On Charlie Kirk: You Can't Pick and Choose Your Martyr

By Abbigale Kernya for The 44 North

Managing Editor

Charlie Kirk speaking into a microphone

"What began as a goal to further the reach of conservative ideology on college campuses evolved into a right-wing pipeline that grounded itself in exploiting marginalized communities and inciting violence against anyone who dared to call out the deplorable white supremacist behaviour."

On September 10th, 2025, American Conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at Utah Valley University on the first stop of his “Prove Me Wrong” campus tour. Kirk, who made his career founding Turning Point USA and debating college students on campus about controversial topics like abortion, same-sex marriage, transgender existence, and the right to bear arms, has left behind a legacy that continues to polarize and divide. 

Kirk’s final words that afternoon perhaps speak most of all to his work, where he riled up the MAGA crowd in attendance—fearmongering about transgender gang violence—moments before he was fatally shot by a rifle 200 yards away. The suspect charged is 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, whose motives remain unknown at the time of writing, despite republican claims his actions were a blatant attack from the left. 

It is without question that no matter Kirk’s controversial and bigoted stance, nobody ‘deserves’ to die by gun violence. This remains true, even after Kirk plainly stated in 2023 that he supported civilian casualties to protect and uphold the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The outcry following his assassination is as polarizing as it is frightening. Far right MAGA leaders are calling on violence towards the left (or, their “political opponents”) and conspiracy theories are headlining mainstream media, stating that this shooting was somehow a result of transgender violence—the same “violence” Kirk conspiratized seconds before the fatal shot. 

And yet, on the same day Kirk was shot and killed on campus, an elementary school in Illinois was attacked by a lone gunman, marking the 146th American school shooting in 2025, as Kirk became the same “civilian casualty” he supported.

Kirk’s platform was built on oppression and harm to anyone who wasn’t a straight, white, Christian, middle-class American cis-male. It can be hard to feel empathy for someone who would not give you the same courtesy. Empathy, which, in Kirk’s own words, was seen as a made-up emotion.

Right-wing extremism has been rising steadily in America, bleeding the harmful rhetoric mainstreamed by people like Kirk into nearly every crevice of the West. When the news broke that Kirk had succumbed to his fatal shot, the response heard everywhere from the internet to sports venues was shocking, to say the least. 

This is not to say that Kirk deserved what he got—nobody, no matter which side of the political line they stand on, deserves to be murdered in broad daylight. Nobody deserves to witness bloodshed, and in breaking down the hypocrisies of republican outcry, it is not a pro-firearm message. Rather, it’s one that aims to draw light toward the mass mourning of a white supremacist podcaster who made a career demonizing marginalized communities under the guise of “free speech” and the right to have your own opinion.

The irony of this whole situation is hidden under the calls for violence and continued “us vs. them” rhetoric, steeped in racist comparisons between Kirk and the murder of George Floyd, to further blame the left for his assassination. However, the argument that one must feel sorry for Kirk is somewhat missing the mark in this conversation. Especially given that Kirk himself advocated for public executions, saying they should be televised to children and sponsored by major corporations like Coca-Cola. It comes as somewhat ironic, then, that the conversation around his death is spiralling into that of a memorialized martyr who died for his own opinion, not one that aims to look at the broader picture of the violence he made a career out of. 

Kirk’s advocacy for the right to one’s own “opinion” is a trapdoor that invites unsuspecting viewers through the guise of free speech into the chasm of extremist ideology. As a reminder, an opinion is whether or not you like summer over winter, or what TV show deserved an Emmy Award, or how you like your eggs cooked. An opinion is not whether or not you believe the Jim Crow laws were a good thing for the Black community, or that women aren’t capable of holding equal careers to men, or that transgender people are dangerous, bloodthirsty criminals. Charlie Kirk did not die for his opinion. He held no ‘opinions’ that were not factually incorrect or spewed in the pursuit of a divided country, fueled by hatred and fear. 

His “Prove me Wrong” tour would be the final act in his legacy of rage-baiting college students into falling for the ultra-right-wing pipeline, spinning every disadvantage young people face into a calling card for bigotry and white-supremacy. It is extremely telling how school shootings and the rise of hate speech in North America have become so normalized that they’ve become desensitized to mainstream media. On the afternoon of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, when a man armed with a semi-automatic weapon opened fire in an elementary school in Illinois, the narrative instead became focused on protecting the legacy of someone who didn’t believe in equal rights based on “freedom of expression” rather than the epidemic of gun violence that is plaguing America.

