There's some interesting rhetorical sleight-of-hand at the opening of Doris Wrench Eisler's most recent letter (Gazette, May 9). She criticizes Dr. Jordan B. Peterson for finding "world-shaking and a threat to free speech and the foundations of Western society a small, legally protected concession to non-gendered pronouns." That sounds innocuous enough; who could reasonably, rationally complain about a few pronouns, right?
Eisler, of course, misses Peterson's wider point, which is not a point that is unique to Peterson himself. Indeed, the same point was made in the novel 1984, and it is this: if speech can be compelled at all, that is the antithesis of freedom. If one can be compelled to state, as though it were true, that which one earnestly believes to be false, then one is not free in any meaningful sense. Freedom of speech, even to speak incorrectly, is – as Peterson points out – the cornerstone of all other rights and freedoms.
This same sleight-of-hand appears again a bit later on in Eisler's letter with her characterization of an enforced 50-metre bubble zone around abortion clinics as "modest." While it is obvious that people should not harass or threaten other people, freedom of assembly is another significant and important right in a free society; we should curtail this right only with extreme hesitance, and only in the most vitally important of circumstances. Which, I submit, abortion is not.
Eisler's remarks about contraception are framed in the typical way: that of victim and oppressor. Because, of course, that is what even love looks like to one who is steeped in the radical ideologies of the far, far left. It would be nice to see pregnancy not be framed, for once, as a problem to be solved. It's one thing to avoid pregnancy by licit means and for valid reasons; that's not (or shouldn't be) objectionable. Not that one needs to use hormonal contraceptives to achieve this, mind you; there are natural family planning methods which enjoy comparable rates of success in this regard.
But there's a difference between seeing valid cause to avoid becoming pregnant, and treating it as an actual problem in need of a medical solution, the absence of which will necessarily imperil the foundations of our society. What will do that, however, is compelled speech and curtailed right of assembly.
Kenneth Kully, St. Albert
