A little while ago, I spoke about how professor Jordan Peterson acted as a lightning rod for Canadians to express their opposition with acceptance of trans people. This opposition has reached a point where it is threatening the passage of Bill C-16, also known as the trans rights bill. In this article, I’m going to cover the opposition.
Jordan Peterson
A few months ago, professor Jordan Peterson published an incoherent rant against non-binary people and Bill C-16, invoking the Soviet Union, calling the Ontario Human Rights Commission a “particularly pathological organization”, stating that using gender-neutral pronouns would make him a “mouthpiece of some murderous ideology person’s gender identity definitions.”
In response, trans people attending the University of Toronto where the professor taught spoke out about this vitriol and demanded that trans students at the university be treated with respect. They organized a teach-in.
An immense backlash followed, not against the professor, but against the trans students. Canadians perceived the opposition to Peterson’s assertions as an affront to their freedom of speech. As I documented in that blog entry, major media outlets in Canada indicated their support for the professor, with seemingly only small queer outlets sympathizing with those on the receiving end of his words. As best as I can tell, the only acceptable response that Canadian public would have tolerated was silence on the part of trans people and no demands for the professor to treat them with respect.
Peterson spoke against Bill C-16 in his rant, stating that it would infringe on freedom of speech. The backlash picked up that narrative, making its way through the media and Parliament. What was initially about a transphobic professor and students objecting to his bigotry at one university became much much bigger.
What Bill C-16 Does
As a refresher, Bill C-16 adds “gender identity and gender expression” to the Human Rights Act and to the criminal code. You can see the full text of the bill here.
The modification to the Canadian Human Rights Act, Section 2. This is the section that explains the purpose of the Act:
2 The purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.
The modification to the Canadian Human Rights Act, Subsection 3(1). This is the subsection that identifies the eligible grounds for discrimination:
3 (1) For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.
The modification to the Criminal Code, Subsection 318(4). This is in the subsection that makes it illegal to advocate or promote genocide:
(4) In this section, identifiable group means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.
The modification to the Criminal Code, Subparagraph 718.2(a)(i). This is in the section for sentencing after an individual has been found guilty of a crime:
(i) evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, or on any other similar factor,
Current public exposure to Bill C-16, through Google search results, Twitter, newspapers and the media is being framed through the lens of the opposition. The focus of the opposition is around free speech and the claim that misgendering an individual would now be a hate crime.
Examples of Public Exposure to Bill C-16
A search for “Bill C-16” on Google shows, as a top result, the ad with the text “Tell Canada’s Senators that Bill C-16 Destroys Women’s Rights and Identity”Top results on Twitter for “Bill C-16”.Latest results on Twitter for “Bill C-16”.Ottawa Citizen article. The article supports Peterson and highlights his opposition of Bill C-16.National Post article showing support for Peterson and opposing Bill C-16.The Hill, an American publication, featuring an article written by Jordan Peterson that takes aim at Bill C-16.TV Ontario’s The Agenda, hosting a panel with Jordan Peterson. The case is made against Bill C-16 in the show on the basis of freedom of speech.
Google Trends Data on Bill C-16
Google Trends on “Bill C-16” and “Jordan Peterson”.
The chart above shows the popularity of particular Google searches over time. Two things to note. First, there’s much more interest in “Jordan Peterson” than there is in “Bill C-16”. Second, that the attention to Bill C-16, in particular it’s much publicized introduction on May 17th, 2016, is insignificant as compared to the attention it got following the Peterson affair. In other words, attention on Bill C-16 is shaped by interest in Jordan Peterson and his negative take on the legislation.
Google Trends comparison of “Bill C-16” to “Jordan Peterson”.
The chart above shows the popularity of Google searches by region, as well as showing related searches. A few things to note. First, there is interest in “Jordan Peterson” coming from the United States. Second, far more people are interested in Jordan Peterson than Bill C-16. Third, when they search for “Bill C-16” it’s in association with an interest in “Jordan Peterson”. Fourth, those with an interest in Jordan Peterson also demonstrate interest in “SJW”, which is an acronym for “social justice warrior”, a pejorative often reserved for individuals advocating for the rights of trans people and other marginalized communities.
Observations about the Opposition to Bill C-16
There’s a few things to note about the opposition.
Opposition is far exceeding support. The opposition is dominating Google, Twitter, newspaper editorials, and television. It is flooding Senators offices.
The opposition is almost entirely associated with Jordan Peterson.
Americans are getting involved in the opposition.
There is a fundamental misrepresentation of what Bill C-16 does that echoes Peterson’s alarmist and misguided take on the legislation.
As a result of its dominance in the media and online, the opposition is getting to frame the bill for the public. In doing so, the content and effects of the bill are being misrepresented and reduced to fear mongering around pronouns, much like previous opposition had reduced the discourse around trans rights to fear mongering about washrooms.
There is little interest by major media outlets in listening to trans people and presenting a more sensible review of the legislation, much less doing so without invoking Jordan Peterson. Non-binary trans people are being regularly lambasted for their pronouns in the media and the suggestion is made that Bill C-16 will restrict freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech appears to be the main argument made in opposition of the bill. Freedom of speech seems to be the successor to the freedom of religion argument, presenting anti-discrimination legislation as infringing on the rights of perpetrators.
The opposition would have been unlikely to exist in this amount had the bill proceeded through Parliament before the events surrounding Jordan Peterson. It could also die out in a year, as other lightning rod issues have. This is perhaps the most inopportune time for the bill to make its way through Parliament.
