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.
I just came back from a two week trip to Dublin, Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona with my dad. We were in Ireland two weeks before Brexit when no deal had yet to be reached, and in the center of Barcelona’s mass demonstrations following the ruling against Catalan leaders.
Dublin, Ireland
Dublin was the first stop of this journey. We were on the River Liffey by Trinity College, home to the Trinity College Library. The Library was beautiful and is pictured below.
You could see the history of Ireland physically embodied in the humble architecture of the city and the stickers and political graffiti for worker’s rights and that of the marginalized. No other European city I had visited to this point had had quite such an explicit activist culture.
Lisbon, Portugal
Next up was Lisbon. The weather was warm and sunny. Advertisements and banners were all over the city from the 2019 Portuguese legislative election and there was a lot of related communist political graffiti. The highlight here was overlooking the city at the São Jorge Castle with a glass of wine.
Madrid, Spain
Madrid reminded me more of New York City than any large European metropolis with its urban vibe. Perhaps it was the concentration of theater productions, the commerce on its boulevards, the density, and the way its urban landscape was structured that gave me this impression.
More than any other city on this trip, this is the one I’d like to revisit the most. I felt like I only scratched the surface.
Barcelona, Spain
I got to see two sides to Barcelona. On the one hand, I was able to have the experience of running up the hills of the Mediterranean city, resting on its beaches, eating street food, taking the metro, checking out a flea market and trying the beer from a local brewer.
My time there also coincided with the severe sentences of over ten years issued to the leaders of the Catalan referendum. So on the Friday, half-a-million demonstrators descended in the city to voice their opposition.
The atmosphere was celebratory during the day, with demonstrators being largely comprised of young people. Riot police started to install themselves throughout the city center during that time, including forming two blockades that cut us off from our hotel.
The situation deteriorated in the evening. Protesters set off fires across the city, police beat youth that had been sitting peacefully in front of the blockades, police drove their vans at high speeds through dense crowds injuring people, demonstrators were firing fireworks at police, and police were shooting foam bullets. Much of this took place immediately in front of me, as I watched from behind steel gates.
A second demonstration took place the next evening, this time largely attended by older adults and families, to protest police brutality.
There was a further entrenchment of Christian white supremacist views in the political discourse when the People’s Party of Canada was invited to the leader’s debate. The official platform for the People’s Party of Canada states that they would:
The decision to give the People’s Party a seat at the nationally aired debates will by association normalize the racist, Islamophobic and transphobic views espoused by the party. This will increase the number of violent acts against the targeted communities.
It was a mistake to invite the People’s Party to the leader’s debate. What I want to examine in this article is why this outcome was deemed acceptable in the first place.
It’s about perception
One way of conceptualizing the mechanics of prejudice is with the following pyramid:
In this model each layer enables the layer above it; the more widespread the acts in one layer, the greater the likelihood of acts in the layer above. There’s also a point in time in which each layer becomes socially unacceptable.
It’s arguable where each political party stands in this pyramid, although all are represented. What I can say with certainty is that Christian white supremacist groups dabble in the upper two tranches, and their contemporaries on the political side seem to be vying for the layer below. That said, the ultimate political aspirations of the nationalist parties is quite clear: the elimination of visible Muslims and trans people from Canada.
There exists an opportunity right now to curtail the spread of these views. This would require the Leaders’ Debate Commission and media organisations to decline giving white supremacists a platform and lend credibility to their views. The People’s Party is still relatively obscure, the project of a Conservative defector following a failed leadership bid. It has no seats in Parliament. If mainstream organisations keep breathing life into these views, however, there runs the risk of the People’s Party becoming too big to ignore.
Yet organizations have chosen to support the People’s Party. I posit that this is for reasons related to perception: the image of Maxime Bernier and the appearance of fairness.
Let’s start with Maxime Bernier. The imagery disseminated of him is largely indistinguishable from that of the leaders of mainline parties. Contrast that with the visuals of the leader for the Nationalist Party which is more aligned with what white people imagine a white supremacist to look like.
Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party
Leader of the Nationalist Party
When Maxime Bernier is interviewed on television, he has a calm disposition, his tone is soft, he is jovial, and affirms his points using language familiar to mainline politicians. He appears respectable.
That leads to the perception of fairness. The decision to invite Bernier to the national debate stage was at the discretion of the Leaders’ Debates Commission. They said that it was based on 30% of constituents in two electoral ridings stating they were considering voting for the People’s Party, enough for the party to potentially win a seat. I speculate that the number was this high among constituents because unlike leaders of other fringe parties Bernier appears respectable. I suspect that the Leader’s Debate Commission then decided upon this outcome for the same reason. This was subsequently framed in the media as a fair decision.
