Maëlys McArdle

Category: Trans Rights

Discussions on trans rights and perceived gender non-conformity.

  • Transition, Six Years Later.

    Transition, Six Years Later.

    Content Warning: This article mentions a previous way of thinking that conflates androgynous trans men and cis butch women. It also details transphobic harassment.

    My transition started as the cumulation of little changes that eventually became something.

    There isn’t a definite start. I didn’t like what puberty did to my genitals, which hit me the summer I turned 14, but it was what it was. I kept having crushes on lesbians in university, but tossed that off to being unlucky. It wasn’t universal – I had had a crush on a straight guy in high school. I remember falling asleep in uni wishing I had been born a girl, but transitioning never occurred to me. I grew up in a home that compared gay relationships to bestiality, with a step-dad that admired John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. As bad as it would have been to be gay, to end up like the large personalities ridiculed on daytime television was inconceivable.

    I don’t know when things changed. I didn’t think anything of it when the first person I met during frosh in 2003 told me she had wondered whether she was masculine or a trans guy – settling on masculine. I was 18. In my third or fourth year, I joined a forum for trans men. That was in 2007-2008 and by then I was already openly pansexual and kinky. In 2009, I was dating a trans man.

    Come 2010, I was following Tumblr accounts of trans guys and androgynous women unsure if I wanted to be them or be with them. I attended the Trans Day of Remembrance that year with my partner, watching NDP MP Bill Siksay promote bill C-389. My immediate social network was soon almost all trans people. This wasn’t conscious; many were originally friends of friends; many came out as trans after having befriended them. Like has a way of finding like.

    In the winter 2011 – 2012, I started to alter the way I looked in the mirror of my bathroom. I bought a RodeoH in the spring of 2012, and come a year later I also had a hollow dildo and my first binder. I tried to make myself look more like the trans guys I saw. I tucked. There was safety and comfort in exploring gender through masculinity, but also a shame around appropriating the experiences of others.

    I wrote the following in March 2013:

    I’m MAAB, and I’m ambivalent with being read as male and he’d. I don’t hold to it, but since my gender expression is masculine then whatever.

    But my sex is different. More specifically, the bottom area. I’m okay with a flat chest, I want the flat chest. But not the bottom. I wish there was a script I could follow to correct that that was supported here.

    If I followed the script that is available, I’d be a butch woman who would bind. Not sure that that’s me.

    By then I was having conversations with friends about hormone replacement therapy. I decided to give it a shot in May 2013, later explaining:

    I knew I needed to quench this disconnect with my body.

    At first, that was in the form of seeking bottom surgery. Really I could live on as a guy, I just needed to fix what was down there. If I contemplated hormone replacement therapy, it was just to follow the narrative to access surgery.

    Outwardly transitioning wasn’t really an option I thought. I had no hopes that I could live on as stealth and that was really discouraging. I feared rejection. Meanwhile, all the trans women I was aware of seemed to be very feminine, which further made me feel isolated as that wasn’t my path. Genderqueer was more apt but that seemed to only to mean female-assigned-at-birth. I felt like I didn’t really belong anywhere.

    I kept thinking more on transitioning, and I realized that no – actually I wanted what the hormones would bring me. Belonging be damned. Bottom surgery started to get less important. I reflected much in this period. I realized that despite all these fears of going at it alone and forever being ostracized in a deeply transphobic society, that it was better than the alternative.

    Around this time I saw a YouTube video of butch trans women. I had known a few feminine trans guys, but this was the first time I saw trans women with a masculine gender expression:

    This 2011 video featuring butch trans women opened the doors to transition for me. Up until this point, all the trans women I knew were very feminine, which didn’t match how I saw myself.

    It was the first time I saw someone like me. The video legitimized in me what I had felt, and what I had been pursuing seemingly on my own. Further helping things was that one of my friends from DEFCON had come out and been instantly named/gendered correctly by our mutual friends – including the one who had a Southern drawl. Her coming out helped make feasible what had seemed impossible then – being accepted as a woman having looked like me and having had cisgender friends like mine.

    I made great strides in my self-discovery over the summer of 2013. I started the summer going by they/them pronouns. A friend helped me buy my first bra and skirts; I shaved my arms and later my legs; I went out in public in feminine attire for the first time. Each of these milestones was accompanied by the removal of a psychic burden; and I realised that I had deferred to a masculine and then a non-binary identity because I didn’t think I could be accepted as a butch woman. Only I could. Each of these steps was making me feel better about my body. I wrote later:

    Weeks before Pride, that friend and I went to Value Village where I picked up two skirts. I wore that skirt for the first time outside a week before Pride. I was so afraid before then that I would be destroyed by comments from judgy passerbys. I had witnessed such homophobic and transphobic vitriol over the years in Ottawa. But at the same time, I needed to do this for me. So I femmed up and walked outside.

    I did get inappropriate comments. But I didn’t care – because what I noticed as I walked down the street is that virtually no one so much as gazed in my direction. That lack of attention was in itself so affirming that when someone finally did say something nasty, I just didn’t give a shit.

    Pride came, and I wore that skirt again. I felt so real.

    Two days later, I announced that my name had changed to Maëlys.

    I came out to my mom and step-dad in September 2013, some four months after I had made the call to start hormone replacement therapy and after all these realisations. It didn’t go well; my step-dad informed me that this was delusional and that I was hurting those close to me by transitioning.

    After that exchange didn’t end positively, I wrote this letter to him and my mom the following month:

    Hi there to the two of you,

    I wanted to write this letter so that I could bring some clarity to what was going on with me. 

    Mom I never gave you much in that regard directly. [Step-dad], I didn’t feel like the communications we did share elucidated much. They were framed in terms of you disagreeing with my decisions without an awareness of what led to them, and that shaped the dialog in a way that was similarly constrained.

    My purpose here isn’t necessarily to convince you, but to inform you. For me to able to speak plainly about myself so that you at least have the perspective of the one experiencing this. My hope is that my doing this will strengthen our relationship through understanding.

    A good starting point would perhaps be to start with saying that I am transitioning. That I go by the name Maëlys, and that my pronouns are she/her.

    There wasn’t really a fixed start to this transition. If you want something more tangible, you could go back to the winter of 2011/2012, which is when I started to make a conscious effort to alter my appearance in the privacy of my bathroom. Round my chin, make it seem like I had a chest, tuck, etc. 

    Or you could go forward in time to this past spring, which is when I started being assessed for hormone replacement therapy. There was much in between, including months of self-reflection and pondering what living meant to me. I won’t speak much to that here, however.

    What I will instead cover is how I feel as I have been transitioning outwardly over this past summer. Every step I’ve taken, from buying a bra, to shaving my legs, to then shaving my arms – has resulted in a progressive shedding of a long-standing source of discontentment around my body. I can actually enjoy my own company now. This is new.

    As I had once described to you [step-dad], it’s as if each of these steps is accompanied by a weight being lifted off my shoulders. Only in their absence do I become cognizant of their past presence, with the accompanying relief so great that I could never fathom going back to that miserable self. 

    Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying wonderful relationships with folk. They know me only as Maëlys and have no problem she-ing me. It’s funny how much the use of one word is powerful. It’s the difference between “Your existence is legitimate” and “I won’t even treat you as you ask to be treated, even if it’s but uttering a single word.” I am grateful for their presence in my life.