What You Can Do
Contact Senators
Here’s a list of priority Senators, provided by Amnesty International. Contact them. Let them know you support Bill C-16 and oppose the discrimination trans people face.
Opponents are reducing discourse of the bill to fear mongering around freedom of speech and washrooms. Discussions about the discrimination faced by trans people and what the bill actually does is getting sidelined. I’ve provided talking points below to assist in redirecting the discourse back to discrimination and the need for such simple anti-discrimination measures.
Talking Points – Addressing “Freedom of Speech” Narrative
There is no hate speech provision in the Criminal Code pertaining to pronoun use or where pronoun use would be applicable.
The Criminal Code changes has to do with advocating for genocide and considering gender identity or expression when someone is being sentenced for a criminal act, for instance, after having been found guilty of assault or murder.
While not using someone’s pronouns on purpose isn’t legally hate speech, it does create a toxic environment. In the same way that a cisgender purposefully misgendering another cisgender person would be bullying.
Any other application of the law, such as to use “gender identity and gender expression” to restrict free speech, is simply not grounded in the reality of how these laws have been applied.
These clauses already exist in the federal Human Rights Act for other grounds.
The other grounds are: race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.
The “freedom of speech” argument appears only to be applied to gender identity and gender expression, in the same way that “freedom of religion” was seemingly only applied to sexual orientation. The arguments could be made of every other clause, but they aren’t.
Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequence.
Just as a professor spouting an incoherent sexist rant against women at university could face repercussions, so too a professor rallying the same against transgender individuals.
Trans people have a right to exercise their own freedom of speech and advocate for themselves. This is not a right that is only reserved to cisgender individuals. It is not an infringement of that right for trans people to affirm that they must be treated with respect.
Sexual assault is illegal. Using the incorrect washroom is not. The idea that predators are waiting for a non-discrimination clause to enter a washroom and commit an illegal act doesn’t hold water.
Subscription to this myth implies that male predators who are waiting to assault young girls are are already in the men’s washroom with young boys, and the discourse is to keep them in the washroom with boys. Letting trans people use washrooms doesn’t figure in this.
There are many trans Canadians, and they deserve to use the right washroom.
Left to right: Susan Gapka, me, the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on LGBTQ2 Issues MP Randy Boissonault, Kaden, unknown, Kye, Amanda Ryan. The photo was taken before entering the House of Commons for third reading.
I was there with activists from Gender Mosaic, who deserve much credit for their work in advancing this bill and its precursors. While waiting to enter the House of Commons we were greeted by MP Randy Boissonault, the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on LGBTQ2 Issues.
There was almost no one sitting in the House of Commons. At one point, I counted only five MPs visible from the gallery. At another point, when an MP was speaking on the bill, the speaker of the house was on his phone, and only a single other MP was actually listening. Whatever was said that day was for the benefit of posterity or the public record, but not for the people in attendance.
There were long speeches. Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin and NDP MP Randall Garrison came to visit us in the gallery. Randall Garrison is the one who introduced the previous incarnations to Bill C-16, Bill C-279. This parliamentary session, previous to Bill C-16 being introduced, he worked on another private member’s bill that would have done the same thing, adding pressure to the Liberals to introduce their version as a government bill. The result was Bill C-16.
I listened to the speeches. Conservative MP Michelle Rempel gave a speech that ended with this bit, which had me in tears:
I especially want to thank the trans activists who have lived through this discrimination, through the upheaval of transition, through the upheaval of guilt or confusion over knowing their truth is something different than what society pressures them to be. While they have lived through that, they have had to sit through years of committee meetings, while their sexual behaviours have been questioned. They have stood up against intolerance and in doing so, they have sustained Canada’s pluralism.
They deserve our thanks, and they also deserve an apology for when we have failed them in the past.
There was some opposition, and the name of Jordan Peterson came up with the suggestion that recognizing trans rights would undermine free speech. Opposition though was really insignificant, a welcome reprieve from previous debates around Bill C-279 or Bill C-389.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel
NDP MP Randall Garrison
Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin
Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall proposed a motion so that the bill would not pass third reading, but be send back to committee. Then came the vote for the motion. It was done by whichever side could yell “yay” or “nay” the loudest. The motion to send the bill back to committee did not pass. Then the Conservative MPs tried to force a vote where each MP would stand up and individually say “yay” or “nay”, which would have pushed the rest of the deliberations to next week. They needed 5 people to stand up. They had 4. Then with no fanfare and no pause the vote for third reading came. The “yay” side had it, it passed.
It was so quick, I wasn’t even sure that this was the vote for third reading. I had to keep listening to see that they had moved onto something else. Here’s a clip of the vote:
Today, I am very proud that Bill C-16 has passed the House of Commons. This Bill would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. It also proposes to amend the Criminal Code to add gender identity or expression to the definition of “identifiable group” for the purpose of the hate propaganda offences and to the list of aggravating circumstances for hate-crime sentencing.
All Canadians should feel safe to be themselves. Our strength as a nation lies in our diversity and our inclusiveness. It is our responsibility to recognize and reduce the vulnerability of trans and other gender-diverse persons to discrimination, hate propaganda, and hate crimes, and to affirm their equal status in Canadian society.
I am pleased that so many Members of Parliament supported this important piece of legislation and I look forward to working with the Senate as it continues through Parliament.
After the bill passed, we exited the gallery. MP Randal Garrison came by to congratulate us and briefly chat, before he went off on a flight home. Then the lot of us went to D’Arcy McGee’s for a late lunch.
