Wherein Colin Wright Takes A Victory Lap

Over in The Wall Street Journal, author Colin Wright takes a victory lap declaring that transgender youth are in fact the result of "social contagion".  

As you might expect, he's fallen all the way down the Gender Critical rabbit hole, making some of the most ridiculous claims possible, and citing material from the "Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine" (SEGM) - a notoriously anti-transgender group which is more a collection of cranks than practitioners of legitimate science.  

The dominant counterargument to the social-contagion theory, repeated endlessly by the media and activists, is that the sharp rise in transgender identification over the past decade simply reflects liberation: People today are more comfortable expressing their authentic selves. The favored analogy compares this rise to the historic increase in left-handedness once schools stopped discouraging it. As transgender activist and biologist Julia Serano put it in a 2017 article, “there wasn’t really a rise in left-handedness so much as there was a rise in left-handed acceptance” that allowed its true natural prevalence to emerge. John Oliver popularized this analogy on “Last Week Tonight” in 2022, insisting that the surge in trans identification was simply a sign that “people were free to be who they f— were.”

If transgender identity were an innate trait, like left-handedness, we would expect identification rates to rise at first when it became socially acceptable, then plateau and remain stable at a fixed level. If the phenomenon were instead driven by social contagion, we might expect a boom-and-bust pattern: a spike followed by a rapid decline once the social forces driving it weaken.

As both a transgender person and a left-handed person, I cannot tell you how completely misguided this really is.  In order for Wright's hypothesis to stand up, we have to turn a blind eye to the last 5 years or more of increasingly hate-filled anti-transgender _LEGISLATION_ and rhetoric coming from the political right, especially in the US and UK.  These laws are draconian, they are hurtful, and yes, they are profoundly damaging. 

If Mr. Wright thinks that transgender youth identities are "just social contagion", he is implying strongly that those youth are too stupid to understand the world around them - that they only follow the lead of others.  Reality is quite different.  Youth are in fact very sensitive to the social signals in their environment, and it would be hard for transgender youth not to be aware of the increasingly hostile legislative environment.  Nor can they ignore the hostility that they hear on a daily basis coming from religious leaders in church, or even their families.  

Mr. Wright has engaged in one of the most serious errors in research and analysis:  Correlation Fallacy.  He is assuming that the reduction being observed indicates a "reduction" in the number of transgender people.  This is, in my experience, likely false in the long run.  Transgender youth are clever - they know the signals they are receiving and will decide to transition later when they feel it's safer to do so.  That may mean getting out from the family home, or given current circumstances, may mean emigrating to another country where being transgender isn't being actively criminalized.  To claim as he does, without serious evidence, is sloppy at best.

Such as it is, the "evidence" for "social contagion" theory regarding gender identity is at best sparse, and most of it is so methodologically flawed as to qualify as junk science.  As an example, many "Gender Critical" arguments reference Littman's 2017 paper proposing "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria".  It was pure junk science.  Methodologically flawed, it proceeded to draw conclusions about transgender youth without even talking to a single transgender youth!  Learn to recognize junk science, people. 

Now, who the heck is Colin Wright?  The byline for him posted with his article reads:  "Mr. Wright is an evolutionary biologist and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute."

The Manhattan Institute? Oh - another conservative "think tank" - you'll pardon me while I ignore that - partisan think tanks are at best disinformation sources, and being affiliated with one doesn't help.  Being affiliated with SEGM is in my view another strike - SEGM is a key purveyor of junk science and misinformation about transgender people.

Doing a brief search on Google Scholar, I see no evidence that Mr. Wright has ever engaged in significant study of transgender people, either as a primary researcher, or as a contributor.  So, basically, we have another case of "I have a PhD, therefore, I can opine on any subject, regardless of whether I know anything about it".  This is sadly, an all too common state of affairs.  People with no actual background or study in the area manage to acquire an audience, and presto, they are "experts".  

There's a reason we don't go to a mechanic to diagnose medical issues, and we don't ask our physicians to repair our cars.  They are very different domains with different training and knowledge.  It would be nice if Mr. Wright had some actual expertise in the area of gender identity, but aside from writing opinion articles in newspapers, he has none.

Reserve Powers, The Notwithstanding Clause, and Unjust Laws

Since the Smith-led UCP government in Alberta saw fit to invoke The Notwithstanding Clause (S33) of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms (The Charter) to order teachers back to work (Bill 2), I have seen some discussion in various forums arguing that once S33 is invoked, there is very little anybody can do.  

