Category: Trans Rights

On July 11^th 2018 the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PCs) followed through on a campaign promise rid Ontario of the 2015 sexual education curriculum. Come September, students would be taught the 1998 curriculum.

The 2015 curriculum included content about consent, online bullying, and LGBT realities. None of these were present in the 1998 curriculum, which was devised years before same-sex marriage became legal, when the Ontario government still funded conversion therapy for trans youth, and before Google or even MySpace were founded.

Progressive Conservatives have maintained that this move had nothing to do with homophobia and transphobia. This article demonstrates those assertions to be false.

Introduction of 2015 curriculum

In 2007, the Liberal government started the process of updating the 1998 sex ed curriculum. What followed was two years of consultation with 700 students, 70 organizations and more than 2,400 people. Among the organizations who helped develop the content was the Ontario Institute for Catholic Education, which works on behalf of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario, the organisation that decides what’s Catholic in Ontario Catholic schools. Then in April of 2010, the government announced they would roll out the curriculum in the fall. The curriculum was 208 pages long as compared to the 42 pages for the 1998 curriculum.

A movement formed to oppose it, including on the grounds that it mentioned gender identity and sexual orientation:

“Christian right leader Charles McVety, who is also part of the coalition, said it is unconscionable to teach children as young as eight years old gender identity and sexual orientation. He accused the Premier of listening to “special interest groups with an agenda,” including former education minister Kathleen Wynne, who is openly gay.”

Following this backlash, the government scrapped the revised sex ed curriculum.

In 2014, the Liberal government picked it back up and sent a survey to 4,000 parents as added consultation. In February of 2015, the curriculum was ready. It was now 239 pages long. By this point, the 1998 curriculum was now the oldest sex ed curriculum in Canada. The Liberal government declared that it would introduce the new curriculum for September.

Among the changes, in Grade 1, children would learn the proper names for their body parts. In Grade 3, children would learn that some people had gay parents. In Grade 6, they’d learn that masturbation isn’t shameful. In Grade 8, they’d learn about gender identity. In Grade 9, they’d learn about staying safe online. The 2015 curriculum can be downloaded here in full.

Protests ensued. One set of parents organized a student strike:

The group Ontario Parents and Students Strike put a notification letter online for parents to send to schools. The group also operates a Facebook page, “Parents & students on strike: one week no school,” which has more than 7,500 likes.

The notification letter says the parents object to curriculum material, which it says is “age-inappropriate” and does not “align with the principles and beliefs of our family, and thousands of other families across Ontario.”

Homophobia and transphobia were rife in the opposition to the curriculum. As one parent explained at the time:

Kimberly Cormier, another mother at the protest, told VICE News it’s the parts of the curriculum that discuss gender identity and LGBTQ issues that trouble her most. “We don’t need to tell the kids about transsexual, two-spirited-ness. Actually, I don’t want to use this terminology because the kids are present here today. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to protect them from,” she said.

Likewise, as a letter to the Toronto Star asserted:

“It will teach Gay-Trans propaganda starting in grade 1 [age 6]. Destroy the idea of gender, natural law, heterosexual family normalcy. You choose your gender.”

The disdain towards trans people was also evident in the mass-produced posters of the time:

Protesters in 2015 for the new sex ed curriculum. One sign reads “Rights to change change gender, but No Rights to choose education?”

PC Party of Ontario from 2011 – 2018

When the revised curriculum was introduced in 2010, the PC Party of Ontario was openly homophobic. For instance, in 2011, PC Leader Tim Hudak defended his party distributing misleading anti-gay flyers:

Then in 2012, the PC Party opposed the Accepting Schools Act, which would put an end to the ban of student run LGBT-oriented clubs in Ontario Catholic Schools. The bill ultimately passed without their support.

But then something changed.

In 2012, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo introduced Toby’s Act to recognize gender identity and expression in the Ontario Human Rights Act. She had introduced it since 2007 but it never became law. Liberal MPP Yasir Naqvi of the Liberals and PC MPP Christine Elliott co-sponsored the 2012 bill. This time, it passed.