The truth is, if people were truly outraged that this horrific act of gun violence cost Kirk his life, a conversation of change would spark. Instead, conversations around further demonizing left-leaning voters and the trans community have infiltrated online forums. Additionally, we’ve seen countless examples where anyone speaking out against the hypocrisy of Kirk’s shooting is facing harassment and, in increasingly frequent cases, being fired from their employment after speaking against Charlie Kirk's “opinions.”

How have we strayed so far from the plot that merely bringing attention to the hypocrisy and somewhat ironic nature of September 12th is an act of war against the right-wing? To say that you don’t support what happened to Charlie Kirk, but Charlie Kirk (by his own words) supported what happened to him, has become controversial—as if his platform was built around not only protecting the Second Amendment, but also advocating for looser gun restrictions. 

How can one mourn Charlie Kirk and ignore the victims of his rhetoric?

What began as a goal to further the reach of conservative ideology on college campuses evolved into a right-wing pipeline that grounded itself in exploiting marginalized communities and inciting violence against anyone who dared to call out the deplorable white supremacist behaviour. 

To truly mourn Charlie Kirk must mean you mourn all victims of gun violence. 

To mourn him as a father, as a husband, is to also mourn the innocent families ripped apart by ICE raids.

To mourn him as a political activist for free speech is to also mourn the journalists murdered in Gaza who died documenting a genocide. 

To mourn Charlie Kirk is to mourn victims of violence perpetuated with hands cradling guns and microphones. 

To mourn him is to mourn trans people and childbearing folks who have died due to lack of access to gender affirming care and abortion resources.

You cannot pick and choose your martyr. 

Book Review: Genderqueer: Maia Kobabe (2019)

by Abbigale Kernya, ​for The 44 North

Managing Editor

The book cover of Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe

Genre: Memoir, Graphic Novel, Queer Literature

“Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.”

― Maia Kobabe, Genderqueer

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This 2019 memoir by author, advocate, and storyteller Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir) is a tender journey through childhood to adolescence, exploring gender expression and the anxieties of growing up. It’s a beautiful walk with time and acceptance of oneself—a teacher, a guide, and at times, a friend. 

It’s also been banned in Alberta schools. 

Genderqueer follows Maia Kobabe from infancy to adulthood, where the first memories of gender confusion and dysphoria peak through the pages. This is a memoir where self-love, kindness, and acceptance of the people around you are seen as radical and sexually explicit. When I first heard that Alberta was banning over 200 books from public school libraries, alarm bells immediately started going off. In my research to not only read a banned book, but also to recommend it to my readers, Genderqueer climbed to the top of my list after Alberta’s Minister of Education, Demetrios Nicolaides, released a list of “sexually explicit” and “harmful” books found in school libraries on X.

Imagine my shock, then, when I began reading this graphic novel and found that the only sexual red flag was the conservative projection of homophobia and transphobia that turns a peaceful recount of gender exploration into sexually explicit content.

Kobabe shares a story that is full of hope—one that is importantly what eir needed when eir was younger. The frustration and self-hatred of not having any non-binary or asexual representation when Kobabe was growing up cost eir friendships, relationships, and peace within eirself. I found the most important part of this novel to be when Kobabe—after years of thinking eir were “wrong” or “broken” for not fitting traditional masculine or feminine gender roles—finds eirself in a teaching position looking out onto the sea of students and realizing this is eir’s chance to be the change eir needed when eir was young. 

On the flip side, this story that beautifully recounts childhood innocence and welcomes in a new wave of kindness and “radical” acceptance has been constantly demonized by right-wing parties as sexually explicit. In flipping through these pages, I had a hard time coming up with examples to fit their narrative. 

Is it sexually explicit to talk about periods and pap smears?

Or talking about sex in a natural and relatable way?

Perhaps dismantling gender roles and the sexualization of young girls is too “radical?”

Or maybe it was too sexually explicit to depict gender dysphoria in a raw and honest way that not only acts as a refuge for those needing representation, but also as a learning opportunity for those looking to understand their neighbour. 

Kobabe’s journey from a fanfiction writing tween struggling to understand why eir can’t move through life equal to eir’s peers, to an adult on a mission to ensure no other transgender children feel the alienation or sense of “wrongness” that filtered through eirs childhood is as memorable as it is raw. One particular scene that really drove this message home for me was an earlier recount of when Kobabe transitioned from homeschool to public school, and feeling like eir was eons behind social norms than eirs female classmates for not understanding why women have to shave their legs, why they cannot swim with their shirt off, or why girls were so obsessed with boys. It was this novel’s transition from a sense of other to togetherness that filled this story not with sadness, but instead a profound message of hope. 

