Category: Life

I feel more anxious now in public than I did pre-pandemic.

I avoid washrooms, holding it in to the point of discomfort and minding what I drink when I go out. Change rooms are out of the question; last month I initially declined curling with colleagues because I thought I would need to use them. That also means I can’t go to the local Nordic spa or attend a spin class. I get nervous at the bookstore when I’m passing by the children’s section. Even shopping for clothes, especially something intimate like a sports bra, is incredibly fraught.

I’ve been talking about messaging that trans women like me are predators or threats for years. I’ve never been entirely able to ignore it because that was paired with a body of bad experiences where I was singled out and mistreated for being gender non-conforming in public – including running from a group of men wanting to beat me up. It’s been years since one of those incidents, but I can’t tell if it’s because I have barely gone out during the pandemic, or if it’s because things are indeed better.

There was two TDoR events last weekend; one on the francophone side of the river and one on the anglophone. I helped a pal carry the displays they made for the English-language event, then attended the French one.

It was intimate; perhaps fifteen or so. Quebec’s transphobic Bill 2 was brought up. There was a mother talking about the loss of her gender diverse child who had passed away by suicide last spring following bullying and school inaction. A trans teen spoke up about their own mistreatment. We took turns sharing what we liked about being trans, and about community.

This one hit different; I’m used to speeches at TDoR that are are a mish mash of academic theory and vocabulary. That stuff resonated when I was younger but now feels like an empty performance, so I go for the newly out to see that they’re not alone. Either way, this event wasn’t like that at all. It was personal.

Part of why this event may have struck a chord could have to do with the kind of week it was.

In this article, I’m going to document how an alleged high school teacher in Ottawa went from being supportive of LGBTQ students to making her entire public persona about being a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist).

Though she used to put a full name on Twitter, and there is a teacher by that name currently working at an OCDSB high school in Nepean, I’m not going to reveal her presumed name or this school. I am against doxxing and for all we know this could be a pseudonym or there could be someone else with the same name. This article will only show her public tweets and I will only refer to her by the initials A.M.

I’m treating this as a case study in anti-trans radicalization.

This week, the Aquatic Federation of Canada, a body representing Diving Canada, Canada Artistic Swimming, Swimming Canada, and Water Polo Canada, voted to effectively ban trans women from women’s events. This vote was for a policy with the international body FINA governing its events of which the Aquatic Federation is a member.

Contrary to assertions, this was not about fairness in sports. I’ve already debunked that line of reasoning with the Rugby ban. The reason we’re having this moment about a topic as specific as trans inclusion in swimming is because conservatives successfully created a panic out of the minor success of a single trans swimmer, Lia Thomas.