Following the failure to portray gay people as an existential threat, conservatives have shifted to trans people’s increasing acceptance as the latest wedge issue. Supported by an ecosystem of American conservative television, British tabloids, reactionary content creators, and a long-standing history of homophobia and transphobia domestically, these forces have resulted in the biggest rallies against gender and sexual minorities in Canadian history. These actions are enabled by legacy media and public institutions that overlook the unhinged bigotry of its organizers, the bomb threats and physical intimidation of its adherents, and sanitizes the genocidal views expressed while depicting them as mere opinion.
Polling and political trends suggests that the virulent transphobia being observed will only get worse.
Largest anti-trans and anti-gay rallies in Canadian history
Last week saw the largest anti-trans and anti-gay demonstrations in Canadian history. They took place from Vancouver to St. John’s, with hundreds attending in Ottawa:
The consistent theme was portraying trans people and sexual minorities as deviants that threaten society and especially children. Labels like “groomer” were interspersed in the rhetoric and signage with conspiracy theories such as “the great reset”, “depopulation” and “big pharma”.
Here’s some signs from Ottawa:
Demonstrators also spat and stomped on a pride flag as the crowd cheered:
The organiser of the Ottawa event, Kamel El-Cheik, is a Covid-era conspiracy theorist and aspiring social media content creator who much like the “freedom convoy” pivoted to conspiracy theories about trans people after the pandemic ones stopped having currency. This is a sampling from his Facebook pages:
Of this rally, he said “STRAIGHT PRIDE IS BORN”. Kamel El-Cheik was also behind the organized intimidation of families attending a story hour led by gender diverse people, and was part of the anti-trans mob that descended in Ottawa schools this past June. He believes in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and that the trans flag is for pedophiles.
Among the prominent supporters at the Ottawa demonstration was Maxime Bernier, head of the People’s Party of Canada. He believes that trans people are part of an “evil agenda” and that “radical trans activists are trying to destroy one of the key building blocks of a healthy society – the distinction between men and women“.
To that end, his party introduced a platform that would strip trans people of human rights, make involuntary conversion therapy for trans people legal, defund trans-related health care, and ban trans people from accessing washrooms and other gendered spaces. Party members have been involved in a string of homophobic and transphobic incidents including the anti-trans mob in June.
All of this is also taking place on top of a series of bomb threats and unfettered violent acts against gender and sexual minorities in Canada in the past year. For these actors, any visibility or inclusion of trans people, no matter how insignificant, is unacceptable.
This aspect is not news; for as long as I’ve been out there has always been a contingent of Canadian society that regarded gay and trans people as sexual deviants with no place in public life. They frame losing avenues to discriminate against these minorities as infringing their own religious rights, freedom of speech, or as in the case of this rally, parental rights. This is to create a false equivalency with the rights-based language from advocates.
Journalists are unwittingly laundering hate
So to recap: anti-trans and anti-gay demonstrations took place around the country, replete with stomping on Pride flags and openly calling gay people “disgusting” and “psycopaths”. They were organized by conspiracy theorists who explicitly tied the event to “STRAIGHT PRIDE” and also believe that there are global plots by Jews as coded through language like the “Great Reset”, “George Soros”, “WEF”, etc. All of this is happening against a backdrop of unprecedented organized violence against gender and sexual minorities in Canada that includes bomb threats, arson, and intimidation by groups of men in all black with balaclavas.
And this is how Canadian news organizations chose to cover these rallies:
Hundreds gathered outside the federal Harry Hays building in downtown Calgary Wednesday morning as part of a cross-Canada movement concerned about sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) curriculum in schools.
CBC News
Thousands of people gathered in cities across Canada on Wednesday for competing protests, yelling and chanting at each other about the way schools instruct sexuality and gender identity and how teachers refer to transgender youth.
CTV News
Hundreds of people voicing opposition to “gender ideologies” and support for parental rights in schools gathered in the front lawn of the Legislature on Wednesday morning… In speaking to reporters at the legislature grounds, the march’s spokesperson Tonie Wells made clear they were interested in promoting their message, not in causing trouble.
Sask Today
At least 1,000 people showed up at the Windsor riverfront Wednesday morning — including many school-age children — to protest a variety of policies they see as violating their rights as parents, and in some cases, their religious rights.
Windsor Star
There’s no acknowledgement of the unhinged conspiracies and exterminationist beliefs integral to these events. Instead, they’re omitted or minimized as mere “concerns”, guiding the public into thinking that these events were the product of rational deliberation. I call this process of reporters normalizing extremism by substituting its hateful language for acceptable versions “laundering hate”.
I don’t know the extent to which journalists are aware that they’re doing this. Reading these articles, it seems like their idea of impartiality is to present this as two sides of equal merit. This model doesn’t work when one side is unmoored from reality by way of social media fueled conspiracy theories and advocating against the rights of another group. Presenting that as equal to a mountain of peer-reviewed evidence and a call not to be discriminated against might satisfy a shallow definition of neutrality, but it’s unwittingly abetting oppression.
Reporters rarely identify as such prejudice when it is against gender and sexual minorities. If they don’t consider the rhetoric prejudiced, then ignoring or reworking what is said to better fit a narrative of two reasoned sides doesn’t seem so bad. Making the stance of transphobes more appealing in this way has real consequences: between 2016 and 2023, the acceptance of trans youth declined by 20% in Canada.