In 2015, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo introduced another bill to ban conversion therapy in Ontario. The PC Party supported the bill. It passed.

In 2016, NDP Cheri DiNovo introduced yet another bill so that same-sex parents would not have to adopt their own children. The PC’s supported the bill unanimously, though, half of the members were not there. This suggested that the progressive stance of the party was led by their leadership.

In 2016, PC Leader Patrick Brown made the following statement in support of the 2015 sex ed curriculum:

I strongly support an updated curriculum that takes into account changing attitudes and the world in which children now dwell. They are being asked to understand challenging topics in ways their parents were not. It is important to have sex education to combat homophobia, and raise important issues like consent, mental health, bullying, and gender identity. The world has changed and so should the curriculum.

Then in January 2018, Patrick Brown resigned following allegations of sexual misconduct. This was months before the Ontario election. The PC’s started a leadership race.

Lead-up to 2018 Ontario election

In the PC leadership race, there were four contenders. Two were socially progressive: Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney. Two were socially conservative: Doug Ford and Tanya Granic Allen.

Tanya Granic Allen is the president of Parents As First Educators (PAFE), which bills itself as a “leader in the fight” against a “radical sex-ed curriculum in Ontario.” When she entered the race, the Toronto Star published the headline “Opponent of Ontario’s sex ed curriculum enters PC leadership race“.

Granic Allen’s homophobia and transphobia was well documented. On a PAFE blog entry written by her, she warned against “influencing young children in the classroom to be accepting of transgenderism” and in another linked to a text called “Gender Ideology Harms Children“. She asked her readers to oppose the trans rights bill. On a television, Granic Allen was saying that same-sex marriage was causing the “demise of society.”

To little surprise, Tanya Granic Allen brought up sex ed repeatedly during leadership debates. She stated she would speak for people who oppose “the Kathleen Wynne sex-ed agenda“. She slammed the bill that banned conversion therapy. She did not appear to speak to any other issue, as this exchange between Steve Paikin, the moderator of the leadership debate, and Granic Allen demonstrates:

“What else in education today needs improving that you’ve got your eye on?” asked Paikin. “Sex ed isn’t going to improve math scores, so tell me about something else.”

Granic Allen’s reply: “Maybe they will focus more on math if they’re not talking about anal sex in the classroom.”

Throughout the leadership debates, Doug Ford and Tanya Granic Allen became a team, often supporting each other’s points in opposition to the two institutional candidates. Granic Allen had little chance to win the PC leadership but nonetheless had a base, with her support critical for Ford’s leadership race win.

Doug Ford won the leadership race. He vowed to repeal sex-ed. He appointed Tanya Granic Allen to run as the PC candidate in Mississauga Centre. She was later ousted, after much resistance from Ford, over a speech from 2014 surfacing in which she said sex ed and same-sex marriage made her want to vomit. The PC Party of Ontario was ready for the Ontario election.

On June 7th 2018, Doug Ford was elected the new premier of Ontario. The Liberals, who had governed the province for the previous fifteen years, lost official party status. NPD MPP Cheri DiNovo left politics. Liberal MPP Yasir Naqvi lost his seat. Charles McVety, the religious leader who claims that “homosexuals prey on children” and who opposed the sex ed curriculum from its inception, was invited to Doug Ford’s throne speech.

Post-election events

Following the election, supporters and opponents made their voices heard.

A petition was put together by supporters of the 2015 curriculum asking the government not to repeal the updated sex ed. Over 50,000 signatures were collected.

Meanwhile, opponents were vocal too. The National Post ran an op-ed by Barbara Kay on July 3rd advocating for the repeal:

“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.”

“The doubt-encouraging “Genderbread” charts, which attempt to explain differences between gender identity, sexual preference and biological sex and have been brought into Ontario classrooms by some teachers, should disappear altogether.”

“If they believe in social-engineering theories, let progressive parents teach their kids “social construction” and “gender fluidity” at home.”

Repeal of 2015 curriculum

On July 11th, 2018, the Minister for Education, PC MPP Lisa Thompson, announced that the government would rid the province of the 2015 sex education curriculum.

