PARENTAL AUTONOMY AND THE TRANS QUESTION

THE RIGHTWING CRITIQUE OF ALBERTA’S LEGISLATION

The Canadian province of Alberta, famously Canada’s most “rightwing” province – though of course that’s employing the masticated version of that word authorized by the spatialist regime – has announced the intention to pass legislation which has predictably been smeared by the “spiteful mutants” and other radical spatials as “anti-trans.” Naturally, such people are going to overblow the legislation and its intentions or consequences since nothing short of conformity with the most radical expression of the spatials’ unconstrained vision of human liberation from nature will be acceptable to them.

That predictable response though shouldn’t misdirect attention away from the fact that this legislation remains part of a spatialist (ultimately managerial class) agenda, which contrary to the usual bloviating is not rightwing, in the proper sense of the term, nor is it as its promotors claim a defense of “parental rights.” (For new readers, who don’t know what I mean by spiteful mutants, spatials, unconstrained vision, or the proper sense of rightwing, you should see my recent book, A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars.)

To be clear, as our reading of Robert Nisbet has revealed, a primary battle line in the phenotype wars between spatials and temporals has historically been in the struggle over the control of children, especially young men, between kinship groups and the leading manifestation of the sovereign state, the military.¹ Protection of temporal values, norms, and institutions – manifesting as community, custom, tradition, etc. – has depended upon kinship groups maintaining control over children. Once the state, through military induction, gains control of the kinship groups’ children, the temporalist gemeinschaft has been set on its way in the direction of space biased gesellschaft, emphasizing military, commercial, and administrative expansion. Again, all this is discussed at length in my recent book, A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars, for those who’d like to dig more deeply into those dynamics. That’s the backdrop context against which I want to provide a rightwing critique of the Alberta legislation.

So, what’s involved in this legislation? First, it has provision to assist adult transitioners, presumably to head off at the pass allegations that the legislation is “anti-trans.” That didn’t work. Then there are a couple provisions that a rightwing assessment could endorse. It will ensure that female only sports leagues and events are maintained, not subject to infiltration by trans athletes. Also, there’s provision, following the lead of some other provinces recently, to ensure that neither educational nor health professionals can surreptitiously interact with children on matters of gender identity; parents must be informed. Again, from the rightwing perspective:…okay...

Likely, though, the most impactful aspect of the legislation, and certainly the most controversial, is a ban on any child under 17 years old initiating transitional treatment.² (Those already under treatment at the time of the legislation’s enactment are to be unaffected.) This is the part of course that the spiteful mutants and other radical spatials reject. And so does the rightwing critique! Though, as you might imagine, for rather different reasons.

An interesting misnomer associated to this legislation by its promoters is that it is a “defense” of parents’ rights. Well, right off the top obviously any rightwing critique will reject this French Enlightenment, spatialist language of rights. As we saw in the recent series on the history of the German hometowns, rights-talk paves the path to monadic, deracinated individualism and the erosion of tradition, organic community, and all those independent intermediary institutions of pluralism which have historically protected people and families from the invasive control and resource extraction of the sovereign state. But even if we momentarily suspend that rather important criticism and took this liberal rights-talk at face value: how is this defending parents’ rights?

According to a September, 2023, Angus Reed poll (arguably, Canada’s premier polling company), one in five Canadians — including one in five parents of a minor — want the option to facilitate their child’s transition through hormone therapy, if that’s the choice their family makes. How are the rights of that 20 percent of Canadian parents being protected? I’m guessing that number is likely lower in Alberta; but even if it’s one in 50, or one in 500, liberal claims to rights are hardly being fulfilled by this legislation. So let’s not pretend to defend it on the grounds of liberal, rights-based principles.

I’m sure some of you would insist – just as anti-abortion people “on the right” argue – that society has a solemn responsibility to defend all the children. A proposition that just oozes smug French Enlightenment universalism. If that’s your position and your values, fine; don’t delude yourself though that yours is a rightwing position. It is a leftwing one; it is part of the spatialist agenda; it is fodder for the bureaucratic regime of the managerial class.

Managerial class rule is premised on that class’s arrogance that in their educated, rational wisdom, they know what’s better for everyone else than do our families know for ourselves. They therefore have both the legitimacy and the social engineering tools to manage everyone else’s life for them. And if you’re saying parents/families shouldn’t have the right to make these decisions for themselves — regardless of your opinion of such families’ intelligence, morality, or breeding — then you’re at least an ally of the ruling managerial class, with its social engineering ethos and bureaucratic paternalism, if not one of its agents. (To better understand these claims, see my book, The Managerial Class on Trial.)

The rightwing position on this issue is not to increase the supervision and regulation of families under the Big Brother thumb of managerial class informed state sovereignty. Rather, it would be to deepen and entrench parental/family autonomy. A resuscitation of temporalist values, including an emphasis on kinship and family, is essential to create the cushion necessary to soften our landing in the coming arc of the phenotype wars. Legal/political intervention into the trans question is a critical opportunity to establish parental/family/kinship autonomy. In that regard, the Alberta legislation is a major failure. It should have defended “the rights” of families to make whatever decisions they chose on these issues.

Now, having said that, I can’t be disingenuous. My perception is that those parents who would allow their children to transition represent biological lineages which may not be long for this mortal coil. Darwin always plays the grim reaper to unfit phenotypic strategies. But the rightwing critique insists that it’s their family and their decisions to make. Promoting parental autonomy doesn’t mean every family will make an evolutionarily successful decision; that’s impossible. Parental autonomy does mean decentering power away from the sovereign state, back to the intermediary institutions, of which the family and its kin is vital.

If I’m misunderstood, though, do not take me to be saying that the rightwing critique concludes that the Alberta legislation should be softer or more permissive. On the contrary, it wasn’t nearly as draconian as it should have been – it merely misdirects its draconian reach. A rightwing version of legislation meant to address the trans question should have been far more ruthless in its prohibition against educational, medical, or any other professionals interfering with a family’s autonomy in this area.

Requiring parents to be informed is necessary, but insufficient. If the Alberta trans legislation were to meet the rightwing standard it would resemble something more like a complete, total, uncompromising prohibition on any such professionals initiating any interaction with any child on issues of gender or transitioning, upon pain of immediate termination of employment and licensure, followed by swift and aggressive legal prosecution. And the penalties for conviction should enforce strong disincentives.

In our current radically space biased society, among the key means to generate the temporalist gemeinschaft, which might cushion us in the coming arc, is as ambitious a restoration of parental (family, kin) autonomy from the interference by the state as possible. In that regard, the Alberta legislation, while it has some achievements, is overall a serious failure to meet the historical moment. Though, of course, I’m guessing pretty close to no one in the Alberta Conservative party would actually qualify as rightwing. They’re probably all some version of a more moderate spatialist, uncritically inclined to managerial class assumptions.

So, it’s not as though one might have reasonably expected legislation that constituted a serious effort at the restoration of parental autonomy. Still, for temporals struggling to make a difference while wallowing in the hegemony of the spatialist regime, it’s important to keep one’s head clear about what is at stake, and where the real fault lines lie.  

Much more exciting stuff coming at this substack, including my most ambitious series yet, so if you’d like to know about it as it posts, please…

And if you know someone else who might enjoy or otherwise profit from these discussions, please…

Meanwhile: Be seeing you!

1. This is a regular theme in Nisbet’s work, but see in particular, chapter one: Robert Nisbet, The Social Philosophers: Community and Conflict in Western Thought (New York: Pocket Books, 1983).

2. It’s actually a little more complicated than that: different treatments are restricted at different ages — between 15 and 17 years old — but this characterization will be sufficient for purposes here.