Since 2019, organizations devoted to opposing rights for trans people have emerged across the world sharing these characteristics:
- Their name includes the words ‘female’, ‘women’, ‘gender’, ‘sex’ or ‘gay’
- …but they disregard all issues faced by these groups
- …their messaging is instead entirely devoted to curtailing the acceptance of trans and non-binary people
- …they offer no services or assistance to those they purport to represent
- …they oppose legislation that would benefit their alleged base, such as the LGB Alliance opposing a conversion therapy ban
- …they promote sexist/homophobic evangelicals and white nationalists that share an intolerance of gender diversity
Their activism is not about lifting women or gay people up, it’s about putting trans and non-binary people down and doing so in a way that also victimizes the very people they’re claiming to protect.
Some examples include:
- Alberta Women’s Advocacy Association
- Created in September 2020
- Canadian Gender Report
- Created in September 2019
- Canadian Women’s Sex-based Rights (caWsbar)
- Created in September 2019
- Gender Dissent
- Created in September 2021
- LGB Alliance
- Created in October 2019 in UK
- Canada chapter created in September 2020
- We The Females
- Created in September 2019
- Women Exist
- Created in January 2019
- Women Human Rights Campaign
- Created in March 2019
- Canada chapter created in April 2021
- Ontario chapter created in May 2021
- Women Matter Canada
- Created in April 2021
- Women’s Voices
- Created in January 2019
They are obsessed with trans and non-binary people. Presenting gender diversity as a threat to women and children defines their social media presence:
These groups all share much of the same membership, amplify each other’s posts on social media, and work in tandem for events. It creates the illusion that they’re bigger than they are.
They advocate for such measures as repealing Bill C-16, which added “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the Canadian Human Rights Act as to protect gender diverse individuals. It should be immediately apparent that these are just fronts for transphobic prejudice, but the intentionally innocuous nature of their name, mixed with an environment permissive of openly questioning trans people’s rights, makes the ruse successful. Conservative politicians and media figures are only too happy to leverage these entities to launder their own bigotry. They’ll cite these groups in Parliament or give them a platform, bridging the divide between social media where these largely exist and decision making. In the UK, where this iteration of this tactic originates as part of the backlash to the reforms with the Gender Recognition Act, it has resulted in such outcomes as denying trans youth healthcare, the ban on trans women playing rugby, more trans people hiding their identity at work, and nixing plans to reduce gatekeeping.
In Ottawa, followers of these groups defaced posters supporting trans rights:
They have also put up ads in Ottawa publications:
They also took part in multiple street demonstrations:
They are also promoted by newspapers available in town such as the National Post:
CaWsbar’s position — and mine — is that gender identity legislation is in irresolvable conflict with women’s Charter rights to security of the person and freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex.
Byline: Transwomen with a history of violent crime are putting female inmates’ security at risk
“The big problem with Canada’s transgender rights bill.” She expressed her “fear that it will not create rights for the transgendered as much as it will take away rights from women and girls.” Importantly, she noted, “Bill C-16 does not provide explicit protections for the transgendered. Instead, it creates protections for “gender identity” and “gender expression”: vague concepts with no precise legal definitions.”
…
She is now affiliated with, and supported by caWsbar — the recently launched Canadian Women’s Sex-based Rights — an advocacy organization whose objective is to challenge C-16 on Charter grounds.
Byline: C-16 is proving to be a hornet’s nest
And they are promoted in Parliament at the behest of Conservative MPs, who in turn helped kill the ban on conversion therapy:
The LGB Alliance Canada report, which I implore you to read, speaks of lesbians and gays saying to each other in whispered conversations, “Thank God I am not a gay kid growing up right now. If I had been, there’s no question that I would have identified as transgender and been sent for sexual reassignment.”
Lisa Bildy, Barrister and Solicitor, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms
It is my expectation that this latest approach to suppress gender non-conformity will be replaced by some other tactic, much as this largely supplanted the bathroom predator trope and absurd assertions that non-binary pronouns threatened freedom of speech.
I only wish this nonsense would stop once and for all, but I’m not that naïve.