I had just finished a work out and was back in the change room to shower. I don’t really remember what she said; I forget exact words when I’m extremely anxious. I just remember her look. I remember that she told me where the exit to the women’s change room and to use it. I remember freaking out because it was lunch time, the busiest time for the gym, and it felt like all these other patrons were looking at me.
She had perceived me as a man intruding into the women’s change room. I was terrified to explain myself, because of the low pitch of my voice would only deepen the perception that I was a pervert. All these people would henceforth see me as the pervert.
All I had wanted to do was to shower, change, and go about my day. This was my worse fear about going to the gym realized.
If this had been a few years ago, I think I would have been too scared to return to the gym at all. These days, it’s easier to cope with incidents like these. I have a process to deal with the emotional aftermath that’s well worn.
I don’t blame her for her ignorance nor do I blame myself for being fearful. I see these actions as not really hers, but the inevitable outcome of being in a society where norms around gender are narrow and deviation from that norm is still largely met with derision, mockery, and/or fear.
For instance, look what politicians had to say last week on the issue of people like me using the change room. This was in the context of the second reading for Bill C-16. Conservative MP Harold Albrecht had this to say:
Another concern is the potential harm to innocent children. As I stated earlier, I am in total support of equal rights. Therefore the question needs to be asked: Where are the equal rights? Is it equal rights of the boys or girls and of the young men or women who expect to find only those of their same gender in their change rooms? Is it fair to have their rights trampled upon by this imposition of extra rights for some?
Women’s rest rooms and locker rooms are traditionally family changing rooms. By passing the bill, are we then be saying that a person’s need to express his or her gender or identity foreshadows the mother’s need to also protect her child from seeing a naked [woman] at, let us say, a YMCA children’s swim class? Have we really gone this far in our society? Is this really where the majority of Canadians want to evolve or aspire to?
The implication of such comments is that allowing people like myself to use the change room constitutes a threat to children. Hearing comments like that over and over have fed into the fears I have.
But it’s not where the majority of my fears comes from. For that there’s my lived experience. But then there are also news stories around gender nonconformity that explode in popularity and become a lightning rod for Canadians to express their views.
These days, the lightning rod issue is around professor Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto who released lectures online opposing the acceptance of trans, non-binary and intersex people.
The original lectures were a mess, invoking Marxism, political correctness, “social justice warriors”, trans women who use women’s shelters, the Soviet Union, conspiracies against free speech, racism, etc. Here are some excerpts to give you a feel for the talk:
Trans or transgender is an umbrella term referring to people with diverse gender identities and expressions that differ from stereotypical gender norms. Now here’s what I think about these terms: you see the people who use these terms want everyone to believe that there for all the good things that they say therefore but I don’t believe any of that. I don’t think that there for good things at all, I think that they use the pretense that therefore good things you know that they stand for good thing to continue their nefarious activity and one of the most nefarious elements of their activity is the use of these ideological clubs…
I think that those gender-neutral pronouns are politically motivated. I think they’re connected to it an entire underground apparatus of political motivations radical left political motivations and I think uttering those words makes me a tool of those motivations and I’m going to try to be a tool of my own motivations as clearly as I can articulate them and not the mouthpiece of some murderous ideology person’s gender identity definitions.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission which is a particularly pathological organization in my estimation and perhaps the biggest enemy of freedom currently existing in Canada…
The whole idea of having needs accommodated is a very very it’s a very very slippery idea and it sounds good but it’s very very dangerous…
I think the Ontario Human Rights Commission is is an emblematic institution in this regard is partly because i think that the that social justice warrior type activists are over-represented in the current provincial government said are the current liberal provincial government and I can’t help but shake this i can’t help but manifest the suspicion that that’s partly because our current Premier is lesbian in her sexual preference…
Following the release of the lectures, students organized a teach-in to help their peers and staff learn about trans, non-binary and intersex people. Students were also successful in pressuring the university to finally send a letter to the professor affirming the rights of students.
From there the story spread and things got ugly.
A reporter from Rebel Media disrupted the teach-in. A student who attended the event said of the reporter:
She very clearly showed no desire to learn about, or even acknowledge the humanity of the people she’d come to criticize. All of her rhetoric was based on gross misinformation and hyperbolic assumptions about our lives, identities, and priorities, which was hugely discouraging given that the intent of the event was to create an experience of human interaction and sharing between the trans, non-binary and intersex communities and the public.
Here be the new axioms of our day: we own your pronouns, use no others. “He” and “she” are assault words. Freedom of speech is the life-raft flotsam of gurgling obscurantists and bigots going down for the last time.
Prof. Jordan Peterson is a brave man. Better, he is an actual, a real, university professor. May his stamina and courage hold. Parents, send your children to his classes.
We all need to stand with Peterson to make sure this rot doesn’t spread further.
The well-being of trans students didn’t figure anywhere in this response, only the perceived imposition of having to show them basic respect. In the end, an incoherent conspiratorial rant against trans people drew up incredible widespread support from Canadians. And that support manifested itself in ways completely devoid of empathy, with leading newspapers using inflammatory and conspiratorial language, with trans people receiving death threats, with individuals getting paid for targeting and harassing trans people.
It’s surreal the way in which the reaction has been disproportional to the original events. My heart goes out to trans, non-binary and intersex students in Toronto, especially those who have yet to develop strategies to cope with such harm.
This lightning rod issue, like the others, showed me where Canadians really stand with people like me.
That’s why I felt scared when that gym member told me to get out and all those eyes were upon me. I responded by carrying myself as if I was cisgender woman perplexed at her statement.
The lady realized her mistake, apologized to me, and I went to take a shower. I entered the shower stall, turned on the water and cried.
