There was two TDoR events last weekend; one on the francophone side of the river and one on the anglophone. I helped a pal carry the displays they made for the English-language event, then attended the French one.
It was intimate; perhaps fifteen or so. Quebec’s transphobic Bill 2 was brought up. There was a mother talking about the loss of her gender diverse child who had passed away by suicide last spring following bullying and school inaction. A trans teen spoke up about their own mistreatment. We took turns sharing what we liked about being trans, and about community.
This one hit different; I’m used to speeches at TDoR that are are a mish mash of academic theory and vocabulary. That stuff resonated when I was younger but now feels like an empty performance, so I go for the newly out to see that they’re not alone. Either way, this event wasn’t like that at all. It was personal.
Part of why this event may have struck a chord could have to do with the kind of week it was.
We were in that room hours after a mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado that killed five and injured eighteen. The gunman had previously posted a Pride flag being burnt on his social media, used homophobic slurs, and a year ago held his grandparents at gunpoint while telling them his plans to commit a mass shooting. His father, for his part, expressed relief that his son was at a gay bar because he had murdered multiple people rather than because he was gay, as the father was a Republican and “we don’t do that sort of thing”. Oof.
The gunman’s lawyer would make the callous claim that his client was non-binary, possibly to counter a hate crime charge. Another oof; I didn’t expect a successor to the trans panic defense.
This was also the same day that a small contingent of transphobes took to downtown Ottawa.
It was also a week after my partner shared a sticker supporting trans kids being scratched off and covered with tape. I expect city workers to remove these, but this wasn’t that; this was the work of someone who doesn’t want people like me and my partner to exist in Ottawa.
It was also the week Reuters and the New York Times did “just asking questions” long-form pieces, eschewing the consensus of the medical profession and trans-youth-turned-adults and embracing the right-wing dogwhistles of the day. The very kind of lazy coverage that fuels this moral panic against trans people. For Reuters, this was part of a series.
It was also the week that Twitter, freshly bought by Elon Musk, allegedly reversed its 2018 policy against transphobic abuse and reinstated accounts that had been banned for their transphobia. This comes on the heels of conservatives in the US pouring $50 million USD on anti-trans ads for their election and less than a month after multiple trustees with an explicitly anti-trans platform ran in Ottawa’s municipal election. It’s also the month that a non-binary firefighter in this city was assaulted by colleagues over their gender.
As I continued to process this TDoR, the ensuing week would have the remnants of the freedom convoy organize a presence at a school just outside Ottawa in Renfrew to bully a trans grade 11 student, using the old sexual-predators-in-washrooms trope no less. The student in question has received death threats.
Ottawa startup darling Shopify would also affirm that it would continue to operate the store to Libs of TikTok, the entity linked to multiple bomb threats to children’s hospitals who provide gender affirming care, linked to the foiled attack on a pride event by the Patriot Front in Coeur d’Alene, that gets teachers fired for being gay, and instigates harassment campaigns against gender diverse teenagers. Effectively, this Ottawa company funds terrorism.
Meanwhile, also this week, members of the “Patriots of Peel”, also connected to the freedom convoy, would show up to disrupt the drag story hour in Hamilton and undermine a community brunch.
A similar attack took place this week in Vancouver during the story time there too. All of this hateful behaviour over a course of a few weeks.
Beyond documenting this, I’m at a loss for words. We’re in an era where there is so much more acceptance by a silent majority, resources, and access to care. Yet we’re also in an era where there is more open hostility than ever before.
Maybe this is the way of progress, to go from implicit bias to explicit. Maybe it’s different because of social media being able to rapidly disseminate conspiracies targeting misunderstood groups of people. I don’t know. Maybe I’m focusing too much on the negative: the transphobic municipal candidates lost, there was a counter-protest in Renfrew, the bigots downtown during TDoR were few in numbers. But then again, the impacts are palpable: friends were at the National Art Center for drag story hour a few months ago when transphobes barged in yelling about groomers and pedophiles and displaying a crossed-out Pride flag, one friend is currently having their profile photo be disseminated by Diagolon members, someone I follow on Twitter knew one of the deceased in Colorado Springs, and I still can’t stop thinking about that mom’s words.
What I do know is that this week felt like a gut punch.
Comments closed because a transphobe hate-reads my blog and regularly responds with conspiratorial drivel, and I’m not in the mood for it.