This weekend I got my first tattoo: a stick and poke with Jay and Joy’s names. They are two very special people in my life; who are bffs / ex’s / chosen family all wrapped into one.
The tattoo was done by my friend Olivier, who did it all at my place.
I mapped out some of the ways that high-profile anti-trans advocates in Canada are related. The chart is a mess because these transphobes are highly interconnected:
While there are hundreds of thousands of trans or gender non-conforming people in Canada, it only takes a handful of cisgender individuals to harass people at Pride parades, fill newspapers with transphobic vitriol, and architect an opposition to our rights in Parliament. This handful amplify each other while occupying positions of power furthering the very reach that is denied to the hundreds of thousands of voices they lobby against.
In such a ecosystem, it becomes very easy for a previously unknown person with views that are marketable by these anti-trans advocates to be amplified and in turn be made an amplifier. This is what happened with Lindsay Shepherd, whose only involvement was that she was a T/A that was reprimanded by her university administrators for showing without context a transphobic exchange featuring Jordan Peterson, another member of this ecosystem. The National Post wrote 29 articles supporting Lindsay Shepherd from authors like Barbara Kay and her son Jonathan Kay. Now Lindsay Shepherd an author with the National Post, is an author with The Post Millennial (Barbara Kay is a contributor there), is a fellow with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (Barbara Kay is on the boards of directors there), is a writer at Quillette (Jonathan Kay is an editor there). Shepherd promotes other members of this ecosystem like Meghan Murphy in her work. This past fall Jonathan Kay and Meghan Murphy were on a panel together moderated by Lindsay Shepherd named “How Media Bias Shapes the Gender Identity Debate“. The self-amplification is constant.
It is frustrating that a handful of cisgender people are able to have such a disproportionate influence in shaping the dialog around the rights of hundreds of thousands of trans and gender non-conforming individuals. On the outset, they appear to be independent voices representing many more, when in reality, they’re only representing each other.
It’s been one year since I’ve had bottom surgery.
The healing process has run its course. I am glad I had the surgery. I sleep much better now that I don’t have my sleep interrupted by spiro-induced runs to the washroom. I feel safer wearing tight-fitting clothes in public spaces. I feel less frightened in change rooms. I feel like there’s fewer worse-case scenarios travelling.
I have mixed feelings about the surgical results. I opted for what the surgeon termed a vaginoplasty without vaginal cavity. It was the right decision. I’ve never liked sex; and going this route means I wouldn’t have to dilate. Meanwhile, I have a clit, and I’ve had no problem masturbating and reaching orgasm.
But when it comes to external appearance of my vulva, the results weren’t what I had expected. I had seen photos of the genitalia of other trans women following surgery online, and theirs looked indistinguishable from cis women’s. This was not the case for me. My labia is an asymmetric fold of fat with a crease that goes much further up the front of the body than a cis person’s. So while I am pleased I had bottom surgery, and do not regret it by any stretch, I also feel some disappointment.
I also feel significant reservations about sending people to the surgeon I saw in Montreal. While the surgeon was friendly when I talked to him for the first time an hour before surgery, and the staff were great during my stay, the experience of dealing with their staff before my stay and after was quite negative. There was no meaningful follow-up and communicating with them was like pulling teeth.
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The National Post publishes articles with titles such as “How trans activists are unethically influencing autistic children to change genders“, “Pronouns are ruining the best thing about hockey” and “Are zee ready for the dictatorship of the gender warriors?” The newspaper has published at least 131 opinion pieces that normalize the rejection of trans and non-binary people since 2011. Twenty-four of those have been in the past year.
The advocated rejection appears to be deliberate. The staff at the National Post brings in contributors known specifically for their transphobic views to opine on current events involving trans or non-binary people. Among them is Susan Bradley, who oversaw conversion therapy of trans youth. She wrote in the National Post that trans people were “recruiting” children. Also featured is Jordan Peterson who was made rich when his rejection of non-binary students at the University of Toronto went viral. He wrote in the National Post that he “hates” non-binary pronouns and equated their use to “the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.“
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I recited the following at our 5 pm church service, which brings in a different guest to speak every week. The lectionary reading that day was Luke 20:27-38.
One of the things that I like about coming to a church like ours is hearing people’s stories. Every one of you has something to share. Stories are important. I’ve seen them subdue the impulse to ridicule, fear, and avoid those who’ve had a different life journey.
No one is owed stories. If sharing a story requires vulnerability from the speaker, then the recipients too must demonstrate equal care in listening. This has not been the case in a lot of churches when it comes to the stories of women, indigenous members, sexual and gender diverse Christians and/or those who have experienced homelessness. And I would add to that sex workers. Or as we have called them from our readings on Sunday mornings, whores, prostitutes and sexually immoral.
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