Update, November 18th 2016:The events at the University of Toronto continued to galvanize Canadians, reaching the House of Commons. Jordan Peterson was cited by two Conservative MPs opposing Bill C-16 in Parliament, MP Bradley Trost and MP Cathay Wagantall. The MPs claimed that Peterson’s rights to free speech were being stifled and that Bill C-16 would have a chilling effect on free speech.
This article will look at some of the causes behind this statistic, and then practices and policies in the workplace that could be used to improve them.
It’s important to acknowledge that even though a workplace might have diversity programs or equal hiring practices in place, it may still have policies that disproportionately act as a barrier to the employment of trans individuals, effectively discriminating against them.
No workplace would believe it fosters a discriminatory environment, and yet these statistics exist. So if you’re an employer, manager, or HR person, I’m going to ask you to set your beliefs about the fairness of your own workplace aside and listen.
The intended audience for this article are cisgender (not trans) individuals who oversee staff in the workplace, though the content is also relevant to educators, school administrators, and others.
Before We Begin…
If you’re not trans and haven’t seen the John Oliver segment on trans rights, then I’m going to ask you to watch this video before we continue. It’s 15 minutes long, but it provides a solid primer to the content that is to follow.
The article will use an umbrella term “trans” to refer to transgender people, but also other identities (or lack thereof) such as non-binary, agender, etc. Other gender diverse populations, such as Two Spirit, are also included. Studies, like those from Trans PULSE, included these identities in their data collection despite using the word “trans”.
I live in Ontario, Canada. Therefore the examples and statistics in this article will centre around my home province. Ontario is one of the most legislatively progressive environments in the world for trans people, and yet, as we’ll see, much work remains to be done.
“Workplace Bigots”
I want to get this out of the way first, because bigots are how television and film most often portray prejudice against trans people in the workplace. In reality, bias usually does not manifest itself in such an easily identifiable way.
Note the lack of certainty. While 18% of trans people had been turned down for a job, twice as many were not certain that it had happened. Were they not hired because there was a better candidate, or because they were trans? While bias can be easily identified by looking at group statistics, it’s very difficult to make such assertions on a case by case basis. As Michelle Leard told the CBC:
No one is going to be able to come out and say to you, we’re not going to hire you because you’re trans, that’s never going to happen.
Even when blatant prejudice is involved it can be hard to identify. Take the case of Dani in London, Ontario. She was working at a shop that sold candles in a local market with two of her friends. The trio were all trans. The tribunal documented what followed:
That night, the market manager called [the shop owner] on behalf of the market’s owner, Edward Kikkert. The market management claimed the call was to relay a complaint about the burning of incense at the booth and that those attending at the booth were dressed scantily and inappropriately for the “family market.”
She was asked if she could not look after her booth, if she was not able, then she was asked to leave it because of the people she had running it.
Both Dani and the shop owner contested this version of events. Twelve days after the incident, Kikkert was interviewed by 980 AM in London. Over the course of the interview he reaffirmed that he wasn’t discriminating:
Why would I be discriminating? I’m not discriminating at all.
The story could have ended here. One party providing legitimate reasons for having an employee terminated, the other alleging discrimination, and trans people having their source of income taken away.
The story, however, did not end here as Kikkert then told 980 AM:
I’m just asking which washroom would they use? How can you go into a men’s washroom dressed as a lady, how can you go into ladies washroom when you’re a man. That’s the difficulty I have. It’s not discriminating at all. The issue is at hand.
The three transgender women filed an application to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Three years later, in 2014, the tribunal awarded Dani and the other applicants $40,000. In its decision, the adjudicator referred to the radio interview:
Mr. Kikkert was interviewed on the radio about 12 days after this incident. An electronic copy of the interview was introduced as evidence. At no time during the interview did Mr. Kikkert comment on the applicants’ clothing or even on the incense. He also raised the spectre of unpaid rent by [the shop owner] at the hearing, another issue he did not address in the radio interview.
Mr. Kikkert’s comments on the radio show were with respect to the market being a “family market”; the fact that he did not have washroom facilities for “these people”; and he referred to the applicants as “people like that”.
When Mr. Kikkert was asked in the interview if transgendered people had a right to make a living and whether they could do that at the market, he said they could if they followed the rules. When asked to clarify what those rules are, he referred to the washroom facilities, implying that the three applicants may have attempted to use a washroom at the market. However, I heard no evidence that the three applicants had used, or tried to use, any washroom on the day in question.
Most cases of discrimination will not have a radio interview. They will resemble this initial situation, with legitimate sounding reasons for an outcome that negatively impacts a trans person.
Perpetrators won’t ever think that they are acting in a discriminatory manner, and instances of bias will almost never clearly be presented as such.
So for the rest of this blog post, I’m going to talk about the other kind of prejudice. A kind that isn’t explicit, where the perpetrators don’t even realize they’re prejudicial, but that as a result of the bias they carry, cause harm.
Also known as implicit social cognition, implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases, which encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control.
Everything from policies to architecture embed assumptions about the people that are affected by them. For instance, that a person’s gender is fixed or that anyone can walk up a set of stairs leading up to a building.
When these assumptions do not take into account how the world is experienced differently for certain groups of people, they can translate into extra obstacles for those groups. It makes it harder for them to reach the same end as their peers and so fewer do.
For example, a person using a mobility device might not be able to access the services offered inside a building that has neither ramp nor elevators. When looked at the group level, this would translate into fewer benefits being conferred to those using mobility devices compared to able-bodied individuals. It creates a disparity.