“The sex-ed component is going to be reverted back to the manner in which it was prior to the changes that were introduced by the Liberal government,” Ms. Thompson said. “We’re going to be moving very swiftly in our consultations, and I will be sharing with you our process in the weeks to come.”

This was the same MPP who had opposed legislation that would end the ban on LGBT-themed clubs by Catholic Ontario schools.

Immediately following the news of the sex ed repeal, a conservative publication ran the headline “Doug Ford’s repeal of radical sex ed is the beginning of victory for parents in the transgender wars“.

There were protests by supporters of the sex ed curriculum. Educators, such as the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, released statements opposing the repeal. However, it is telling to look at the views post-repeal of those who wanted that sex ed curriculum gone.

The July 15th demonstration by supporters of the 2015 sex ed curriculum in Ottawa was disrupted by a group of white nationalists.

The Globe & Mail published a piece by Debra Soh called “Ontario’s sex-ed backlash isn’t about children’s safety” stating that:

“The curriculum promotes the idea that there are more than two genders and that gender identity is socially constructed.”

“A curriculum that teaches gender fluidity is misleading and will impair a child’s ability to have an accurate understanding of the world.”

On CBC News, Barbara Kay was invited to speak on the sex ed repeal. She stated that teaching about gender identity was child abuse. On Twitter, she also alleged that trans people were “body snatching kids”:

A National Post op-ed by Marni Soupcoff cited the article “The New Sex-Ed Curriculum Would Have Saved Me From Torment Growing Up” by a gay man and the opinion of a dad who lost his daughter to bullying that “the 2015 sex ed curriculum could have saved my daughter” when she called such responses to sex ed “sad and misguided.”

Government response following repeal

There was tremendous negative media attention on the sex ed repeal, including internationally from Time Magazine and the BBC. On July 16th, the education minister Lisa Thompson stated the repeal would only be partial and continue including gender identity and cyber safety:

“We know they need to learn about consent,” she said at the legislature. “We know they need to learn about cyber safety, we know they need to learn about gender identity and appreciation. But we also know that the former Liberal government’s consultation process was completely flawed.”

A short time later, Thompson told reporters that only a portion of the curriculum will be rolled back, not the entire document.

“What we’ll be looking at is the developing sexual relations,” she said. “That’s the part in the curriculum that we’ll be taking a look at.”

Hours later, her office released the following retraction – there would not be a partial repeal that left in gender identity and cyber safety:

“While these consultations occur, we are reverting to the full health and physical education curriculum that was last taught in 2014.”

As the backlash continued, Lisa Thompson attempted to present the 1998 curriculum as the “2014 curriculum”, reflecting the last year the 1998 curriculum was taught. This was presumably to improve the optics of substituting the 2015 curriculum with one from 1998. Take this interview with her on July 26th:

Q: Okay straighten out the confusion about what curriculum is going to be taught in September?

A: In September teachers will be using the 2014 curriculum.

Q: But that’s based on the 1998 curriculum, it’s the same curriculum is it not?

A: Teachers are going to be familiar with the curriculum they are using because they utilized it in 2014.

Q: But it’s the 1998 curriculum. There is no such thing as the 2014 curriculum is there? Or can you provide that for us?

A: What we are going to be doing is asking teachers to use the 2014 curriculum as we embark on the most comprehensive consultation this province has ever seen when it comes to education. We made a campaign promise to respect parents and we are going to be doing that.

Q: There is no such thing as the 2014 curriculum. It’s the same curriculum that was taught in 1998 am I not correct?

A: The curriculum in 2014, teachers will be very used to…

Meanwhile, statements from MPP Christine Elliott, now the Deputy Premier, appeared to suggest that content not covered by the 42-page 1998 curriculum should not be discussed openly in class:

“The requirement is that the curriculum be followed,” Elliott said. “But of course there’s lots of student questions that come to teachers every day. Of course, a teacher is able to have a private discussion with a student to answer the questions.”

When asked if those discussions could include topics in the now-repealed curriculum, Elliott said teachers should help put students in touch with appropriate resources.