    Truth be told, I don’t know what my future holds. That’s okay with me. What I do know is that what I’m doing now is right for me.

    Much love,

    Maëlys

    In their response, my parents addressed me by the correct name. Over the next year I would make the name change legal and start hormone replacement therapy. Later on I would amend my gender marker on my birth certificate, driver’s license, etc. The sense that I was appropriating the experiences of “real trans people” would go away and I would accept that I was trans.

    This brings us to the present, some six years later: I had surgery on February 6th that removed my penis and testicles and created a vulva. It is the last major milestone of my medical transition.

    Jumping into the unknown with hormone replacement therapy remains the single best decision I’ve ever made. I didn’t go in knowing whether it would work for me; just knowing that it was possible that it could. Am I ever glad I did. I am so grateful to those who counseled me and assured me the changes were progressive and reversible. I’m also thankful to those who shared their own stories. It was reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t “always know” and lacked the easily digestible narrative.

    Had it not been for the listening ear and calm words of my friends, I wouldn’t have been able to make this important leap. Their support was precious in this very intimidating time of my life.

    Evolution in photos

    With all that said, I figured that I’d mark my surgery with a photo essay of the past decade.

    November 2010. I attend the Trans Day of Remembrance. I consider myself cis.
    August 2011. My private Tumblr blog is very focused on trans issues and I comment that I wish I looked like the trans guys I see.
    August 2011. Pride. As with everywhere else, I only spot a few young trans folk. It’s mostly just old trans women. At this point, I hadn’t noticed any butch trans women.
    Winter 2011-2012. I start to do gender play with a RodeOh, strap-on, binders and tucking.
    October 2012. I return to university for a second degree. This time I attend the Pride Centre, and go to trans events for my own benefit instead of as in solidarity.
    Winter 2012-2013. I’m having a lot of conversations about transitioning with friends.
    March 2013. I blog publicly that I’m doing explorations around gender.
    May 2013. I make the call to get on HRT. It’s with a new program for trans adults at the downtown clinic. I move into its catchment area.
    August 2013. I’ve socially transitioned among friends. This is at DEFCON, in Las Vegas, at the queer pool party.
    August 2013. Pride. This is one of my first public outing in girl mode in Ottawa.
    August 2013. I change my name.
    September 2013. I come out to my parents. It doesn’t go well.
    October 2013. I inadvertently attend the Philly Trans March.
    December 2013. First time in a women’s washroom. I do so outside the GenderQuest meeting at Pink Triangle Services.
    January 2014. I apply for my legal name change. It is refused on the first go.
    February 2014. Still waiting to get on HRT. I start to self-administer androgen blockers.
    April 2014. My name change becomes legal.
    May 2014. I freeze my sperm at the most hetero-toxic-masculinity clinic ever.
    July 2014. First estrogen injection. I socially transition at work.
    January 2015. I do laser hair removal for the first time. It takes three years to get rid of my facial hair.
    February 2015. Gender change on driver’s license and health card comes through.
    June 2015. Gender change on birth certificate comes through.
    June 2015. One year on HRT.
    August 2015. Pride parade. Protesting the conservatives killing the bill to add gender identity to the Canadian Human Rights Act. My mom is to the left.
    October 2017. The day I get my library card is also the day that I see my doctor to get my first recommendation letter for surgery. I am referred to another doctor for the second letter.
    February 2018. I see the second doctor and get a second surgery recommendation. I have my final laser hair removal appointment.
    July 2018. Four years on estrogen.
    August 2018. I go attend the trans march. I notice how many more of us attend year on year.
    February 2019. I undergo surgery.

    Societal context

    As an aside, things have happened in the world in the short period since I’ve started to transition. I thought it would be useful to give some of that context from an Ottawa lens:

    2008

    • OHIP relists gender affirmation surgery under a Liberal government. The Progressive Conservatives had delisted it in 1998, requiring people in Ontario to pay out of pocket for surgical care.
    • Gender Mosaic, the support group primarily for 50+ trans women in Ottawa, celebrates its 20th anniversary.
    • YouTube becomes the place to be to find young trans people talk about their lives and spread information.
    • Ivan Coyote releases the book The Slow Fix.
    • Susan Stryker’s book, Transgender History, is published. It becomes essential trans lit along with The Whipping Girl, a book by Julia Serano published the previous year.

    2009

    2010

    • Tumblr becomes the place to be to find young trans people talk about their lives and spread information.
    • Sam Orchard starts the web comic Rooster Tails.

    2011

    2012

    2013

    2014

    2015

    2016

    2017

    2018

    Somewhere in there health care practitioners in Ottawa started to adopt informed consent for hormone replacement therapy in greater numbers. Workshops targeting health care professionals on these matters became well attended by those who didn’t specialize in this care. Workplaces and schools started to include gender expression and identity in their non-discrimination policies. Mainstream bookshops went from carrying zero books on trans lives and issues in their LGBT section to those books making up a significant portion of their collection. It became common for schools to have multiple out trans students.

    The number of out trans people exploded in the last decade, as seen through these referral numbers of trans teens across Canada.

    None of the positive developments would have been possible without the efforts of largely homeless, poor, and/or working class gender non-conforming individuals.

    Unfortunately, the good of those developments has not been evenly distributed. Young white affluent gender-conforming trans people and young white middle-class transmasculine folk have overwhelmingly been the beneficiaries of recent societal change and become the face of transness for mainstream culture. The attention on them has diverted resources away from the very people who made this change possible and who need a shift in societal values the most.

    It’s not all roses

    Ignorance and harassment continues to be a regular facet of my being trans in Ottawa. I’ve written about some of my experiences and those of others before here, here, here, here, and here, so I won’t go too much into it. I have never felt safe in Ottawa, and I am frustrated at the lack of consequence for mainstream organisations that abet this danger for profit (see here, here, here, here, and here).

    Some examples of harassment include:

    A man in his fifties yells at me in French “Are you a guy or a girl?” before then shouting “You’re a guy with a penis!”
    A man (not shown) interrupts me while I’m walking with a date and grabs my breasts to see if I’m really a man or a woman.
    A man calls me a faggot while walking with a friend. I turn around, he asks if I had a problem with that, and I calmly tell him that I do since he had called me a faggot. I take his picture and walk away. I hear him say he’ll punch my face in.
    Messages I’ve received from men while dating.
    Unsolicited comments I’ve received from men on social media.

    I haven’t been shocked at the intimidation in Ottawa. When I was perceived as a dude in a gay relationship previous to my transition, I was called faggot by men in cars and told that my head and that of my boyfriend should be cut off. My trans friends all have stories, many of them involving physical assault. The nice things they’ve tried to run – picnics for rainbow families and support groups – have been threatened and disrupted by transphobic and homophobic locals.

    Ottawa is a conservative town.

    Meanwhile I encounter transphobia in the books, tv, movies and newspapers I consume. It’s always like a little punch in the gut:

    Books I’ve read.
    Movies I’ve seen.
    Newspapers I’ve read.

    Closer to my heart, I lost some friends because of my transition. My sister initially refused to use my name and pronouns around her young children, asserting it would confuse them. I heard my step-dad tried to stage an intervention. I was in my twenties when I transitioned; non-acceptance hurt me more then than it would now.