With all this talk of obstacles, it should be noted that cisgender people face obstacles too. However, there won’t be an additional set of obstacles related to them being cisgender. Cisgender people might face obstacles for being poor, but trans poor people will face one set of obstacles for being poor, a second for being trans, and a third for being trans and poor. As an example of the last category, a poor trans person might not be able to afford the fees to update their birth certificate to reflect the correct gender, causing difficulties later on. It’s not just that they’re trans, not just that they’re poor, it’s the intersection of the two and that adds an additional set of challenges.
Implicit bias also accounts for the difference between what we think we believe and what we actually believe. For instance, Canadians largely believe they support the rights of trans people.
The difference between cis people’s widespread perceptions of their support and the reality is made even more clear when you ask trans people about their experiences. In Ontario, trans people reported that:
Those people who say trans people aren’t normal work somewhere. Those people who ridicule trans people work somewhere. While most workplaces do not tolerate such behaviours, the underlying bias can manifest itself in other ways acceptable to the workplace, such as passing over trans employees for advancement opportunities.
Because many Canadians believe they are supportive while acting otherwise, I personally believe that education in this matter is of limited value. It’s too easy to do training, say you believe in a supportive climate, but to then leave discriminatory policies and practices in place. Instead I favour collecting metrics, the implementation of concrete measures, and to reduce opportunities for people to exercise their bias. I’ll be covering some concrete measures that can be implemented in the following sections.
A Note on Equality
Before we do talk policies and concrete measures, I think it’s important to clear up a misconception: treating people equally perpetuates inequality. At least in this environment where certain groups of people face more challenges than others to reach the same end.
This is counter-intuitive, but I find this comic by the Center for Story-based Strategy helps elucidate the matter. When you treat people equally, you end up with the top-left pane, where barriers still remain for some individuals:
There’s a few strategies to address inequality. Some, such as employment equity, involve providing special measures and accommodations of differences to correct the conditions that disadvantage employment. That would be the top-right pane in the comic. Examples of this could be to add a ramp for mobility devices or to ensure the workplace has a gender neutral washroom.
To provide equal opportunities, workplaces must then not only account for how present conditions affect current or prospective employees, but also understand how past treatment affect these same employees.
At Work
There are concrete measures that can be implemented to address the barriers trans people face to employment. We’ll look at some of these, starting off with policies to address the needs of current employees.
Name
Employers need to let employees specify a legal name and the name to use for the employee. The latter is how the employee should be referred to in all communications with employees, name tags, etc. Employees should be able to change their name. There should be no requirements imposed changing names to go by. No legal name should be asked of the employee before or during the interview process. Only those who handle taxes, benefits, or other documents that require legal names should be aware the legal name.
Processes to change names in the company should be formalized, in the same way that changing addresses might be formalized. What you don’t want is for HR to address the matter in an ad-hoc fashion, because while one HR person might allow and facilitate a name change, another HR person might not. Creating a formal process removes room for personal bias.
Gender & Pronouns
Don’t track the gender of employees unless it’s mandatory (eg. for benefits). If gender is to be tracked, employees should have the option to specify a legal gender and the gender to use for the employee. Employees should be able to change both. Only those who handle benefits, or other documents that require legal gender, should be aware of the legal gender. Like names, processes to change gender should be formalized.
Employees should be able to specify gender to use other than male/female, such as non-binary, two-spirit, or none. Employees should also be able to direct staff to use pronouns, and those pronouns should not be tied to perceptions around the employee’s gender. Employees should be able to use he/him, she/her, but also pronouns such as the singular they/them, xe/xir, etc.
If that bit about gender other than male/female and pronouns is new to you, then I would introduce to you the notion that gender exists on a spectrum. The Queer 101 comic made by Sam Orchard explains this spectrum:
There will likely be some opposition to employees having the option to self-report their gender, as Angus Reid found that 24% of trans Canadians should have their documents reflect the gender that was incorrectly assigned at birth in spite of their actual gender. This goes back to the concept of implicit bias. The mistake to make is to assume that because cisgender individuals have not experienced issues around gender, that the experience is less real for trans people.
Ask the employee how they want you to handle the times where they are misgendered in your presence. They might ask you to correct the pronoun for them, or prefer you to leave it be.
Dress Codes
Dress codes should be identical for men and women and applied consistently irrespective of gender. If women can wear dresses, so can men. Dress codes should not be to sexualize female employees (commonplace in restaurant jobs.)
Some Ontario employers require female employees to dress in a sexualized or gender-specific way at work, such as expecting women to wear high heels, short skirts, tight clothing or low-cut tops. These kinds of dress codes reinforce stereotypical and sexist notions about how women should look and may violate Ontario’s Human Rights Code.
Washrooms and Change Rooms
Employees, patrons and clients should be allowed to use the washrooms and change rooms of their choosing, irrespective of the gender on their ID. All single stall washrooms should be gender neutral.
Not allowing employees to use the change room that corresponds to their gender identity creates a poisoned work environment according to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario as per Vanderputten v. Seydaco Packaging Corp.
Misgendering
Employees need to be referred to with the pronouns they ask to be referred to. It is the manager’s responsibility to check in with the employee, and ask them if they want the manager to correct other team members or staff who misgender them.
There is a double standard when it comes misgendering. If a cis person was repeatedly misgendered at work, that would be considered workplace harassment. Trans people are, however, largely expected to put up with it. Employers should accord the matter the seriousness it deserves. The emotional impact is no less on trans employees than it would be on cis employees.
We’ve hired our first transgender employee that we’re aware of. On its face, this is a non-issue for our company as we’ve always been very inclusive.
