It's simple.
Transgender woman Darrien McWatters would like to see the "hurtful" GetAwake billboard in West Kelowna taken down right away.
"I know GetAwake will just say the billboard is their freedom of speech," said McWatters, who is also on the board of the Kelowna Pride Society.
"But what it is is an attack, a hurtful attack, that is calling out people in a derogatory way."
The billboard just went up in the high-profile location along the northbound lanes of Highway 97 on the approach to Kelowna.
It features a cartoon of a stern, bespectacled, purple-haired, masked teacher standing in front of a pride flag along with the question: What are your kids really learning in school?
Along the bottom of the billboard is the website GetAwake.ca.
GetAwake is a riff on 'woke' as woke is the past tense of wake and the group feels what kids are being taught in school is too woke when it comes to gender, sexual orientation and race.
NowMedia did a story yesterday quoting the spokesman for GetAwake who wanted to remain anonymous because he has kids in the school system and he wants to protect them and himself from being bullied and cancelled and labelled bigots, racists and homophobes.
"They are hiding behind anonymity to get their extremist right underlying message out there on a very public billboard," said McWatters.
"There's nothing anonymous about me. I am who I am. And I will use my name and my voice to speak up for me and my community and schools that are teaching that there is diversity in the world and many different people."
As such, McWatters said she's willing to have a reasonable discussion with anyone who wants to learn more, including anyone from GetAwake.
McWatters was born male, married and had children and then transitioned and now identifies as female.
"If I'd learned more about 2SLGBTQ+ when I was in school 30 years ago it would have saved me 25 years of angst," said McWatters.
"I'm happy diversity is taught in schools. It meant that when I came out to my teenage kids they said: Oh ya, we already know about that."
McWatters said her speaking out against the billboard isn't likely to change the minds of anyone who's a strident supporter of GetAwake.
"Those at the furthest left and right of the spectrum won't change their minds," she said.
"So we have to work on the middle ground to help people recognize and accept that there is so much diversity in the world."
If the McWatters last name sounds familiar it's because Darrien's father was the late Harry McWatters, a pioneer of the modern Okanagan wine industry.
He founded Time Family of Wines (Time, McWatters Collection and Evolve wineries) in Penticton and was instrumental in starting the BC Wine Institute, BC Vintners' Quality Assurance program and Okanagan Wine Festivals Society.
"Anyone who knew my dad knew he was a conservative, but he was a very kind man and learned about what it meant for me to be transgender and to transition," said McWatters.
"(My dad) was open and loving and even though, early in my transition, when he passed away, he was working on using the right pronouns with me. It is not that hard to just be kind to people."
McWatters works at Time as operations manager.
Meantime, GetAwake says its questioning of what's being taught in schools is the biggest news story of the year and that they're not going away and that there will be many more billboards in BC.
GetAwake's first two billboards were in Kamloops and were about censorship and COVID and the vaccine.