I argue that this respectability and fairness is based on an incomplete picture rooted in white Christian sensibilities. If those were expanded to be inclusive of Muslim and trans viewpoints, I don’t believe that Maxime Bernier and the People’s Party would appear respectful. His candidates are openly harassing Muslim Canadians and members of the 2SLGBTQ community. They are unabashedly racist. His own rhetoric peddles in fear mongering and conspiracies.
In the end, saying things with a smile goes a long way towards legitimizing what’s uttered with those who aren’t targeted by the thinly-veiled vitriol. Mainstream organisations that provide a platforms already vet their invitees based on perceptions of respectability as they don’t wish to place their own organisation in disrepute. These organisations must be representative of more than white Christian viewpoints when making such judgments, or they inadvertently become amplifiers of this Christian white supremacy.
[Yaniv] says many of the estheticians advertised themselves as offering arm, leg, and pubic hair waxing for either male or female customers.
However, when Yaniv informed them she was transgender she says she was suddenly refused appointments outright, or that the estheticians made excuses for no longer being able to perform the service.
Her stories of discrimination at the hands of estheticians would be familiar to any trans woman who has been out for a while. What sets Yaniv apart is that she challenged these wrongs and went before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
This put her in the cross-hairs of Canadian media.
The language used by The National Post, The Globe and Mail, and the Sun about Yaniv have themes familiar to trans people: mockery, derision, and focus on genitalia. “Bizarro” declares the Globe and Mail, “laughing stock” says the National Post, “balls to that” headlines the Sun with its genitalia pun.
These news organisations abdicated their responsibility to give a measured analysis and chose to describe a living person with cruel and dehumanizing language. Their staff encouraged readers to ridicule and shame Jessica Yaniv.
Meanwhile, on YouTube, the top results are all videos lambasting Jessica Yaniv:
On Twitter the hashtag #waxmyballs is trending while a top result being the National Post’s article:
Keep in mind that this onslaught is all directed at a single individual. It’s a lot for any one person to endure. Yaniv has since received death threats in person. All this because she brought a case of discrimination before a tribunal after being denied service over a dozen times. It is a disproportionate response created by the worst impulses of individuals working for news publishers in Canada.
It is reminiscent of the furor a few years ago, where a Toronto family didn’t disclose gender of their child. The Canadian media found out and targeted the young family in a similarly cruel fashion, with the family then making international news, and receiving an overwhelming vitriolic response on social media.
When the Star first covered their decision, public outcry was fast and furious. People delivered angry letters to the family’s door. Drivers slowed to shout “Boy!” from their windows at Storm, as the family was en route to the pool or the library.
News organisations such as The Globe and Mail and National Post aren’t reporting on transphobia, they are active instigators of it. Their actions made the lives of the specific trans individuals they targeted hell.
Their writers show no empathy because gender diverse individuals are stand-ins for trans rights as a whole. The authors use these events as a conduit to communicate their dislike for the increasing acceptance of trans people. But for those queer and trans people whose names are used without their consent, it means having their young child yelled at by strangers on the street. It means receiving death threats on public transit. It means violence.
This has got to stop. It’s not just the authors who are accountable here, but the chain of cis people inside these news organisations who okay’ed their platform targeting these individuals with such vitriol. Who followed on by publishing more such pieces. Their platforms create movements that harass queer and trans people.
Media organizations targeting trans individuals has a long history.
There’s a pattern here. These organisations vilify gender diverse people whose existence or actions challenge norms, no matter how insignificant. How necessary was it for a news organisation in Britain to say that a newborn in Toronto was a “freak” because their gender wasn’t disclosed at birth?
Conversely these same organisations make martyrs of cisgender people who have been publicly challenged by trans people – the Jordan Petersons and Kenneth Zuckermans of the world. Much the same, these individuals are used as proxies to communicate the desire for the world to remain as it was: without cis people opening up spaces to gender diversity.
Companies that produce the Globe and Mail, National Post, and the Sun are generating ad revenue from their writers using this incendiary language. In the current social climate, this transphobia is profitable. But these organisations are culpable for the violence they have fostered, and their role needs to be openly recognized in our discourse. We must stop perceiving news organisation as neutral observers and recognize that society’s prejudice manifest there as it does everywhere.
