, I’ve got the Bowden Judgement, I’ve got the Marzari judgement (you referred to her as ‘he’) but I haven’t got the Tammen judgement that revoked the order that CD calling his daughter a daughter is "family violence".
My understanding is that while it would no longer be a criminal offence for him to do so, he was still compelled to do so, which is one of his violations?
If I’ve got that right, how was it the Post-Millenial "outright lied" for saying he’d been arrested for calling his daughter a daughter?
I’d be grateful if you could provide a link to Tammen’s Judgement if you have it to hand.
Thank so much for all that you have done. God bless you and God bless CD.