Category: Human Rights

Some history

Up until very recently, gender diverse people were shut out of the publishing world.

If they wanted to exchange ideas in print, they had to do it in their own newsletters and zines such as in Friedrich Radszuweit’s Das 3. Geschlecht – Die Transvestiten (translation: “The 3rd sex – the transvestites”, 1930-1932) or Rupert Raj’s Gender Review (1978-1986).

Not that there weren’t books on trans people, but they were either medical texts written by cisgender people such as Magnus Hirschfeld/Max Tilke’s Die Transvestiten (1910), Harry Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon (1966) and Richard Green/John Money’s Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment (1969), or they were autobiographies of trans anti-celebrities such as Lili Elbe’s Fra mand til kvinde (translation: “From man to woman”, 1931), Christine Jorgensen’s A Personal Autobiography (1967), Dianna Boileau’s Behold, I am a woman (1972) and April Ashley’s Odyssey (1982). Publishers weren’t interested in trans voices otherwise; this was a society that regarded queer people as dangerously unfit and outlawed trans women wearing dresses.

There was another anti-trans protest in Ottawa this week. It was organized by a group whose foundational beliefs are labeled trans-exclusive radical feminism (TERFs) or “gender critical”, depending who is doing the naming.

This follows an incident a week ago where a man from Vancouver who makes a living crowd-funding anti-trans actions and is affiliated with TERF groups showed up at an elementary school in Ottawa with transphobic signs and was filming children. Meanwhile, over the past two weeks, the Quebec government has introduced a law that would require trans people to be sterilized to update identity documents, the Toronto Star released a piece decrying trans-inclusive language, the CBC published another portraying inclusion of trans people as a danger to cis women, and CTV aired a piece from their investigative show W5 that tried to stir a moral panic over care for gender diverse youth, uncritically parroting disinformation from UK TERF organizations. The CTV production was reminiscent of the documentary on the same topic that the CBC had sourced from the BBC a few years ago which centred the views of a conversion therapy clinic operator.

I’ve written about this new wave of anti-trans organizations before. Whatever moniker used to identify them, their behaviour is near identical to anti-gay evangelicals of yore.

If anyone ever wanted to study attitudes on gender nonconformity in Canada during in this period in history, I’d point them to opinion writer Barbara Kay. Her prominence is fading now that newspapers and books are losing ground to competing forms of entertainment, but not too long ago she was one of the few authoritative voices Canadians might hear discuss gay or trans issues.

What she had to say was not particularly kind. She beckoned readers to purge society of these people using a litany of ever changing pretences. Now her latest diatribes are aimed at trans women. The story here though isn’t about her. It’s about the chain of people required to publish these dog whistles: folks who consider themselves supportive of diversity working for companies that claim to be inclusive of “LGBT” people, all the while making money by advocating for their eradication.

I believe these enablers and the apparent contradiction of their actions with their beliefs has more to tell us than the enmity of a single person. After all, it’s inevitable for cruel people to exist, but for others to monetize this antisocial behaviour is not. Nonetheless we can’t talk about that and the very real harm it causes without first talking about her.