However, this young man shows their biologically feminine features enough that our guests (we’re a restaurant) are using the incorrect pronouns which is bothering him.
We’ve of course directed everyone that should know to use the correct pronouns internally, but we can’t preemptively tell our guests that. Today, the employee arrived to work with a name tag indicating that people should use a “he/him” pronoun. We’ve directed him to remove the tag as it is not part of our uniform policy, but was hoping to get some advice/insight for proceeding from there.
My immediate direction to the operations manager was to let him know that we understand it is frustrating to be referred to by the wrong pronoun and that as long as he is polite and professional about it, he can gently correct a guest of the error or just ignore it as appropriate for the situation.
The employee is being continuously misgendered, but comes up with a solution and alters their name tag to include their pronoun. Management comes down on the trans employee for responding to the misgendering with this simple and effective prevention method, presenting an alternative that forces the trans person to submit themselves to being misgendered. While the human resources person states the company is inclusive, their actions in fact undermine inclusivity. This is an example of what not to do.
The correct path would be to make accommodations for the employee. An exception should have been made to permit the employee to alter their name tag.
Inappropriate Questions
Never ask a trans employee if they’ve had “The Surgery.” You’re essentially asking about their genitals, as a curiosity. Don’t do that.
Don’t bring up the show or movie you saw with a trans person in it in conversation with them, assuming the colleague may be interested because they’re trans too. That may be perceived as tokenizing.
Disclosure of Trans Status
Do not disclose that an employee is transgender without that person’s consent. Such disclosures could have social and professional ramifications for the employee. Ask the employee whether to disclose. Approval to disclose once is not approval to disclose every time.
Surgical Requirements
Requiring trans people to undergo surgery in order to change documents even if the trans person doesn’t desire such a procedure is tantamount to involuntary sterilization according to the World Health Organization. As the agency explained in its statement Eliminating forced, coercive and otherwise involuntary sterilization:
In many countries, transgender and often also intersex persons are required to undergo sterilization surgeries that are often unwanted, as a prerequisite to receiving gender affirmative treatment and gender-marker changes.
According to international and regional human rights bodies and some constitutional courts, and as reflected in recent legal changes in several countries, these sterilization requirements run counter to respect for bodily integrity, self-determination and human dignity, and can cause and perpetuate discrimination against transgender and intersex persons.
As a real-world example, some insurance companies have the surgical requirement in order to update the gender marker for policy holders. The policy holder may have a birth certificate with the updated gender and could get a new policy elsewhere under the correct gender, but because of this requirement, cannot change their existing records.
Such policies are dehumanizing for clients. But it also sends a message to trans staff that their gender is perceived as illegitimate unless accompanied by a medically unnecessary procedure that they do not desire.
Companies with surgical requirements should remove them. For similar reasons, a letter from a medical professional should likewise not be a requirement for updating the gender marker in company records.
As a final note, surgical requirements to change gender was deemed discriminatory by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in XY v. Ontario (Government and Consumer Services). The case was with regards to the Ontario birth certificates, and the tribunal stated:
[The] requirement that Ontario birth certificates reflect the sex assigned at birth unless a person has and certifies to the respondent that he or she has had “transsexual surgery” is substantively discriminatory because it perpetuates stereotypes about transgendered persons and their need to have surgery in order to live in accordance with their gender identity, among other things.
A living wage is not the same as the minimum wage, which is the legal minimum all employers must pay. The living wage sets a higher test – a living wage reflects what earners in a family need to bring home based on the actual costs of living in a specific community.
In Ontario, 10.9% of the population earns minimum wage. No one should be earning less than what it costs to live. If your business doesn’t pay a living wage, then it is contributing to the poverty faced by trans Canadians.
Part-time employees should be paid a living wage, guaranteed a minimum set of hours, and schedules should be stable from week to week. Businesses should support employees who wish to unionize rather than to stand in opposition.
No employee should involuntarily be given so few hours to work that they live in uncertainty. No employee should be asked to give up their week so that their employers may, or may not, call them in on a whim. This precarious work contributes to the poverty faced by trans Canadians.
Salary Transparency
When salary is chosen in a discretionary manner, it provides room for individuals to exercise bias. This bias may not be intentional, but it results for instance in women getting paid less than men for the same jobs, even if they have the same experience and degree. This disparity is documented in most sectors, from finance to software development.
To reduce the effects of such bias, salaries should be transparent and dictated by policy. Employees should not be prohibited from discussing wages. This will ensure that trans people are fairly compensated for their work.
Company Culture & Workplace Incidents
Businesses need to be preventative rather than reactive to workplace incidents. Every workplace incident should be treated as preventable, and addressing the conditions that favour such incidents should be regarded as instrumental. That means making a concerted effort to make the company culture inherently more inclusive.
Reporting mechanisms can only be seen as part of the solution to workplace incidents especially as so many incidents go unreported. In Canada, sexual harassment is experienced 43% of women, but goes unreported 78% of the time. The leading reasons given for not reporting is that the victim feels the issue is too minor or that the employer would not respond well. Reporting mechanisms present a reporting cutoff point, letting damaging behaviours persist. Lowering the bar for reporting isn’t enough as the process itself is only invoked after the employee has been harmed. That harm should not occur in the first place, and to do that the role of the workplace as an enabler has to be looked at and addressed accordingly.
I’d like to further drive this point with an example from my own work history. At one of my jobs, I was sitting in the outdoor employee lunch area with my friend eating lunch. We were alone at the time and both of us are trans. The building manager for my workplace came out and yelled at us. We weren’t allowed here, he said. I told him that I worked here, but he didn’t believe me. We were made to leave. His behaviour was based on assumptions from our appearance.