Maia Kobabe’s Genderqueer opened my eyes to a new perspective—the end goal of any great novel, I am so bold as to claim. Yet, it is hard to understand how a government could remove this teacher from shelves in the act of “protecting children” when unrestricted internet access and the normalization of extremely harmful actual pornographic content (found everywhere on Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube) are left out of the conversation. How is this novel—detailing the journey from self-hatred to self-love—harmful?

I’ll save you the trouble: it’s not. 

The fearmongering of queer spaces through the right-wing dog whistle of “protecting the children” isn’t about children at all: it’s about enacting harmful narratives to raise a generation that fears each other and anyone who dares to live authentically. The most important role we have now as an audience is to read and surround ourselves with as many “radical” perspectives as possible, ensuring everyone is given the same right to go through this life with peace, kindness, love, and respect. 

Poet's Corner: “half-blood” by Justene Dion-Glowa

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North

Senior Editor

“half-blood” by Justene Dion-Glowa from The League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause, June 5th, 2024

A bison in a wheat field under a cloudy sky

Note: This poem is not in the public domain! Please use the link above to read it.

Justene Dion-Glowa is a queer Métis poet living in Secwepemcúl’ecw. An alum of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, they now work in the non-profit sector and recently released their first full-length poetry collection, Trailer Park Shakes, available now via Brick Books.

The brilliance of Justene Dion-Glowa’s poem shines through their use of white space on the page, which is one of my favourite craft tools in poetry. In “half-blood”, space—including caesuras, stanza breaks, line breaks, and indents, for example—works as hard as words, enacting the feeling of being ‘halved’ alongside a sort of sinister whiteness. But there is also space for thought, pause, breath, love, and reverence, for “the strength of our people / and Creator / reflecting in my eye shine”. The title of the poem, “half-blood”, isn’t extrapolated directly, but this is why it works so well: it layers the poem’s language. And although it likely speaks to Dion-Glowa’s Métis heritage, it also says: for so much to coexist is to be devastated—to be in a perpetual state of halving oneself and being halved by society. It’s both a brand of erasure and a necessary state of reflection.

Dion-Glowa, with tender care, also weaves in reflections on longing for the “sleek, hot, and slender-framed conventionally attractive”, “not made for a life of hardship”. A longing, now, to be halved. But I also think about the etymology of the word ‘hardship’, which conjures the rigidity of the British and French ships seemingly pouring into harbours, everything aboard inflicted like a trap. Dion-Glowa’s lines, here, gently shift blame and fault from them and their people. Followed by white space, I see these lines afloat, reclaiming the sea dominated by whiteness. 

There are also several short lines, intentionally placed to help us mirror feeling. For example, “spoons tapping along to the rhythm / I consider / how lucky I am / to have a weight I must carry physically” offers space to mirror how we consider gratitude, particularly with the inclusion of extra space beneath “how lucky I am”. Similarly, Dion-Glowa leaves extra space for generations to hurt—the past is not obsolete or ‘back in time’, it’s ongoing and always with us. The hurt didn’t happen behind us, it’s beneath our every step.

I’m also drawn to the musicality in “half-blood”, specifically in “girthy thighs”, “bison & bear”, and “food / fur / fibre / so / I starve no longer.” When rhyme and alliteration are used here, they ask us to chew. The language is delicious, so an excellent craft choice for the content of these lines (which become memorable for these reasons).

In the same vein as musicality, word choice profoundly shapes a poem. The word ‘meager’ stands out, starkly, because it’s the only word italicized. It also drives the last line, and is uncapitalized when we’d expect a capital ‘M’. We so often repeat “meager means” when we’re speaking about intentionally marginalized and “underprivileged” folks. By using lower case and italics, Dion-Glowa is tapping on the shoulder of the inflection—fear, discomfort, disgust—that’s used when we say ‘meager’, which our lexicon bolsters: “deficient in quantity, fullness, or extent; scanty, deficient in richness, fertility, or vigor; feeble, having little flesh; lean (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition).” Anti-fatness and ableism are apparent here without these exact words, reflective of the covert ways they outline our world. This is the power of poetry—‘meager’ is one word, and placed well, it does the work of evoking everything “half-blood” is alive on the page to say: in body, mind, spirit, and relationship, Dion-Glowa and their people are not, never have been, and never will be meager.