A few weeks ago anti-trans messages were put up around downtown. In response, local queer activists and the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women put up posters affirming that trans rights are indeed human rights.
These were repeatedly vandalized by residents of Ottawa over a number of days. I thought I’d do a gallery of the various ways these posters were defaced.
For reference, this is what the main poster is supposed look like:
Behind the poster is an electrical box with a wrap that memorializes when the mural for trans women of colour was also destroyed.
Most posters were covered with trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) messaging, with the perpetrators taking care to specifically cover the word “trans”. The references are obscure to most people who aren’t familiar with anti-trans activism:
Some posters were scribbled on. The religious bent suggests that a different perpetrator was responsible:
Other posters were ripped down or cut:
Meanwhile stickers with more TERF talking points targeting trans women were being put up:
A quick Twitter search revealed that a number of people were responsible in multiple coordinated efforts. That one of these individuals posted the designs for all the stickers before the original transphobic campaign suggests culpability for that as well:
A few posters were observed speaking to this misguided brand of transphobia:
Honestly, the covering up and ripping down of the trans rights posters doesn’t affect me. It’s obscure messaging in a desolate downtown during a pandemic. Where stickers are used, no one except those familiar with English and Vancouver-based TERF anti-trans talking points will even get the references. Those not as well versed into transphobic discourse might even mistake it for affirming trans people.
It’s different for gender diverse youth though. They’re being bombarded with anti-trans rhetoric at the point of their life when they have the least capacity to cope. Now here’s numerous people in Ottawa also making it loud and clear how they want them gone. I take these stickers down for the sake of those like the youths who could be harmed this bigotry.
This vandalism is a window into a specific moment in time and a prominent branch of reasoning used to oppose equality that has seen great success in jurisdictions such as the UK. I would love to see these posters collected and turned into an art exhibit, auctioning them off to fund housing and access to hormone replacement therapy.
Update
Sébastien Roback with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network covered this saga here.