Being reactive is too late: I was already kicked out of my own workplace. Prevention is key. It takes more than a paragraph in a training manual to make a culture welcoming of all workers, it has to be a continued conversation and backed by concrete policies.
If the workplace is large enough to bring in a dedicated diversity consultant, bring in one that knows discrimination first hand. The content will likely be far more relevant even if their experience isn’t around transphobia specifically. For example, a cisgender person that experienced racism and understands the mechanisms that sustain it would be far better positioned to challenge the practices that perpetuate transphobia.
Monitoring Diversity
For workplaces that have more than a few workers, monitoring diversity is a concrete way to know if there are barriers to employment. If there is low employee diversity then there are likely discriminatory practices at play. Such numbers dispense with good intentions and instead speak to the reality of the situation.
With such low estimates, it’s difficult for most workplaces to gather metrics on trans employees as a percentage of total workers specifically. However, there is another good set of measures: the percentage of women in the workplace, the percentage of people of colour, the percentage of people with disabilities, the percentage of francophones, the percentage of First Nation/Inuit/Metis employees, etc.
If workplace conditions improve for women, if they improve for people of colour, if they improve for people with disabilities, then they very likely improve for trans people too.
All companies, especially those in traditionally male-dominated fields, should monitor diversity. These numbers should be disclosed, and companies should strive to improve them. A second set of numbers should also be disclosed for the diversity as found in upper and executive levels of management. In Canada’s top 100 companies, women only make up 8.5% of executive positions, presenting a different set of challenges than that found in the positions below. Accountability there is important.
I’d like to give a personal anecdote on the value of monitoring the percentage of women in the workplace. One place I worked at was a mid-size tech company.
The company sponsored an initiative to support high-school girls interested in getting into tech. The founder was awarded the Diversity Champion of the Year by a national organization of women in technology and communications. Things looked good on paper.
But this company had a sexism problem. A video sexually objectifying women was circulated in the company-wide internal chat, to the approval of an executive. Sexually charged jokes and language were becoming regular. Women were subjected to sexual harassment. Women were passed up for opportunities that were given to less qualified men. In this company, only 9% of technical roles were occupied by women, despite the fact that in the city this company was based, 26% of computer and information systems professionals were women.
That 9% figure, especially as compared to the 26% of women in the field, spoke to a tangible problem. This is why collecting and disclosing this data is so important, which this company did to its credit. It not only brings a clarity that could otherwise be obscured by goodwill and corporate initiatives, but it creates pressure to improve those numbers.
And if you hear excuses like “all the people who applied are men!” then you need to look at your hiring process, because that’s where some of your flaws are to be found.
Benefits & Leave
Employers who offer health benefits should make them immediately available upon employment. Employees should not be made to wait a probationary period to access benefits.
According to Trans PULSE, 43% of transgender Ontarians were currently on hormone replacement therapy. This treatment is costly. Ensuring that all employees can access benefits immediately ensures that trans workers do not experience a period of financial strain that cisgender employees, as a group, would not experience. Otherwise this creates income disparity.
Employers should negotiate with insurers to ensure that the language in health benefits are not gendered, so that trans people can access medical care relevant to their bodies. Short-term leave coverage should include recovery time from surgical care.
Companies should regard raising children as the responsibility of all parents involved and correct for a correct for a culture that both expects and penalizes women for being parents. PayScale found that while men prioritize home over work more frequently than women, women in similar jobs still endured the greater loss of salary over work-life balance.
All partners should be given generous and equal leave. Men in positions of leadership should be taught to avoid expressions such as telling staff they are “babysitting” their kid as it subtly reinforces the perception of women as caretakers. Gender equality in this matter makes a difference for trans people, for example, by ensuring transgender fathers who gave birth have access to appropriate leave.
[W]hen women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines — for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.
Consider the discrepancies in jobs requiring similar education and responsibility, or similar skills, but divided by gender. The median earnings of information technology managers (mostly men) are 27 percent higher than human resources managers (mostly women), according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. At the other end of the wage spectrum, janitors (usually men) earn 22 percent more than maids and housecleaners (usually women).
“It’s not that women are always picking lesser things in terms of skill and importance,” Ms. England said. “It’s just that the employers are deciding to pay it less.”
The same thing happened when women in large numbers became designers (wages fell 34 percentage points), housekeepers (wages fell 21 percentage points) and biologists (wages fell 18 percentage points). The reverse was true when a job attracted more men. Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige.
Businesses choose the remuneration they give their employees. They can contribute to the wage gap by paying those who work in (primarily female) human resources less than the (primarily male) software engineers they oversee. Or they can close the divide between the two. This is a choice.
To my knowledge, there has not been any data collected on occupations held by trans people. However, as Trans PULSE found, half of trans people make less than $15,000 a year and closing the wage gap will be especially beneficial to those working the lowest paid occupations where women have had high representation.
When Hiring
Another significant barrier to trans people accessing the workplace occurs during the hiring process. In this section, we’ll address concrete measures to reduce these obstacles.
As such, requiring diplomas and references can act as a barrier to the employment of trans people. There are, however, alternatives.
In the software industry, it is common to not care about formal education, and instead focus on what the prospective employee actually knows. Candidates are presented with challenges that reflect the work they will perform, and they are evaluated accordingly. This approach can be brought over to other domains. It won’t work for all candidates, but it’s one approach.