The government did not appear to provide any further rationalization for rescinding the sex ed curriculum in the weeks following its repeal, beyond reiterating the allegation that there was insufficient consultation. The government did not conduct any consultation before replacing the curriculum with twenty-year old information.

Conclusion

By this point, it is clear that the repeal of the sex ed curriculum was rooted in homophobia and transphobia.

The repeal was popularized by a virulent homophobe and transphobe who ran for the PC leadership on that issue alone. Her low probability of winning meant her base was up for grabs with whoever she endorsed. Ford, the other social conservative in the leadership run, became that person. He adopted the same rhetoric as Granic Allen vowing to “scrap Kathleen Wynne’s ideological sex-ed curriculum and replace it with one that is age-appropriate“. Ford won the leadership race. Then he was elected Premier, and followed through with the repeal.

The media coverage of conservative voices following the repeal further indicated that the repeal was motivated by the inclusion of content pertinent to trans experiences. Inclusion of this material was consistently presented as harmful or abusive to children.

Meanwhile, educators, including the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, and twenty of Ontario’s 72 school boards including the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and the Toronto District School Board, have all spoken against removing the 2015 curriculum.

In spite of this strong response, the government was unable to provide a reason for the repeal, beyond the disproved assertion of insufficient consultation. The only comment in support of teaching content pertaining to gender identity from a  minister was retracted the same day.

PC MPPs can deny that transphobia and homophobia had any part to play, citing “process” instead, but that would be false. Ignorance and prejudice towards sexual and gender minorities was the leading reason for its repeal.

Update – November 2018

On November 17th 2018, during the convention for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, delegates passed a resolution introduced by Tanya Granic Allen that “an Ontario PC Government will remove the teaching and promotion of ‘gender identity theory’ from Ontario schools and its curriculum.” Two days later, Doug Ford stated he was “not moving forward with that.” Ford did not have to. His government had already removed all trans-related content from the curriculum.

Since this article was written, the conservative government announced their consultation on the new sex ed curriculum would take the form of 27 telephone conference town halls across the province. Teachers reported being shut out of these consultations. This is a far cry from the 700 students, 70 organizations and more than 2,400 people consulted for the 2015 curriculum. This adds to the evidence that the lack of consultation was not the reason behind the repeal despite the government’s insistence otherwise.

In the intervening months, two lawsuits have also been launched. The first was initiated in August by six families with an eleven year old trans youth as the lead applicant. The second was put forward in September by a pair of trans teens. Their outcome is still pending as of the time of this writing.

Warning: This article contains some deeply transphobic images and text.

Following Bill C-16’s passing, I monitored Twitter and other social media platforms with respect to the bill. Initially, coverage was mostly positive. As the news of the bill’s passage left the current news cycle, the coverage turned sharply negative.

Some of it was particularly nasty. Below are example of tweets from the past month:

The situation on other social media platforms frequented by both proponents and opponents of the bill, YouTube and Facebook, wasn’t much different:

Through the month, the news media landscape remained largely positive. MacLean’s had a great article, as did The Globe & Mail. There were notable exceptions. The Ottawa Sun argued that transgender people didn’t exist:

Most dangerously, with Bill C-16, [Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] is expanding the legal enclave of “hate speech” by creating special “gender equity” rights for an entirely fictitious group.

The National Post, which had written article after article opposing the bill before its passing, continued to portray it as an infringement of free speech, granting special rights, and likening it to the oppressive Soviet regime:

Bill C-16 will give transgendered and non-gendered people the ability to dictate other people’s 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.

The CBC portrayed Bill C-16 as detrimental to [cisgender] women while arguing that trans women shouldn’t be permitted to use a women’s spa:

Bill C-16 has the capacity to actually undermine women’s rights.

The article was written by Meghan Murphy, who testified in Parliament that trans women were not women but were men who chose “to take on stereotypically feminine traits“.

Why was the negativity continuing so loudly on social media when the bill was becoming old news everywhere else and the fear-mongering assertions hadn’t come true?