    My sister eventually had a talk with her kids about aunt Maëlys. My step-dad came to use the right name and sometimes the right pronouns. Given conversations we have had since, I felt that things would be better for me if my mom and step-dad didn’t know about my surgery until after I recovered. I worried they might try to stop me, or make my recovery about their immediate emotional needs.

    It’s been good

    When I decided to start hormone replacement therapy, I didn’t know whether it would be for me, and whether I would always be on it if it was. Maybe these feelings around my body would change years later. I didn’t have the story I was expected to have – that I always knew, that it was some strong feeling in me.

    I came to be okay with the ambiguity. I resolved that it was better to give a shot at living live five, ten or fifty good years, which is what HRT could potentially enable, than the alternative. If it wasn’t for me, then I’d know and stop. If things changed for me after years, it was no big deal, and I’d address it then.

    This was the moment to give it a shot. I had hit rock bottom, and I was mentally prepared to lose my job, my family, and my friends. It’s harder to relate to those consequences now, but this was before awareness of trans people exploded into the mainstream.

    The six happiest years of my life followed.

    Then came surgery. There was a lot of processing, with some final ambiguity but comfort with all possible outcomes. After the procedure, I had a moment of “holy fuck, I just got my penis cut off.” It lasted maybe a day or two.

    The momentary incredulity gave way to contentment. I began to feel absolutely liberated. Anything I could put my mind to I could do as long as there were steps to get there. I had spent my adult life so uncomfortable departing from a known routine. This departure, along with quitting two previous jobs with nothing lined up, signaled a change in me that I had wanted to see.

    I continue to be the happiest I’ve ever been. There’s a lot more to why that’s the case than my transition – such as going to therapy and reprioritizing who gets to be in my life and to what extent – but transition is a significant part of it.

    I’m proud of myself.

  • Common Spaces

    Common Spaces

    I walked around my place, unsure what to do. My contract had ended unexpectedly right before Christmas. It was about the worst time to look for work, and I had surgery in two months further complicating the job search.

    I immediately went to Halifax. Never been. Always wanted to go. A friend met me there and I had a great time. Once back, I was a bit at a loss.

    I had a “no buy” policy to save money; so pretty much all outings were out. My extended friend network didn’t really do stuff together anymore as we aged; instead favoring the intimacy of their home and partners. My closest friends were at work and school. Winter had come and I only had a bus pass to get around. I got into a routine: yoga on YouTube, good coffee, job search, walking to the library / around, reading, video games.

    I was bored out of my mind. I yearned to be around people. Where can you hang out without expectations of paying in downtown Ottawa during winter? It’s really just the library.

    I ended up getting a job, at least for now, but I still dream of common spaces. Big venues in the center of the city, with a large library, free concerts, poetry shows, communal gardens, free chili/tea, work spaces, maker spaces, and green spaces to lay down for picnics, with plenty of natural light. Where everyone, from affluent urban parents with young children, to the elderly, to those with significant visible mental health issues, to those who experience great levels of poverty, are all able to feel safe and enjoy and use the space equally.

  • Emergent Traits in Trans Activism

    This is a short article in which I want to note two emergent traits I have observed in trans activism.

    The traits can be summarized as such:

    1. An entitlement by privileged trans people co-opting the hardships of others
    2. A framing of trans rights as only being about gender identity
    An entitlement by privileged trans people co-opting the hardships of others

    The entitlement I’ve observed is especially true of trans people who are white, financially secure, have supportive families, have recently transitioned (post 2008, and especially post 2014) and lack dependents. They co-opt the statistics of trans people of colour and lived of experiences of poor trans people, passing off their hardships as their own. They wield their privilege and co-opted identity to divest resources and recognition from those who do far more. They do experience discrimination, but lack the awareness to appreciate their relative privilege.

    A framing of trans rights as only being about gender identity

    Under this framing, equality is reached when trans identities are normalized. This narrative ignores the ways that trans people have been systemically prevented from a safe and secure existence. In this framing of trans rights as being about gender identity, the following topics are avoided:

    • Poverty reduction
    • Housing as a right
    • Sex work as work
    • Living wages
    • Rights for precarious workers
    • Reduction in unionized workers
    • Police brutality
    • HIV criminalization
    • Rape culture
    • Free tuition
    • Good public transit
    • Physical access to spaces
    • Drug use criminalization
    • Colonialism

    I believe these topics are avoided because the discussions around trans rights are led by the privileged trans people mentioned previously. They have not experienced the systemic discrimination that the statistics they coopt refer to, and therefore fail to take these factors into account when discussing the marginalization of trans people.

  • List of Anti-Trans Scientific-Sounding Evidence

    List of Anti-Trans Scientific-Sounding Evidence

    While there are thousands of peer reviewed articles and a multitude of medical organisations that support the acceptance of trans people, there are also a handful of articles and medical professionals that are in opposition. Yet this handful is over-represented in newspapers and television. After hearing mental health professionals inquire about both the Swedish Study and Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria at a training session, I thought I’d address them here.

    Literature

    The Swedish Study

    Actual Name: Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden

    How Opponents Use It: “A 2011 long term Swedish study that followed a 30-year trajectory of 324 people who had sex reassignment surgery found that suicide rates 10 years after surgery were 20 times that of the non-trans population… Surely it is the government’s first responsibility to try to prevent suicides rather than to validate emotive claims made by those least capable of assessing their condition with objectivity.” Source.

    What’s Wrong About It: The study does not compare suicide rates of trans people before and after surgery. It compares trans people with cisgender people after surgery. It does not take into account that trans people have a high rate of suicidality as a result of discrimination and intolerance before surgery. When this is accounted for, research indicates that the suicide rate goes down after surgery.

    The leading author of the 2011 study, Cecilia Dhejne, has also spoken out against the interpretation of her research by opponents. She said “People who misuse the study always omit the fact that the study clearly states that it is not an evaluation of gender dysphoria treatment. If we look at the literature, we find that several recent studies conclude that WPATH Standards of Care compliant treatment decrease gender dysphoria and improves mental health.”

    Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria

    Actual Name: Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports

    How Opponents Use It: “Dr. Littman describes the condition experienced by these girls as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD). It develops during or soon after puberty and mainly affects girls with no previous signs of childhood gender dysphoria . According to the study, parents say that many girls do have a history of mental illness, and some are on the autism spectrum. The most controversial element of Dr. Littman’s research is her claim that ROGD spreads via social and peer contagion. While the incidence of gender dysphoria in the general population is quite low – less than 1 per cent – it’s not uncommon for two or more girls in the same friendship group – or even half of them – to begin to identify as transgender. ROGD also spreads by social media according to Dr. Littman; some parents describe their daughters binge-watching YouTube transition videos.” Source.

    What’s Wrong About It: The study did not speak to or collect any data from trans youth for this paper on trans youth. The author surveyed 256 parents recruited from websites advocating against the acceptance of trans youth. The children described were 82% assigned female at birth and some were as old as 27. The author appears to conflate the gender dysphoria being new to the parent as being new to the child, calling it rapid onset gender dysphoria.

    Following criticism, PLOS One, the journal that published the paper, released a statement stating that it would “seek further expert assessment on the study’s methodology and analyses. We will provide a further update once we have completed our assessment and discussions.”

