Category: Human Rights
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Lessons in advocacy
I’ve been doing queer & trans advocacy for over ten years. As I slowly make my exit from this part of my life, I thought I’d share some observations. Mostly dispelling misconceptions I inherited from media.
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Conservatives in Parliament: A Case Study with Bill C-6
Passing through the federal legislature is Bill C-6, a law to make involuntary conversion therapy illegal. It addresses a real need: 8% of trans and non-binary youth 14-24 have undergone conversion therapy. The bill passed second reading and is now with the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in the House of Commons. Of…
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Map of transphobic harassment in Ottawa-Gatineau
There’s now a crowd-sourced map that documents transphobic harassment encountered in the Ottawa-Gatineau region. You can access the map through this link. If you’d like to share your experiences of transphobia for this, please reach out to me. The more the better. This is intended as an advocacy tool. It’s been my experience that cis…
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How bogus science was used to ban trans women
Preface I debated whether to write this article at all. For the last ten years I’ve been countering the excuses that have been made to exclude gender and sexual minorities from participation in society. From the ban on Gay/Straight Alliances in Catholic schools (excuse: contravenes Catholic teachings and values), to the successful efforts to kill…
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Cancel Culture
Our world is changing in wonderful ways: people are living longer, parents are spending more time with their children, stigma around mental health is declining, and differing life experiences are increasingly becoming part of our everyday. This last point has been alarming to some. The increasing visibility of life experiences they don’t relate to conflicts…
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The media needs to contextualize prejudice
A few days ago, tire tracks etched on the rainbow sidewalk in Prescott made the news. The mayor of the community said that it was “impossible to interpret the action this evening as anything but a statement of hatred toward the LGBTQ community.” Seems like a bit of an overreaction right, for something that visibly…
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We Make Better Monsters
I’ve been musing about writing a short horror story grounded in reality. So often the horror genre makes the object of fear a disfigured man, a man with mental illness, a trans woman, someone living in poverty, someone with an accent, a black or brown person. It echoes the ableism, classism, white supremacy, and exceptionalism…
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Making Peace with Queer Anger
I’m turning 35 in a few months. One of the nicest things about getting older is seeing queer people in my life shaping their life to their desires. Renting a place and making it cute with plants and art from pals. Camping in the woods or going on hikes. Celebrating milestones with partners and friends.…
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Christie Blatchford and Freedom of Speech
National Post writer Christie Blatchford passed away last month, resulting in a flurry of articles praising her career in Canadian mainstream media. The experience of reading Blatchford’s articles was very different as a trans person. She regularly used her platform to advocate for a world free of those perceived to be gender non-conforming. In her…
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Transphobes in Canada are Connected
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…