This did not manifest out of nowhere
The last decade saw a series of movements to purge society of gender and sexual minorities in Canada. From first the Catholic and evangelical quarters, but then white nationalists, the “trans exclusionary” movement, and now “freedom convoy” covid-era conspiracy theorists.
These groups have physically attacked attendees at Pride, sent death threats to an LGBT youth center, forced the cancellation of events led by gender diverse people escalating to bomb threats and arson, marched through the gay village with hateful messaging, forced schools to lock down, etc. Law enforcement in Canada for its part has been permissive of intimidation against sexual and gender minorities.
Canadian institutions have also amplified transphobia and homophobia for years, from Shopify helping fund Libs of TikTok after it was linked to multiple bomb threats, to newspapers regularly running anti-trans op eds, to police victim blaming after violent homophobic attacks, to television channels airing anti-trans disinformation.
Given this context, this rally as the largest display of anti-trans and anti-gay messaging in this country is a natural progression.
Politicians are adding fuel to the fire
Adding fuel to the fire is the credibility that politicians are lending to the likes of these rallies. Among them is the Premier of New Brunswick, Blaine Higgs, who attended the rally with his education minister.
Both New Brunswick and Saskatchewan passed policies requiring that schools out trans students to their parents, even if their parents are going to reject them. They also force teachers to address these students by the wrong name and pronouns unless a supportive parent can sign off.
Given that 30% of Canadians with an opinion on the matter said they would “reject” or “resist” and “work to change” a gender non-conforming child, this is a lot of students who are henceforth going to have adverse experiences in schools. Many won’t know how their parents will react and will hide their identity out of safety. Treating these students’ identity as objectionable only serves to validate the bullies who picked on them for it.
When the Saskatchewan education minister was asked in an interview with CBC “how does this make trans kids safer?“, the minister couldn’t answer and deflected. Scott Moe, Premier of Saskatchewan, said he would use the notwithstanding clause as to override the charter rights of trans students. The Premier of New Brunswick for his part lied when he claimed that he had received “hundreds” of complaints about the province’s previous policy which supported trans students – a freedom of information request found that his government had received not a single one.
Federally, I already covered Maxime Bernier, but Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada also threw his support for the rally. Poilievre came into power after ousting his predecessor Erin O’Toole because O’Toole supported the ban on involuntary conversion therapy for trans people. This month the Conservative Party also introduced two new anti-trans platform positions, one which is designed to block trans women from using gendered spaces and services, and the other banning healthcare for trans youth. The Conservative Party are currently leading the polls for who will form the next government in Canada.
I don’t think this is a matter of informing conservatives about what’s really going on at these rallies, because their legislative record shows that they share the same eliminationist objectives. These are the parties that after all, introduced bills requiring trans people to undergo sterilization to update identity documents, amended legislation to ban trans people from washrooms and gender-based services, blocked human rights legislation for trans people, delisted health care for trans people, etc.
They are also taking inspiration from conservatives in the United-States and the United Kingdom, who have made the following remarks in the past year:
If conservatives are adding fuel to the fire it is because they are okay with watching trans people burn.
Taking a step back
This article has talked about these rallies with a level of detachment, but I need to convey the impact of being around hundreds of people who believe that people like me are, in their words, groomers and abominations.
I think of the multiple pharmacists that refused to fill h.r.t. prescriptions for my friends. Or the bartender who refused to accept the ID of a pal over their gender marker. Or the policewoman who berated me when I reported my best friend missing. What power do these rally-goers have over gender non-conforming people? Surely some are landlords, hiring managers, supervisors, teachers, nurses and doctors. How will those outcomes be shaped?
I don’t think these people mean to do harm. I’m sure that they’re lovely in many ways, but the fictions they believe about trans and gay people, the threat that they think we are, makes them susceptible to do harm – and to think of themselves as good for having done it.
I recognized some people at this rally from weeks ago when I was trying to stop them from disrupting a little pride event a few blocks from my home. I know from experience in trying to dialog with people like this that when someone is that beholden to conspiracies, that it isn’t presenting facts or the better argument that will sway them back. I don’t know what it takes. Years certainly, but what else I don’t know.
What I do know is that anti-trans sentiment is spreading. Acceptance for trans people is falling. I’m finding myself needing to counter anti-trans talking points with friends and family. It’s messing me up, in part because it’s mixing with past trauma I’ve faced like being sexually assaulted by a pedestrian because they couldn’t tell my gender, having had my clothes pulled at by another stranger, running from men who wanted to beat me up, and repeatedly being called a faggot. I never get to leave the stink of these experiences because there’s always a reminder that people with the same beliefs as my attackers are not just around, but defended and celebrated.
What we can and cannot do
Polling from Angus Reid shows that fewer Canadians are accepting of trans people today than they were in 2016. I don’t think that I can sit here and say what we should do differently. Whatever I’m thinking of, like more diversity in newsrooms, someone is already on it. I meet amazing advocates all the time.
I do think that through no fault of their own things will get worse. When conservatives picked trans people as the latest fixation of their “culture war” in the latter half of the 2010’s they knew what they were doing. They knew that many people might have never even met a trans person (72% of Canadians in 2016), and that there was a real opportunity to fill the gap with their own threatening depictions of us. It proved effective.
Over years things will improve again. I also recognize that this might be longer than some trans people have left to live, and that no one can wait for such a time. So if I have any advice, it is to make your own happiness, to find people to share moments with, and to never be apologetic about speaking your truth.