While this was all going on, Jordan Peterson’s income from the crowd-funding site Patreon continued to increase, and he was now making over $55,000 a month. His fortune was in response to his YouTube videos asserting that Bill C-16 threatened his free speech. In the month since Bill C-16 has passed his monthly donations increased by nearly $10,000. Contrary to his assertions, his free speech hadn’t been impinged, much the same as it hadn’t under Toby’s Act, but generously rewarded.

I mention Peterson because he is at the heart of this opposition. He popularized the argument that would define this opposition of this iteration of the trans rights bill. The last two iterations relied on the bathroom predator myth and targeting trans women and their access to gendered spaces. This one took a fresh angle, suggesting that non-discrimination protections for non-binary individuals threatened free speech. His stance went viral, and he quickly became far more popular than the very bill he was opposing. He became more popular in the United-States than in Canada, resulting in Americans getting riled up about Bill C-16.

The bigger Jordan Peterson got, the bigger others made him. The media had a big hand to play with this. He was on television. He was testifying in Parliament. He was in newspapers. He was the subject of countless supportive editorials. His arguments that relied on othering non-binary individuals and presenting their equality as a threat to cisgender individuals were repeated over and over.

I don’t fault Jordan Peterson for his popularity. He has awful views, but so do many people. He’s not the one who propelled himself into stardom; that requires other people to do that. Those others – especially those in the media who should have known better – are just as responsible for the spread of this vitriol.

If this was an election year, I’d be concerned that this bill would be repealed. As it stands, the effects appear to be a poisoning of social media platforms for trans, non-binary and otherwise gender diverse individuals. I expect that the negative attention for the bill will die down with time as the attention of the libertarian click-tivists is captured by the next issue gone viral.

I also expect that Jordan Peterson will try to stay prescient, as his significant monthly income on Patreon depends on it. This means he’ll need to release new material, which given the financial success of his campaign against Bill C-16, might mean continuing to portray minorities seeking equality as a threat. Time will tell.

Twelve years after it was first introduced to Parliament, the law to add gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act has finally passed. The final vote in the senate was 67 in favour, 11 against, and 3 abstentions.

The day had started with conservative senators arguing that recognizing the rights of trans people infringed on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and brought up fears of sexual predators. These statements received applause from Conservatives in attendance.

The inclusion of a new group in the Canadian Human Rights Act and in relevant hate crime sections of the Criminal Code does not improve the condition for those who are discriminated against. I would like to reiterate strongly that our laws, including the Criminal Code, are no place for an awareness campaign to assist in building understanding for those who do not fit into the colloquial “norm.”

This will allow men to go into women’s change rooms and bathrooms across the country.

If a person is unwilling, for religious or cultural reasons, to show a man one’s hair, how are we expected to force such a person to share the most private and intimate of spaces with someone who appears, in all physical and biological ways, to be of the opposite sex? I ask, honourable senators: Is it possible that, in passing this bill, we would be discriminating against our Muslim friends, as well as other groups, and their practice and policy of modesty?

One of those potential consequences, as some witnesses in committee had mentioned, is that Bill C-16 in its current form may compel speech, which goes against a fundamental right that we uphold in Canada.

 

Senator Plett’s motion to add one sentence “For greater certainty” — and if I may read the full sentence:

For greater certainty, nothing in this Act requires the use of a particular word or expression that corresponds to the gender identity or expression of any person.

…which was defeated, would have added language to this bill that would have given assurances of protecting free speech.

To the “compelled speech” argument, a brilliant retort came from senator Lillian Eva Dyck:

Even here, in the chamber, we do not have unlimited freedom of speech. […]

 

As an example, recently when Senator Plett felt or perceived that Senator McPhedran had called him a bigot, he raised a point of privilege and the Speaker ruled in his favour.  […] Senator McPhedran said it was not her intention to offend Senator Plett. So there was a ruling made on the balance between what was said, what was intended and what was perceived. That’s what freedom of speech is all about, and that’s also what harassment is all about. If Senator McPhedran had continued to speak along those lines, then she could have been found guilty of harassment, but she did not do that.