Anonymous Job Applications
When hiring, name, age, and gender should be hidden from staff evaluating resumes and technical challenges. The effects of anonymous job applications on the callback rates of minority applicants were documented in the IZA Journal of European Labor Studies:
First, women benefit from higher callback rates with anonymous job applications—at least if they compete with male applicants for a job. However, for roughly half of the vacancies included in the experiment only female candidates or only male candidates applied. Second, migrants and residents of deprived neighborhoods suffer from anonymous job applications. Their callback rates are lower with anonymous job applications than with standard applications. Third, recruiters who tend to invite candidates with similar characteristics to them are not able to continue to do so. This conscious or unconscious behavior of “homophily” is therefore prevented with anonymous job applications, importantly with persistent effects in later stages of the recruitment process.
Such measures positively affect trans people by mitigating the effect of homophily and by reducing the bias against female names.
Take a fresh look at person–organisation fit, considering both current and aspirational organisational culture.
Test the wording of your job adverts to see how it affects who applies.
Personalise your outreach efforts to encourage applicants.
Make it easy for people who show interest to apply directly.
Vary where and how you do outreach.
Push for transparency in outreach even when using networks for recruitment and selection.
Systematise your use of social media in recruitment.
Assessment
Group and anonymise CVs when reviewing them.
Pre-commit to a set of interview questions that are directly related to performance on the job.
Focus interviews on collecting information, not making the decision.
Make sure tests are relevant to the job and fit for purpose.
Decision-making
Include people in hiring decisions who have not been involved in assessing candidates.
Stick to what the scores tell you for final decisions.
Recruitment strategy
Spread assessments and decisions across days, but keep all other conditions similar.
If discussing unconscious bias, emphasise the desired behaviour of assessors, rather than the problem.
Evaluate your assessment practices.
Candidate experience
Avoid creating stereotype threat in the assessment process.
Ask for feedback from rejected and accepted candidates.
I would add to the list that if the employee comes in from a referral, that the candidate should not be known to those handling or evaluating their application.
Members of stereotyped groups often perform worse on tests (a naturally stressful situation) when their identity as part of that group is highlighted or they are primed to think about it; a phenomenon that psychologists call stereotype threat.
There is never an appropriate or relevant time to bring up transition, much less during the interview. If the employee needs to discuss something, they will do so. Otherwise, they do not need to provide an explanation for changing their name, gender, dealing with misgendering, etc.
One mitigating strategy is to anonymize the names of the organizations worked by the candidate in addition to their name, gender, and age.
Evaluate Bias In Hiring Staff
Staff handling hiring should be evaluated to identify implicit bias. Project Implicit from Harvard University provides a series of tests that can be taken to help detect implicit bias.
The Project Implicit provides tests on the basis of gender & sexuality, which is directly pertinent to trans people, as well as other metrics. Staff with a known bias towards a minority should not be involved in evaluating candidates from that minority.
To Wrap Up
I ended up skipping some common workplace advice for the inclusion of trans people, such as adding gender identity & gender expression as a protected class to a company’s non-discrimination and harassment policies. I didn’t want to create the sense that adopting this to the exclusion of other listed measures would make for an inclusive workplace, because it doesn’t.
The list I provided is a partial one and I encourage people to contribute their own suggestions by commenting below. The take-away however is that there is overlap between the discrimination faced by trans people and the gendered discrimination faced by women as well as the discrimination faced by other minorities. Addressing the barriers for one with meaningful change will invariably benefit other groups on the receiving end of bias.
I end this with a request. Doing something like adding gender identity & gender expression to a company’s non-discrimination policy is easy. It doesn’t necessitate any tangible change. Real change is hard. Real change requires being uncomfortable. So speak up. Push back. Present that unpopular opinion. You won’t be rewarded for it, you won’t get praise, but that’s the only way things will get better.
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.
On Friday evening I was in the Byward market about to say goodbye to a friend when a man approached the two of us. He asked me if I was a guy or girl. He looked to my friend, told her that he could tell her gender. But he couldn’t tell mine.
He then grabbed my breasts, and made a comment saying either I was a flat-chested woman or a man. He then kept asking me for my name, to see if it was a “man’s” or “woman’s” name. I did not answer, wishing him goodnight instead.
My friend and I walked on. Initially I laughed it off, but I felt dizzy. I woke up the next morning feeling no emotion – no happiness or anger, just nothing. It took a lot of talking this weekend to recover.
I get comments about my gender like those from that man semi-regularly. They vary from “That’s a man!” to “Is that a guy or a girl? Oh my God it’s a guy!” It’s also not the first time that a perfect stranger, again in public, grabbed my breasts on account of how they perceive my gender.
On Sunday, I listened to individuals who were still subjected to the continued practice of involuntary gender assessments in Ottawa. Where they either have their gender assessed, potentially by someone who knows little on the matter, or they are denied medical care. There is always the concern, as I had when I went through that process, that our identity isn’t regarded as legitimate on account of how well we fit (or don’t fit) gender norms and that we are denied care.
Today, the Canadian Blood Services is introducing a ban on blood donations from straight transgender women. However, women who have their genitals surgically altered to look like those of a cisgender woman will be allowed to donate. There is no evidence that altering the appearance of genitals has any effect on the quality of the blood.
There is very little difference between the ignorance that led to that man sexually assaulting me on Friday night, anachronistic gender assessments, and the thinking behind the ban from the Canadian Blood Services. They all involve policing gender when it doesn’t fit within their conception of what is acceptable.
On Friday, I’ll be marching in Ottawa’s Trans March.
These experiences, a few of many, are why I march.