    Brown University, where the study’s author is based, released its own statement saying “After the research paper was published in the Journal PLOS ONE, concerns were raised about the paper’s research design and methodology by leading academics in the field… Given the concerns about research design and methods — not the controversial nature of the subject — the University decided to stop featuring this news story on its news site.”

    People

    Kenneth Zucker, Susan Bradley and Ray Blanchard

    Who Are They: Kenneth Zucker was the former head of the Gender Identity Clinic at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. This was formerly known as the Clarke Institute. Susan Bradley and Ray Blanchard both worked with the clinic.

    What’s The Deal: The clinic performed conversion therapy for trans youth. In June of 2015 Ontario passed a law to end conversion therapy in the province. The clinic was shut down months later.

    How Opponents Invoke Them: “Let’s say it were possible to take a 10-year-old kid and make them either a well-adjusted lesbian or turn them into a female-to-male transsexual,” Blanchard told Rogan. “I don’t see anything wrong with saying it’s better to make this kid into a lesbian, because being a lesbian doesn’t require breast amputation, the construction of a not-very-convincing false penis, and a lifetime of testosterone shots.” Source.

    “We urge them to say, ‘Let’s figure out what other things you can do besides play with that doll,’” Zucker says. “In some situations, we have to work hard with parents’ own issues about gender. Could be a mother who’s had difficulty with the men in her life and has a lot of mixed feelings toward men. That gets translated to the boy, and her fear that he’ll grow up to be like those men causes him to reject being a boy.” Source.

    “The trans movement is crossing ethical lines with a particularly vulnerable subset of young people struggling with issues of gender identity,” writes Susan Bradley. “A recent article by Elise Ehrhard in Crisis Magazine, a Catholic periodical, addresses the aggressive approach by adult trans activists in recruiting adolescents with Asperger’s Syndrome or other types of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to their cause.” Source.

    Paul McHugh

    Who Is He: Paul McHugh is the former chief of psychiatry of the John Hopkins Hospital. He shut down the gender identity clinic that performed surgeries in 1979, thirteen years after its first such surgery, and four years after he had become the chief of psychiatry. He retired in 2001. In 2017, John Hopkins Hospital resumed performing gender affirming surgeries.

    What’s The Deal: McHugh’s former status at John Hopkins has been used to legitimize his view against affirming medical care for trans individuals in leading newspapers. While he has opined on trans individuals, has never interviewed or collected data from them.

    In 2016, The New Atlantis published McHugh’s article “Sexuality and Gender“. The current faculty at John Hopkins disavowed McHugh’s article citing that it “was not published in the scientific literature, where it would have been subject to rigorous peer review prior to publication” and that it “mischaracterizes the current state of the science on sexuality and gender.” While The New Atlantis purports to be a scientific journal, it is not peer reviewed, was founded by the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, and publishes articles like “The Population Control Holocaust” in apparent reference to birth control and abortion.

    How Opponents Invoke Him: “HRC and other pro-LGBTQ organizations are trying to discredit McHugh because he is the most respected medical and psychiatric authority debunking transsexual “gender change” ideology, which includes recommending “sex reassignment” surgical reconstructions — even minors —of healthy sexual organs to imitate body characteristics of the opposite sex.” Source.

    Jordan Peterson

    Who Is He: Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He acquired fame after he published YouTube videos advocating against a bill to add gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act.

    What’s The Deal: Previous to Jordan Peterson, arguments against trans rights centered around the bathroom predator myth. As the sexual predator argument was losing steam in the face of increasing acceptance for trans people, Peterson popularized a new argument: that human rights legislation would require people to use the right pronouns for non-binary individuals. He wrote of pronouns, “These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.” Peterson has never researched trans people.

    How Opponents Invoke Him: “In the later years of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, the government made it compulsory for people to use the “Heil Hitler” salute in all public greetings. They risked prosecution, arrest and even death for refusing to do so… Prof. Peterson is facing intense criticism from students, professors and administrators for saying he will not use genderless pronouns (such as “they”) to refer to transgender students, if asked. … Forcing members of private organizations to call transgender people by the personal pronouns of their choosing is a form of conscripted speech.” Source.

    Organizations

    American College of Pediatricians

    Who They Are: The American College of Pediatricians is a conservative advocacy group with an estimated 500 members. It is meant to be equated to the American Academy of Pediatrics which has an estimated 64,000 members.

    How Opponents Invoke Them: “Dr. Michelle Cretella is Executive Director of the American College of Pediatricians who focused on children’s behavioral health as a general pediatrician. I asked her about the Brown University study, and the increase in children identifying as transgender… “Yes. Regarding transgender identification, social contagion is unleashed on teens via the internet, mainstream and social media, messaging in schools, peer pressure, and sadly, from the medical elites who propagandize gender ideology as science.””

    Meanwhile: The evidence-based American Academy of Pediatrics has advocated to support trans youth stating “The American Academy of Pediatrics stands in support of transgender children and adults, and condemns attempts to stigmatize or marginalize them… The AAP supports policies that are gender-affirming for children – an approach that is supported by other key professional organizations.”

  • Trans people according to the National Post

    Trans people according to the National Post

    The National Post is one of two leading national newspapers in Canada. From 2011 to 2018, the National Post has released at least sixty editorials advocating against the acceptance of trans people. Most of these date from after 2014.

    So I thought I would paint a picture of trans people, as depicted by the National Post. I’m doing so without commentary as I believe it’s more revealing this way.

    Trans women are not women

    From Diluting the meaning of ‘woman,’ to appease transgender activists, is misogyny (Original title: Transwomen deserve respect. But they aren’t ‘women’):

    Radical transactivists are guilty of the worst form of misogyny in their ruthless campaign to erase from our thoughts the human female body as a unique life form.

    Such an absurdity — a woman literally redefined as a man or a woman — could be sloughed off as an over-reach if politicians, the justice system and school boards were not similarly complicit in enforcing compliance with this lie.

    Whatever is going on in his mind and heart, a biological male “is” not a female. Two plus two “is” still four.

    From Transgendered advocacy has gone too far:

    True sex change … is simply not possible; you end up as a “feminized man” or a “masculinized woman.”

    From Sorry LGBT, sex and gender are not the same:

    Psychologically trapped or not, the body remains one sex or the other until the genitalia are surgically altered.

    From Is noted feminist Germaine Greer a hateful anti-transgender misogynist?:

    “Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a f***ing woman,” [Germaine Greer] said.

    However, to be a woman involves a set of biological and social rites that someone who merely looks like a woman can never fully appreciate.

    She objects to transgender men appropriating her gender and flaunting a surgically enhanced caricature of it. They are engaging in a fantasy of womanhood free of its dangers and pitfalls.

    From Disqualifying a transgender person from a female beauty contest isn’t discrimination:

    Ms. Talackova began hormone therapy as a teenager and underwent a sex reassignment surgery two years ago.

    Even if Ms. Talackova may have always felt she was a woman, the fact is that she wasn’t.

    From Jenna Talackova goes double dipping in the theatre of gender politics:

    Ms Talackova, you will recall, is the surgically transgendered woman who successfully challenged the rules of the Miss Universe Canada contest when she was rejected according to the rules disallowing transsexuals.