I propose that this is not entirely true.  Certainly, Bill 2 imposes onerous, if not excessive, fines for any "labour action" over the next 4 years which would make most teachers hesitant to act directly, like all of us, they have families to support and generally have to pay the bills, the penalties aimed at the ATA are clearly designed to bankrupt the ATA very quickly.  

I've argued in other posts that Bill 2 is exceptionally bad legislation, and as such presents a clear danger to Canadian democracy and our legal system.  It is not the only legislation that the UCP has passed which is of dubious value, but it finally seems to have galvanized people's attention on the potential for abusing S33.  

Broadly speaking, I contend that laws which require the government to invoke S33 should be subject to much greater scrutiny, for the government's invocation of S33 is essentially an admission that the law not only curtails rights guaranteed under The Charter, but that they acknowledge that the law would not stand scrutiny with respect to The Reasonability Clause (S1).  In other words, the application of S33 must be of the most urgent nature, and for circumstances that the government could not reasonably mitigate with other statutory tools.  

Alberta Bill 2 and The Notwithstanding Clause

So, Alberta has used S33 as part of its “Back To Work” legislation for ending the teachers strike. There will be many pixels of virtual ink spilled over this.  Much of that will go on breathlessly about how this is “unprecedented”, “shocking”, and so on.  Rest assured, none of this is shocking.  The UCP has been looking for an excuse to use S33 for quite some time - going back to Jason Kenney, if you have been paying attention.  Kenney’s Bill 1 would have become that bill - except the excuse for Bill 1 vaporized.

The UCP is being purposeful.  They started musing about S33 to buttress their anti-trans legislation a while ago, but I think they also realized that outside their base, the broader public has little appetite for such a move.  This application of it is “temporary”, and addresses events that are directly affecting families (often an easy sell for conservatives who love to spout off about family values). 

Conservatism Is Dead

Conservatism in Canada is no longer a coherent political philosophy.  It has become a hybrid of a business that sells access to power, and a collection of people who have been drawn into utterly paranoid conspiracy theories.  The slide into this place has been a long, slow process, and I don’t think it’s necessarily all intentional.

Let me explain why I think this is the case, and then we can get into how we got here in the first place.

Parasitic Capitalism (Oilpatch Edition)

I have little love for the oil & gas industry in Alberta.  Having grown up here, worked in and adjacent to the industry for years, I have become increasingly disillusioned, and then angry with both the industry and the government.  At this point in our history (2025), I'm pretty much at the point of saying that not only has the industry captured the UCP government, but it has become a parasite on the Alberta and Canadian economies.  

"Oh, but what about the billions it brings in?" proponents say.  Those billions mean nothing if they leave the people holding the bag with billions more in costs after projects are shut down.  We have a massive problem with oil companies leaving their industrial wastelands lying about and simply doing nothing to clean up after they are done with production on a site. 

Further, they refuse to pay municipal taxes to municipalities because they know they can ignore it and the government will do nothing, and they can tie any legal actions up in courts until the municipality runs out of money to pursue the matter with.  Landowners are supposed to be paid money for access to the surface area where they put wells down, and companies ignore those obligations too - often for the same reasons. 

All of this makes me quite furious - both with the government and with industry - however, my ire is focused much more on industry because they are the ones making profits off the resources, and ignoring their responsibilities beyond those profits. 

So Poilievre Doesn’t Like Birthright Citizenship

 I see that Poilievre has borrowed another page from GOP politics - this time he’s going after birthright citizenship.  

Birthright citizenship is really nothing more than “if you are born in Canada, you are deemed to be a Canadian Citizen.  It’s really that simple - in a nation that was literally built out of immigration, it makes a certain amount of sense that we might look at citizenship through such a lens.  Many of us were born here when one, or both parents, were not yet citizens themselves.  

Frankly, when the subject comes up, nobody seems to have any idea what pressing problem Canada is facing would be solved by revoking birthright citizenship.  Are there suddenly a whole bunch of citizens of Canada that are causing problems because they aren’t “Canadian enough” for Pierre’s tastes?  Or is this a revisitation of Harper’s infamous “Old Stock Canadians” nonsense? 

I’ve seen a few people whine about “anchor babies”, or “birth tourism”.  Of those arguments, I am inclined to be more than a little suspicious that the people making that argument are doing so more because they don’t like the idea of people from certain cultural backgrounds.  However, so-called “birth tourism” babies are hardly a large number of Canada’s births - some 5,000 or so annually, on a total birth rate of ~365,000 - and nobody has demonstrated that those 5,000 births are resulting in “a problem” for Canada.  

