Beastly BC’s house of government is rife with bad manly behaviour, so much so that a research firm hired to examine the workplace environment in the Leg after a resigning MLA called it a “torture chamber” found that “given that the legislative assembly’s fundamental origins and structural foundations are predominantly white, male and colonial, careful consideration needs to be given to building a more inclusive, modernized, and decolonized workplace culture that fully embraces and actualizes the values and objectives of diversity, equality & inclusion”.

It says so much about a province’s general culture if its main political body can’t even behave in a way that doesn’t smack of imperialistic subservience to WASPy society and patriarchal allegiance to the soul-sucking cause of promoting white male power at all costs. But, unfortunately, we live in a paternalistic province wherein women who work as elected representatives for the people are compelled to give responses to the working group that commissioned the “listening exercise” such as: “women were routinely targeted for being demeaned and treated with less respect (and) if she was young, Indigenous or a visible minority, it was worse”; or how they “can recall several instances as well as patterns over time when MLAs treated other members much worse than acceptable in that venue and in a way they would never treat white men”; or how “comments on appearance, comments on smiling more, questions about whether I can be a good mother while serving”; or how “women in the chamber face more derogatory behaviour than men, including dismissive and rude hand gestures”, among many other valid complaints.

More than a handful of women working as MLAs have left or resigned during the era of the Non-Democrat Party’s brand of misogynistic powermongering because of factors such “as the shocking lack of child care, which ‘has a disproportionately negative impact on mothers and other caregivers'”. Another respondent noted, “I heard from my colleagues with children that they don’t feel supported” and another said, “I desperately needed on-site child care, (as) it didn’t exist, and the assembly didn’t prioritize it”. None of these legit comments came from men, as you can imagine, and now, when a Jewish woman resigns from the Nu-Dipper caucus because of perceived Anti-Semitism within the ranks, at least a few of the highest-ranking orange kool-aid drinkers including Premier Dweeby have publicly come out about how they don’t agree with the woman’s experience in a classic case of mansplainers disrespectfully sweeping a woman’s concerns under the imperial rug because as vote-obsessed bros “that wasn’t their experience”.

As the latest resigning MLA wrote about the Orange Crush gang, “this is not the party I signed on with — it has become a party that is afraid to stand with people, people who were hurting (and) it is now a party that puts politics and re-election before people”. Predictably, the awful opposition leaders have pounced on the Dweeby Team’s most recent internal debacle, but we won’t deign to give them any space in this column because they’re a bigger part of the oligarchy-loving problem than the orangemen are. So instead, we’ll note how the nonpartisan working group has recommended that there be “mandatory learning for all MLAs on Indigenous history, gender and diversity, cultural competency, racism and anti-oppression and mental wellness and resiliency”, plus they’ve at least managed to create a childcare centre on the Leg grounds which MLAs will be able to access, although too late for some working mothers who did not seek reelection due to the previous absence of accessible childcare.

The main takeaway from all of these documented masculine misdeeds is that you don’t need to take the Golden Heron’s word that the Brutish Colonia legislature is emblematic of everything that’s wrong with our white-bred settler society, which illegally pretends to still have all the power over its Indigenous peoples and anyone who isn’t a Caucasian dude, all you have to do is listen to the words of the dismayed womanly MLAs themselves for the goddesses’ honest truth.