    I should think that amongst the diminishing coterie of non-ideologues for whom beauty contests still hold significance, Ms Talackova’s presence was a joke. A joke, mind you, they have been well trained in political correctness enough to understand they mustn’t laugh out loud at, but a joke nonetheless.

    From One gay man’s lonely fight against Ontario’s new law banning ‘mother’ and ‘father’:

    Mocking the transgender argument that people are whatever gender they feel they are — male, female, something in between, or none of the above — Clark refuses to concede longstanding facts of life: “Men don’t have vaginas or female anatomy … and women don’t have penises,” he says.

    From Between two sexes:

    …any attempt by one sex to pass as the other is an impossibility, since males and females are different…

    From This is what Bruce Jenner thought women were?:

    I finally figured it out: the Vanity Fair cover of Caitlyn Jenner represents none of what matters about women, and lots of what harms us. That a man — athletic, accomplished, successful — can, in 2015, announce to the world: “I’ve decided to become a woman,” and then go on to proudly present herself as a corseted, puffed-and-buffed bimbo whose only credentials as a woman are breasts and professional makeup. What’s worse: people are taking it seriously.

    From Caitlyn Jenner trivializes the momentousness of what it means to be a woman:

    As Mark Steyn puts it in a deeply insightful column analyzing the new tyranny of trans correctness, Caitlyn is neither man nor woman – “she’s a transwoman – a new, separate … category…

    By her family, Caitlyn is a woman, and by her 10 million Twitter followers, Caitlyn is a woman… But by doctrinaire feminists – and I never thought I would say this, but they seem to me, in terms of ideological integrity, to be the brave ones in this affair – she’s not a woman.

    From Caitlyn Jenner, Rachel Dolezal and the identity double standard:

    And it’s instructive to contrast Dolezal’s fate for saying she feels black with that of Bruce Jenner for saying he feels like a woman.

    It perfectly captures the modern spirit of narcissistic relativism. And once you abolish truth you never find a stopping place. Social change is a process not a destination. But once “Caitlyn” Jenner has been lionessized on the cover of Vanity Fair, what frontiers remain?

    And if you can change your sex just by saying “Ecce femina” why not your race while you’re at it? And your height.

    From Hillary’s hypocrisy:

    It’s an odd world. Glamour magazine recently named the former Bruce Jenner as its Woman of the Year. … In this context, coming out is simply to be understood as an act of self-declaration. If a person self-identifies as X, Y or Z, then he, she, ze or hir has to be what he, she, ze or hir professes to be. If it’s a nightmare for grammarians, just think of the chaos in biology departments.

     “I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a fucking cocker spaniel,” [Germaine Greer] said.

    From Delaware students can now choose their own race. This should end well:

    I have a chicken-and-egg theory about the whole trans phenomenon we are witnessing. It only took off in a big way when the chemical means became available to artificially mimic the opposite sex in self-presentation. In other words, the notion that one was born in the wrong body only became a social contagion when the look of the assumed identity could be approximated via medication.

    From Sex and the troubled mind (Original title: Gender issues are a matter of sex and the troubled mind):

    It has become politically incorrect to suggest that transgenderism or transsexualism is anything more than an alternate lifestyle … In the new parlance, “normal” is not how people are born biologically, it is whatever they think they are.

    …we should lend our efforts to research that will lead to a cure for this terribly sad psychological problem.

    From Conservatives may win elections. But liberals have been winning the culture:

    But, barely pausing to celebrate their victory on gay marriage, the identity-group enforcers have gone full steam ahead on transgender issues.

    Having done an impressive job of demolishing the basic societal building block of the family, the ambitious liberal is now moving on to demolishing the basic biological building block of the sexes.

    Parents should not accept their trans child

    From B.C. school official protests ‘transgender education’ — and pays the price:

    Letting little children choose to change gender is nothing short of child abuse

    From Between two sexes:

    Biological homelessness — “gender identity disorder” in the jargon — is a very real, biologically rooted condition, but it is nothing to celebrate or encourage.

    Yet the message we are getting from academics and pedagogues fixated on gender equality is that biological ambiguity should be valorized and even encouraged, at any rate certainly not discouraged.

    From Stop being a jerk over someone’s pronoun preference — they’re human beings, not issues:

    “Let’s say it were possible to take a 10-year-old kid and make them either a well-adjusted lesbian or turn them into a female-to-male transsexual,” Blanchard told Rogan. “I don’t see anything wrong with saying it’s better to make this kid into a lesbian, because being a lesbian doesn’t require breast amputation, the construction of a not-very-convincing false penis, and a lifetime of testosterone shots.”

    A trans child coming out is cause for parents not to accept them (and parents are the victims here)

    From Parents face scorn for worrying about letting their children change genders (Original title: Parents victimized in the identity vs mental health battle over transgendered children):

    “Out of the blue,” never having shown signs of gender dysphoria before puberty, a girl announces she is trans.

    Many parents, influenced by a bullishly trans-supportive cultural environment … offer uncritical support for transitioning. By contrast, the skeptical parents think medicalization is too drastic for what could be a transient phase, and resist. What happens to them isn’t pretty.

    From A new report sounds the alarm on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria:

    Imagine yourself the parent of an adolescent boy or (more likely) girl without a single previous sign of body dysphoria, who “out of the blue” decides she is transgender.

    Parents often felt betrayed by the unprofessional attitudes of clinicians they consulted: psychologists, pediatricians, gender therapists and endocrinologists. Many were resistant to exploring other sources of distress, or hostile to parental testimony regarding their children’s fabrications.

    From How trans activists are unethically influencing autistic children to change genders:

    Their parents felt confused at what appeared to them to be a sudden change in their daughters.

    Their experiences align with accounts by parents of “trans” kids on the blog, 4thwavenow.com, described as “a community of parents and friends skeptical of the ‘transgender/child/teen’ trend.”

    Tumblr is to blame for this trans thing

    From Parents face scorn for worrying about letting their children change genders (Original title: Parents victimized in the identity vs mental health battle over transgendered children):

    Mothers I’ve spoken to referred to Tumblr and DeviantArt as prime influences.

    From A new report sounds the alarm on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria:

    Almost invariably, these teenagers spend an inordinate amount of time on certain websites, notably Tumblr and Reddit. Here they can find advice on how to lie to clinicians: “Get a story ready in your head … keep the lie to a minimum” and “look up the DSM for the diagnostic criteria for transgender and make sure your story fits it.”

    She found reviewing Reddit, SubReddit and Tumblr comments very troubling. Disparagement of heterosexuals and “cisgenders” is rife. Contempt for parents is encouraged. Feelings of victimhood are promoted.

    This trans thing is a social contagion

    From Delaware students can now choose their own race. This should end well:

    I have a chicken-and-egg theory about the whole trans phenomenon we are witnessing. It only took off in a big way when the chemical means became available to artificially mimic the opposite sex in self-presentation. In other words, the notion that one was born in the wrong body only became a social contagion when the look of the assumed identity could be approximated via medication.

    From Parents face scorn for worrying about letting their children change genders (Original title: Parents victimized in the identity vs mental health battle over transgendered children):

     Linda had resisted affirming her daughter’s decision to transition because of its suddenness, and because the daughter had a history of other psychological issues. She voiced her concerns to the group, expressing her opinion that [Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria] was a “social contagion” rather than a true identity. Linda said she would not support medical intervention.