 

How does this relate to Bill C-16 and pronouns? I’ve already outlined that. If I or any other person were to call a trans woman by the pronoun “he,” that trans woman may well be offended. If that trans woman spoke to me and said to me, “Please, I would rather be called ‘she’ than ‘he’,” and I ignored that and continued to call that trans woman “he,” that would be discrimination. She could take this case to a human rights tribunal, and in all likelihood I would be found guilty of harassing her because I called her by the wrong pronoun and had done it willingly and as a way to discredit her, humiliate her or make her feel less than what she was really worth.

The Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould, who had introduced Bill C-16, came by to sit down in the Senate gallery while we were observing the proceedings. Following these speeches against and in favour the bill came to a vote.

The Speaker asked those in favour to yell “Yea”. So yelled numerous senators. Then he asked those against to yell “Nay”. The nay yells appeared to be louder. My heart stopped. “The yays have it”, declared the Speaker. Two senators stood up to trigger a roll call. The Speaker announced a half hour intermission.

At 3:54 pm, the senate was far fuller than it had been throughout the proceedings. Each senator in favour stood up to have their vote recorded, then the senators opposed, and those abstaining, followed suit. The final vote was 67 in favour, 11 against. Plett was unsurprisingly among the eleven. The gallery cheered and stood up, to the security guard’s dismay, who was trying to get us to be quiet. The senate applauded, looking up at us as they did so.

Afterwards, we headed to Senator Grant Mitchell’s office, the senator who had sponsored the bill. The Minister of Justice joined us. There was a brief chat, then they left, and we took the following photo.

Some of us, myself included, headed to Dunn’s to celebrate, while other advocates headed to Nate’s. News outlets pickled up the story within hours with mostly positive coverage. The response was much more significant than it had been throughout the bill’s life cycle following its introduction. The National Post and the CBC published stories opposing the passage of the bill.

I don’t feel particularly joyful at the news of the bill’s passage. There are benefits to C-16 that will permeate across the country. For instance, when someone in an HR department copies the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination for their own internal policy, it could now include gender identity and expression. Trans employees will benefit from that. When pollsters look to define populations, they might pull from the prohibited grounds list, and trans people will now be counted. Specific hate crime statistics will also be collected now that gender identity or expression is part of the Criminal Code. Individuals challenging institutional discrimination will have another argument to call upon. There’s lots of freebies that comes from the passage of this law, without it ever being used in a human rights case.

This bill would of had a much greater impact had it passed when it was introduced twelve years ago. Perhaps my lack of celebratory feelings is related to thinking of all the people who were harmed while Parliament let these intervening bills die through action and inaction. The bill, though a positive step, has less impact now.

Perhaps my muted response comes from knowing that this law alone won’t alone protect transgender, non-binary and otherwise gender variant individuals. It isn’t laws like this which significantly changes statistics in short order, like these ones I picked for trans youth:

• 40-50% of Ottawa homeless youth are LGBTQ
• 70% of Canadian trans youth reported sexual harassment
• 36% of Canadian trans youth were physically injured or threatened in the past year
• 70% of Canadian trans youth reported discrimination due to gender identity
• 37% of Canadian trans youth attempted suicide
• Only 15% of Canadian trans youth with a family doctor reported feeling “very comfortable” discussing their trans status and trans-specific health-care needs
• Only 10% of Canadian trans youth always felt safe in school washrooms
• Only 5% of Canadian trans youth felt always safe in school change rooms

This is unsurprising given the attitudes of cisgender Canadians:

• 42% to 59% of Canadians would restrict or prohibit washroom transgender individuals from using washrooms
• 29% of Canadians agree that being transgender “is just unnatural”
• 42% of Canadians say that transgender celebrities worsen their opinion of trans people
• 24% of Canadian men are uncomfortable with a transgender person moving next door to them

These numbers are a sobering reminder that legislation represent a small component of a much larger effort. I do want to acknowledge that there’s a lot of positive changes lately though, and I’m pleased.

I also want to recognize former NDP MP Bill Siksay, who first introduced this legislation as a private members bill in 2005, and current NDP MP Randall Garrison who took over the task of introducing it’s successors after Bill Siksay retired from politics. I am likewise thankful to Grant Mitchell the sponsor of the bill in the Senate and Amanda Ryan, Susan Gapka and the many others who tirelessly lobbied for this. This is a victory. This law was needed, and their work has made a difference.