Frankly, the problem I see with this is that it creates a whole subclass of people who are born in Canada, may live their lives here, and are denied citizenship because of their parents’ circumstances at the time they were born.  

Additionally, it gives politicians with malicious intentions an easy tool upon which to make the lives of Canadians more difficult.  Removing birthright citizenship suddenly means that a person who has lived in Canada their entire lives could have to prove not only their citizenship, but also that of their parents.  

Consider some of the possible scenarios:  

Someone travels to Canada for work reasons, and for one reason or another has a child while residing and working in Canada.  Subsequently they decide to become a permanent resident.  Does the child's status follow that of the parent?  Or have we just created a situation where the child, having been born here to a person classified as "temporary" ends up effectively stateless?  

Or, let's say the child becomes an adult (18 years old) when the parent finally gains Permanent Resident status.  What then?  Do we suddenly deport that 18 year old to a country they have no experience with?  

Similarly, let's say that a child of a "temporary resident" grows up in Canada, and applies for citizenship under this new regime.  Do we then demand that they go through the same process of applying for "Permanent Resident" status, and then on to citizenship a decade later?  Do we demand that they apply through the same immigration system that they would have to apply through if they were coming from abroad, and they would have to "qualify" under the admission criteria?  Does that make any kind of sense?  

Let's consider the case of someone who has been born and grown up in Canada.  Regardless of the status of their parents, they are asked if they are citizens.  Now the question rests not on "where were you born?", but "who were your parents, and what was their immigration status when you were born?".  I dare say most adults in the country would have a very hard time proving the citizenship status of their parents - especially if their parents are deceased, or their documentation isn't readily available.  

It creates an environment where, like the US, a huge amount of energy is wasted on "finding illegal residents".  This will stratify society further, making a subclass of people who live here, and may have done so their entire lives, who have no legal status.  As we have seen in the US, that subclass of people becomes ruthlessly exploited by employers looking for cheap labour they can abuse. 

I'm not arguing that our immigration systems are perfect or ideal.  They need work - a lot of it.  There is an honest discussion to be had around what immigration to Canada should look like, and how the various streams should flow.  Stripping birthright citizenship from the equation creates problems, it does not solve them.  

Poilievre's tirade doesn't make Canada a safer place, it makes Canada a much more dangerous place for the people who live here already.  

Dear Conservative Premiers: The Charter Isn't Up For Shredding

 So the 5 conservative premiers have sent a letter to Carney demanding that the Attorney General of Canada (AGC) withdraw its filing with the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) regarding the application of The Notwithstanding Clause (S33) in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms (The Charter).  

To me, this looks like a desperation maneuver on the part of the premiers: 

What this tells us is that premiers like Alberta's Danielle Smith already know that their intentions for the use of S33 are in fact intended to erase rights entirely, and if the SCC were to adopt even partially the AGC's position, their use of S33 would come to a screeching halt. 

It is not lost on me that it is conservative premiers who are making this argument - because collectively, conservative legislators have been looking for a way to undermine The Charter for years.  Once Ontario started using it to buttress back to work legislation, they started the process of a slow boil - get people used to the idea of S33 being used on issues with relatively minor impact on them, and by the time that they start using it to erase The Charter as Danielle Smith in Alberta is trying to do using Transgender people as a target, it will be "too late" and The Charter is rendered moot. 

I explore the filings in more depth in another post.  However, the tactic of sending a letter to the Prime Minister tells us a couple of things:  

First, it's a tacit admission on the part of the premiers that their own arguments do not address the issues raised in the AGC's filing.  They can argue indefinitely about "the agreement that allowed The Charter to come into being", and the importance of Parliamentary Sovereignty, but that doesn't address the problems that the AGC's position raises (and solves). They have been outmaneuvered and they're admitting it. 

Second, their argument that this "violates the agreement around The Charter" ignores the implicit fact that the same agreement presupposed that the legislatures would act prudently with regards to S33 and not use it as a weapon against the people of Canada.  

It is this latter point which is more significant - Scott Moe and Danielle Smith wish to use S33 to extinguish the rights and validity of Transgender Canadians in their provinces.  Unlike Ontario's use of S33 to save back to work legislation from court challenges, where the situation around that legislation is clearly temporary and naturally resolves itself in time, the legislative use of S33 in Saskatchewan and Alberta addresses issues that are not temporary, and the laws themselves are intended to stand not just for 5 years, but indefinitely. That is a far different use of S33, and one without legitimate legal or cultural justification to support it. 

[Update:  Oct 8, 2025]:  The federal government just told the premiers to go pound sand.