    From A new report sounds the alarm on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria:

    One reinforces the theory that [Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria] can be a form of “social contagion.” (In one case study, a 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends announced they were transgender within a year of a popular coach’s announcement that she was transgender.)

    Trans people are exploiting children (with sex education)

    From How trans activists are unethically influencing autistic children to change genders:

    The trans movement is crossing ethical lines with a vulnerable subset of youth struggling with issues of gender identity.

    A recent article by Elise Ehrhard in Crisis Magazine, a Catholic periodical, addresses the aggressive approach by adult trans activists in recruiting adolescents with Asperger’s Syndrome or other types of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to their cause.

    From Between two sexes:

    Sex merging is especially present in domains where pre-sexual children are ripe for indoctrination.

    At the gender-neutral Egalia pre-school in Stockholm, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.

    Ideologues applaud these bizarre initiatives, but I don’t know any ordinary person, including myself, who is not appalled by this absurd and dangerous impulse toward social engineering.

    From B.C. school official protests ‘transgender education’ — and pays the price:

    SOGI 123 [curriculum supplement on sexual orientation and gender identity] represents a sectarian belief system, whose advocates seek normalization of the statistically rare phenomenon of irreversible gender dysphoria through an unproven concept — despite the assertions of transactivist militants, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that biology and gender are unlinked — that can cause psychological harm to children.

    I predict a surge toward home-schooling by parents who refuse to allow their children’s minds to be exploited as pedagogical guinea pigs.

    From Vancouver school board gender policy allows “xe” or “xem” in place of “he” or “her”:

    B.C., it is clear, does not view schools as a place in which children are taught the basic tools necessary to navigate life – math, science, geography – but as petri dishes for social experimentation in which teachers are lab technicians with unwitting children as their mice.

    On Monday, the Vancouver School Board approved a policy change aimed at accommodating gender identity and sexual orientation. … Parents who questioned the change argued, quite reasonably, that six-year-olds aren’t qualified to understand all the intricacies of identity issues.

    From Shutting our minds to the truth:

    This is abundantly clear in the third grade of the Ontario sex-ed curriculum, where children are introduced to the thought-experiment that their gender identity may be at odds with their biological sex. They can be a male trapped in a female body, and vice versa.

    The moral and psychological and health implications of this experimental teaching alone would be worthy of a parental revolt. The suicide rates for trans people rises above 40 per cent.

    Yet even purely intellectually speaking, the public education establishment is involved in disseminating what can only be termed propaganda.

    From Suggestions for the new Ontario sex-ed curriculum:

    Much of what children are learning about transgenderism today, at a very tender age, is not science-based, but activist-dictated theory that can result in psychological harm.

    Advertisement run in the National Post on September 24, 2011. The Post apologized a week later following complaints, stating the ad among other things singled “out of a specific group of people who have made choices about their sexuality with which the group disagrees”.

    Trans people are worse-off for transitioning

    From Parents face scorn for worrying about letting their children change genders (Original title: Parents victimized in the identity vs mental health battle over transgendered children):

    …the assumption that a gender transition will solve their problems is unrealistic and potentially tragic, as elevated post-transition suicide attempt rates demonstrate.

    Meanwhile, they’ve observed “the mental health and social relationships of children with [Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria] get much worse once they adopt transgender identities,”

    From Transgendered advocacy has gone too far:

    And they are correct, as many apparently transgender children accept their biological identity at puberty, and many adults express regret over their surgeries.

    Of the 324 surgical patients studied, the suicide rate was 20 times the non-transgender population.

    From Bill 77, the Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act, is a dangerous overreach:

    A 2011 long term Swedish study that followed a 30-year trajectory of 324 people who had sex reassignment surgery found that suicide rates 10 years after surgery were 20 times that of the non-trans population.

    Surely it is the government’s first responsibility to try to prevent suicides rather than to validate emotive claims made by those least capable of assessing their condition with objectivity.

    Trans women should be prohibited from women’s washrooms

    From Diluting the meaning of ‘woman,’ to appease transgender activists, is misogyny (Original title: Transwomen deserve respect. But they aren’t ‘women’):

    Transactivists bristle at the very idea that girls and women may be at risk in single-sex environments when biological males have access to them.

    A Sept. 2 article in The Sunday Times states the newspaper’s own investigation showed that “(a)lmost 90 per cent of reported sexual assaults, harassment and voyeurism in swimming pool and sports-changing rooms happen in unisex facilities, which make up less than half the total.”

    From Can Catholic teachings on sexuality be reconciled with mainstream values?:

    On a practical level, there may well be concerns with allowing biologically male or female children to use a communal bathroom belonging to the opposite sex, and the NDP should respect a school’s discretion on this point.

    From The left is now so arrogant it doesn’t even see the need to cover up its petty retributions:

    So the apparent message is that if you want to have a career, even start one, stay away from anyone espousing what have very suddenly become intolerable views on gender like that men shouldn’t pee in the girls’ bathroom.

    From There’s no safe space on campus to debate bathroom politics:

    But Trent has instituted a policy of gender-neutral washrooms, and Brown balks at sharing intimate space with members of the biologically opposite sex. She discovered that expression of her discomfort is more than unwelcome on her campus; it has literally become a forbidden opinion.

    To conclude on a personal note, from what I understand of Transparent’s Maura, she would have been perfectly happy to pee in a designated single-stall bathroom, physical relief, not tyranny over others, being her objective.

    Trans people are ruining sports

    From Hockey dressing rooms should belong to players and coaches, not human rights commissions:

    Because of a settlement reached four years ago in a case brought to the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 2013, the Ontario Hockey Federation, the governing body for most of minor hockey in the province, has now trained its coaches in gender diversity…

    If only Jesse Thompson … wouldn’t have needed to file a human rights complaint — and now, there wouldn’t be a whole new set of rules and regs tailored to 0.7 per cent of the population with issues that were only ever a problem for 0.7% of the hockey population.

    From Pronouns are ruining the best thing about hockey:

    I think a mandatory pronoun check-in is regrettable because of the emphasis on difference as opposed to an emphasis on oneness — that we are all the same.

    From Is noted feminist Germaine Greer a hateful anti-transgender misogynist?:

    Greer was expressing a not-unreasonable concern that a transgender athlete would enjoy an unfair biological advantage over her female counterparts.

    From Why the world may end with a bang — and sooner than you think:

    Then transgender rights came along and within a couple of years we had people born male racing in women’s track events and heading feminist organizations, and academic censorship of opposing views. Can it really keep going like this?

    It’s okay to disclose the genitals of trans people to an international audience without their consent

    From Caitlyn Jenner, Rachel Dolezal and the identity double standard:

    But you could cast as much doubt on Jenner’s claim to be female. She has, after all, got a penis.

    From Women’s prison left to cope after getting male inmate who identifies as female:

    Yet Bellmore, who still has the requisite male gear, is in a so-called “living unit” with as many as 11 other women.

    From We’re supposed to send people, not penises, to prison:

    Since Edison identifies as a woman but has not had gender reassignment surgery, Canadian law says she must be held in a men’s institution.

    From Disqualifying a transgender person from a female beauty contest isn’t discrimination:

    Ms. Talackova began hormone therapy as a teenager and underwent a sex reassignment surgery two years ago.