This past month, the National Post published an article in opposition to Bill C-16, the legislation that would add gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act. It is the eighth such article by the newspaper opposing the anti-discrimination bill for trans, non-binary, and gender diverse individuals in the past year.

In this piece, the newspaper articulated the view that the anti-bullying “Day of Pink” is harmful and that the inclusion of gender identity and expression in the law that prohibits advocating for genocide would curtail freedom of speech. The paper did so despite acknowledging the high bar to charge someone for advocating genocide, recognizing that it “involves an intent to destroy or kill an identifiable group and requires the consent of the provincial attorney-general.” They stated:

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.

 

That means, presumably, that if someone like Eric Brazau were to fixate on the gender-fluid and say negative things about them, he too could be charged with advocating genocide.

 

No wonder Peterson raised the alarm.

 

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

Such arguments blending free speech with violent overtones have not only been promulgated by the national newspaper but also in Parliament.

Senator Don Plett, perhaps the most vocal opponent of Bill C-16, invited Gad Saad to serve as a witness on the Senate committee for the legislation. The Concordia professor had no professional or personal experience with trans or non-binary individuals but regularly made disparaging remarks about them on Twitter and in his YouTube show, The Saad Truth. In the private event organized for him on Parliament Hill afterwards, Gad Saad suggested that including “gender identity” and “gender expression” in the Canadian Human Rights Act was not merely an impediment to free speech, but would lead to the “death of the West.” As he stated in Parliament earlier the same day, the “slippery slope of totalitarian lunacy awaits us.”

On Twitter, the Concordia professor continued to ridicule trans and non-binary people advocating for their rights.

He wasn’t the only witness to blend freedom of speech arguments with suggestions of calamity. University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, also invited by Plett, said in his testimony that these rights would infringe freedom of speech and were a “vanguard issue” in an “ideological war” with a “neo-Marxist base“. That these protections would lead to “re-education committees“. That trans advocates were “unforgivable and reprehensible“. That the request for these rights showed “how deeply a culture of victimization has sunk into our society“. Like Gad Saad, Peterson regularly admonished trans and non-binary people on Twitter and YouTube.

Terms like “genocide”, “war”, “murderous ideology”, “re-education”, “death of the West” were being used by Peterson and Saad when discussing the inclusion of “gender expression” and “gender identity” to federal anti-discrimination protections.

Peterson and Saad’s arguments in Parliament largely targeted the rights of non-binary individuals. They were joined by witnesses who took aim at transgender women. Here the rhetoric shifted from language around totalitarianism and atrocities to rape.

Paul Dirks, the pastor behind the “Woman Means Something” campaign, explained that trans women were predators and a threat to women:

But there is one piece of evidence that’s important in this, and that is that there exists amongst trans women certain criminal patterns that do not exist at all amongst women.

In the Okanagan in B.C. recently, in 2017, women were being kicked out of women’s shelters because they objected to having a [trans woman] in their space where they are unclothed. We have all sorts of examples where these predators are getting in.

Dirks stated on his website that being inclusive of trans women was an “erasure of women’s identity and idealogical rape“. Members from the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter asserted that transgender women did not exist but rather were men who took on sexist stereotypes and that “gender expression” included rape. Members from Pour les droits de femmes du Québec stated that transgender women had no place in women’s washrooms, change rooms, sports, prisons, and shelters under implied threats of sexual assault:

With regard to prisons, everyone remembers Colonel Russell Williams, who was found guilty on 92 charges, including murdering two women and numerous sexual assaults. Colonel Williams liked to take pictures of himself in his victims’ underwear after committing his crimes. Why might he not decide that he would be better off in a women’s prison?

The witnesses had deep misconceptions about trans women and non-binary people yet were treated as authorities on the matter in Parliament and given extensive time to air their views. Those misconceptions were then further distributed through outlets such as the CBC. Opponents largely had neither professional nor personal experience with trans people, which is why they spoke to hypotheticals in asserting their opposition whereas proponents spoke to the present and measurable discrimination that trans and gender variant individuals encounter.

As I write this, it’s the day after Peterson’s testimony and Bill C-16 just passed the senate committee. This is the furthest this legislation has gone in the 12 years since former NPD MP Bill Siksay introduced the first such bill and in the 7 years I’ve been following its various incarnations. Every previous iteration – Bill C-392 (2005), Bill C-326/C-494 (2006), Bill C-389 (2009), Bill C-276/C-279 (2011) – was killed. C-16 is now likely to become law by the end of June. A conclusion to this legislative process will hopefully mark the end of these committees, and thus of inviting transphobic bigots from across Canada to spread their harmful misconceptions through Parliament and the media coverage that ensues.

Opponents have used rhetoric around rape, murder, war and genocide when describing their fears of what would happen in a world where trans women such as myself could change after working out at the gym. This isn’t a fringe view: it’s advertised in Parliament and in our national newspapers.That so many influential people equate the simple things I do with such violence is scary. I ground myself in the knowledge that things are the safest they’ve ever been.

Here are some experiences I’ve had:

• I go on a date. While saying goodbye to the date, a man comes up to me, inquires about my gender, and gropes my breasts to find out if I am a man or a woman.
• I go to the gym. After my work out, a patron tells me to get out of the change room.
• I eat in a food court. The table next to me has five older men talking about trans people derisively, with straw-men arguments.
• I go to an outdoor music festival. A woman pulls at my sports bra. A man follows me to inquire why I’m wearing feminine attire.
• I watch a new movie. There’s a tranny joke.
• I go buy clothes. A sales associate follows me around the store after I try on leggings, stops by me, and eyes me up and down giving me a look of disgust.
• I go get my brows done. The aesthetician laughs in my face when I ask for thinner more feminine eyebrows.
• I’m at work. A coworker tries to bond by deriding their ex for being trans. He doesn’t know I’m trans.
• I go to a laser hair removal clinic. The receptionist looks at my file, sees the medications I’m on, and berates me for being on hormone replacement therapy.
• I walk to a coffee shop downtown. On the way a pedestrian yells that I’m a man.
• I walk to the grocery store. A guy at a pub patio along the way mocks me over my breasts to his friends.
• I walk up to a bus stop. A lady waiting for the bus ogles so hard that she nearly falls over when she bends forward to get a better view.
• I take the bus home. A man points at me repeatedly and laughs.
• I buy a coat. The sales associate tells me I’m in the wrong section, the men’s is over there.
• I take a walk. A man passing me mutters that I’m wearing a women’s coat.
• I walk to work. A man loudly asks his friend if I’m a guy or girl. I turn around to see if he’s talking about me, then he promptly yells that I’m a dude.
• I take a cab. The driver solicits me for sex.
• I go to a bar and use the facilities. I overhear a man say that a guy went into the ladies washroom. Leaving the bar, a patron yells at me that I’m a guy.
• I read a national newspaper. There’s an op ed portraying trans rights as a threat to children.
• I update my insurance info. They won’t let me change my gender marker until I have surgery that renders me sterile.

The views that led people to act in the above fashion are widespread. They are so widespread that I’m still afraid when accessing gendered public spaces like change rooms.

It irks me when people claim that these views are silenced because some university declined to give this transphobia a platform or because some trans people protest it.

No. This view is all around us. Trans students at that university are immersed in that view, whether the administration hosts a transphobic speaker or that speaker finds another venue. I don’t buy for one second that free speech is under threat; not when this view is literally shouted from the streets of Ottawa. Not when this view is voiced in change rooms, in washrooms, in clothing stores, in food courts, outside bars, in clinics. Not when it’s advertised on Parliament Hill and in this country’s national and local newspapers, in recital halls, and television programs. That free speech is being exercised all the time with very significant displays.

Don’t conflate particular venues declining to lend their name to these views with being silenced. Don’t mistake trans people protesting this prejudice for a loss of free speech. To the contrary, that’s adding a voice to the mix that wasn’t heard before. But to those whose views monopolized the public sphere, having these new voices gain prominence can feel like a loss. It may be a loss of comfort from having to share space with trans voices, but it is not a loss of free speech.