    From Caitlyn Jenner trivializes the momentousness of what it means to be a woman:

    Compare her to a partially transitioned woman-to-man of 65 who, though everyone is aware he has no penis, dresses up as a Navy Seal in camouflage…

    They/them pronouns are too hard or at least part of a conspiracy

    Editorial cartoon that appeared in the National Post in May 2016.

    From The confusion of raising genderless children and the time I was ‘Jack’:

    I can’t even get my head around what it must be like trying to determine what “they” want for dinner; it must be like an endless game of who’s-on-first.

    I find it precious to be asked to call a single human being by a plural pronoun, I would, if asked. (I wouldn’t write it that way, however, because it just gets stupid. See what-do-you-want-for-dinner, above.)

    From The right to be politically incorrect:

    I would not use what have come to be known as “preferred pronouns” to refer to people who believe that their gender does not fit neatly into the traditional categories of male and female.

    I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words “zhe” and “zher.” These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.

    Finally, it is absurd to insist that each person should have the right to, or could practically, choose their own pronouns.

    From Prof. Peterson must not face this assault on reason and his rights alone:

    I have and continue to urge against and dismiss as absurd and outrageous the demand that those who purport to be in a transgender condition that is neither male nor female, have a right to be addressed in a new vocabulary of their devising.

    From If gender identity debate at U of T was about free speech, then the battle is truly lost:

    Bryson’s official profile on the UBC site uses the pronoun “they” to refer to her, as in, “Throughout Mary’s 27 years at UBC, they have served in many senior administrative roles…” I take from this that “they” is her preferred pronoun, but I decline to use it.

    From Jordan Peterson speaks for those of us that refuse to follow the ‘great liberal death wish’:

    “Ze” for he or she and “Zir” in place of his or him are the sticking points, but what is accumulating behind these imbecilic distinctions is quite sinister.

    But no individual or group has the right to invent a new vocabulary and a new co-equal gender because of a state of ambivalence or confusion about which sex they are.

    From Meet the new ‘human rights’ — where you are forced by law to use ‘reasonable’ pronouns:

    On Thursday, the Senate passed Bill C-16, the Liberal government’s legislation that adds “gender identity or expression” to grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

    Few Canadians realize how seriously these statutes infringe upon freedom of speech.

    In other words, failure to use a person’s pronoun of choice — “ze,” “zir,” “they” or any one of a multitude of other potential non-words — will land you in hot water with the commission. That, in turn, can lead to orders for correction, apology, Soviet-like “re-education,” fines and, in cases of continued non-compliance, incarceration for contempt of court.

    From When the government tells us how to speak:

    Prof. Peterson is facing intense criticism from students, professors and administrators for saying he will not use genderless pronouns (such as “they”) to refer to transgender students, if asked.

    Forcing members of private organizations to call transgender people by the personal pronouns of their choosing is a form of conscripted speech.

    From Are zee ready for the dictatorship of the gender warriors?:

    The aim of the exercise is to remove any hint of gender from the language. It’s the goal of people who feel that being identified as male or female is a trap, or a prison, and wish to break free. They do not “identify” as either of the conventional genders, and feel their perspective should be recognized and respected by others, and that the language should be adapted to suit their needs.

    If the language can be bent to suit every individual preference, it ceases to have rules and becomes yet another victim of political purity, as dictated by whatever identity group has the megaphone today.

    From Our campuses show we’re practicing cultural genocide on ourselves:

    The cowardice of the regime limped to the aid of the winner of the media and public relations contest, as the University of Toronto did last year when transgender groups tried to force Peterson to address them in a special vocabulary, the words “he, she, and you” being somehow disrespectful.

    From Jordan Peterson — a real professor, at last:

    The older, raw, honest tyrannies told people what not to speak. But the new, wilier versions, midwifed by our famous human rights overseers, are proposing to insist on what we must speak. 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.

    From Embattled U of T professor a warrior for common sense and plain speech:

    He’s a hurricane of fresh air, this university professor who baldly says that one of the many reasons he won’t adopt the faddish new non-binary gender pronouns is that “the people who made those words are possessed by ideology and not to be trusted anyway.”

    From Jordan Peterson vs. the new freedom fighters at Queen’s University:

    In other words, if I, as a short, old, straight, white woman demand to be called “they” or “him” or “the king of England,” I must be accommodated.

    From M-103 is a political billboard. Pick a side and advertise your virtues:

    The recent controversy over Professor Jordan Peterson’s refusal to mouth the latest neologisms for transgenders — the “xe, xir, xem” and the like — earned for him accusations of being “transphobic.” I think any fair reading of Peterson’s arguments utterly deflate that accusation.

    From The prime moment Jordan Peterson’s ‘gotcha’ was heard around the world:

    The case of the professor who refused to speak made-up pronouns…

    From In 12 years, free speech on our campuses has gone from routine to besieged:

    Accentuating the differences of a group already afflicted by feelings of being outcast, through inventing and mandating the use of discriminative gender identifiers, will only exacerbate feelings of ostracism.

    From Yes, the ‘gender unicorn’ is absurd, but something even wackier will follow:

    That toolkit, by the way, also suggests that teachers address students in gender-neutral terms such as friends, folks or “comrades.”

    True stuff, as Peterson might say, and beyond absurd.

    Using trans people’s pronouns is comparable to Hitler, Mao, 1984 and genocide

    From When the government tells us how to speak:

    In the later years of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, the government made it compulsory for people to use the “Heil Hitler” salute in all public greetings. They risked prosecution, arrest and even death for refusing to do so.

    Prof. Peterson is facing intense criticism from students, professors and administrators for saying he will not use genderless pronouns (such as “they”) to refer to transgender students, if asked.

    Forcing members of private organizations to call transgender people by the personal pronouns of their choosing is a form of conscripted speech.

    From The right to be politically incorrect:

    I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words “zhe” and “zher.” These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.

    Bill C-16 [adds “gender identity or expression” to grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act] is dangerous legislation. Those who formulated it and who are pushing it and its sister legislation are dangerous people.

    From Diluting the meaning of ‘woman,’ to appease transgender activists, is misogyny (Original title: Transwomen deserve respect. But they aren’t ‘women’):

    In his writings on totalitarianism, George Orwell powerfully exposed the link between the manipulation of language and the erosion of individual liberty. Ideologues understand that linguistic control precedes, and is crucial to, political and cultural power. The novel 1984 illuminated the shame in being compelled — figuratively — to endorse the lie that two plus two is five.

    Categorization is the basis of knowledge. Whatever is going on in his mind and heart, a biological male “is” not a female. Two plus two “is” still four.

    From Our campuses show we’re practicing cultural genocide on ourselves:

    Shepherd had created a “toxic climate” and an “unsafe learning environment,” and had violated the university’s “gender and violence policy,” and had incited “gender-based transphobia” by presenting, with contrary argument, the views of Peterson.

    The inquisitors falsely described Peterson as a “white supremacist” who “targeted and harassed” transgender students and incited “transphobia” in a manner that is illegal under human rights legislation.

    The cowardice of the regime limped to the aid of the winner of the media and public relations contest, as the University of Toronto did last year when transgender groups tried to force Peterson to address them in a special vocabulary, the words “he, she, and you” being somehow disrespectful.

    From Trudeau’s love of dictatorships is showing again at home:

    It’s a harsh word, but “totalitarian” is the mot juste to describe governments that use their power — and public resources — to enforce ideological agreement with the maximum leader. That is exactly what the federal Liberals are doing in imposing an ideological test and coerced speech upon the Canada Summer Jobs Program.

    But now, in order to qualify, the federal department of employment demands that the “organization’s core mandate respect … the right to access safe and legal abortions … and the rights of gender-diverse and transgender Canadians.” If you refuse the loyalty oath to Liberal party policy, you can’t apply.

    From Meet the new ‘human rights’ — where you are forced by law to use ‘reasonable’ pronouns:

    On Thursday, the Senate passed Bill C-16, the Liberal government’s legislation that adds “gender identity or expression” to grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

    Few Canadians realize how seriously these statutes infringe upon freedom of speech.

    In other words, failure to use a person’s pronoun of choice — “ze,” “zir,” “they” or any one of a multitude of other potential non-words — will land you in hot water with the commission. That, in turn, can lead to orders for correction, apology, Soviet-like “re-education,” fines and, in cases of continued non-compliance, incarceration for contempt of court.

    From Embattled U of T professor a warrior for common sense and plain speech:

    He’s a hurricane of fresh air, this university professor who baldly says that one of the many reasons he won’t adopt the faddish new non-binary gender pronouns is that “the people who made those words are possessed by ideology and not to be trusted anyway.”

    He was influenced by the likes of Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl and “more peripherally by people like (the former Czech Republic president) Vaclav Havel, who noted very carefully the tight causal relationship between the pathologizing of everyday language and the degeneration of societies into authoritarian states.”

    From WLU’s contemptible conduct proof of intellectual assault underway on campuses:

    C-16 amended the Criminal Code to extend protection against “hate propaganda” to any segment of the public “distinguished by gender identity or expression,” and made “bias, prejudice, or hate based on gender identity or expression an aggravating circumstance when it is a motivating factor in a crime.”

    As Senator Linda Frum tweeted: “Proponents of Bill C-16, including Justice Minister [Wilson-Raybould], testified that Bill C-16 could not be used as a tool to silence reasonable free speech. Yet here we are just a few Orwellian months later.”

    From For gender Marxists, pronouns are the latest patch of hotly contested terrain in the revolution:

    For gender Marxists, pronouns are the latest patch of hotly contested terrain in the ongoing revolution.

    Being compelled to validate someone else’s unsupported hypothesis by using what he believes are meaningless words, offends Peterson intellectually (and is sure to offend many religious people: “male and female He created them”).

    Peterson is also prepared for an eventual trial in front of a human rights tribunal. Such a show trial would be a perfect object lesson in “velvet totalitarianism,” a trope coined decades ago by recently deceased University of Toronto psychology professor emeritus John Furedy.

    From One gay man’s lonely fight against Ontario’s new law banning ‘mother’ and ‘father’:

    In deference to transgender activists’ opposition to binary gender categories, her bill replaces most uses of the words “mother” and “father” in Ontario law, substituting for them “birth parent” and “parent.”

    Clark calls Bill 28 “the Handmaid’s Tale Act,” referencing Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel in which women are coerced into bearing children for infertile theocratic elites. That’s because it “literally rewrites motherhood and fatherhood,” he says. “In fact, it redefines motherhood out of existence.”

    From Brave New World, here we come:

    There are increasingly eerie parallels to our own time. For instance, in [Brave New World], the words “father” and “mother” are taboo, vulgar, even obscene. As recently as 2002 I felt Huxley was straining to make a point here. Yet politically correct government forms now forbid these terms as oppressive to gays, the transgendered and what have you.

    From B.C. teacher fired for having the wrong opinion:

    Before classes even started last fall, teachers underwent serious “gender training” given by QMUNITY, an organization for LGBTQQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning and two-spirit) people. Teachers were told in no uncertain terms, for instance, that “no one is 100-per-cent male or female” and that everyone is somewhere on the “gender spectrum.”

    What happened to the teacher over the ensuing few days sounds like something out of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China, where people were subjected to what were known as ideological struggle sessions, forced to “confess” to various imagined sins before large crowds, and roundly denounced.

    From Thought police strike again as Wilfrid Laurier grad student is chastised for showing Jordan Peterson video:

    Everyone is entitled to their opinions, Pimlott said, but the university has a “duty to make sure we’re not furthering … Jordan Peterson.”

    They were oblivious to the fact that they themselves were proving him right by holding the 2017 equivalent of the “struggle sessions” so beloved in Mao’s China.

    From Jordan Peterson — a real professor, at last:

    The older, raw, honest tyrannies told people what not to speak. But the new, wilier versions, midwifed by our famous human rights overseers, are proposing to insist on what we must speak. 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.

    From Campus free speech advocates owe pro-life students their help:

    In my observation … the least “vulnerable” and “marginalized” people on campuses today … are those in the trans community. Their professors, the administration and equity officers are falling over themselves to make life “safe” for them. We saw proof of that in the Maoist “struggle session” Lindsay Shepherd experienced. Her interrogators demonstrated that they consider “transphobia” to be an egregious thoughtcrime.

    Meanwhile advocating for genocide of trans people should be permissible

    From You think Pink Day is harmless until you raise your voice against it in the town square:

    But the advocating-genocide-against-any identifiable-group business was interesting. It was just recently, via Bill C-16, that “gender identity” and “gender expression” were added to the Canadian Human Rights Code and the criminal code.

    With the criminal code, it means the section against hate propaganda — this is the one under which advocating genocide falls — is similarly enlarged to include the tiny percentage of people who don’t have the same gender identity as their biological sex.

    No wonder Peterson raised the alarm.

    Defy the stultifying parameters around public discussion that exist in this suffocating country at your peril.

    It’s harder being transphobic now

    From Sex and the troubled mind (Original title: Gender issues are a matter of sex and the troubled mind):

    It has become politically incorrect to suggest that transgenderism or transsexualism is anything more than an alternate lifestyle … In the new parlance, “normal” is not how people are born biologically, it is whatever they think they are.

    From Living in a country where you daren’t be anything but gay friendly:

    These days, those who don’t embrace the full spectrum of gay and transgender life are often silenced.

    From Absolutist dogma is chilling transgender research:

    It is increasingly difficult for those studying transgender issues to report any findings that challenge the progressive narrative.

    They have had the integrity to explore sexual variation in all its complexity, but have been stymied by transgender turf warriors bent on imposing an absolutist dogma that chills scientific and therapeutic progress.

    From Scandal at CAMH — one entirely of its own making:

    But, thanks to aggressive activism in the trans movement, today any interventions to prevent gender transitioning in children is deemed by LGBT loyalists — and increasingly by legislators — as insensitive or even abusive. Ontario’s 2015 Bill 77, for example, bans funding for “any services rendered that seek to change or direct the sexual orientation or gender identity of a patient, including efforts to change or direct the patient’s behaviour or gender expression.”

    Gender politics is putting a chill on objective research and psychiatrists’ ability to offer reasonable clinical help to distraught families.

    Referenced articles

    A total of 60 editorials published by the National Post with anti-trans commentary were selected for this article. The oldest editorial dates from 2011, the vast majority were published from 2014 until now (September 2018).