Category: Trans Rights

On February 25th, I headed to Parliament to attend a Senate committee meeting on the fate of Bill C-279, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (gender identity.)

This was my third time at Parliament to observe the progress of this bill through the legislative process. I was in the House of Commons when it passed Third Reading in 2013 and in the Senate last fall for hearings.

When I walked into the conference room, things weren’t looking good for the bill. It was getting dangerously close to election time. After four years of proceedings, including a 20 month delay between passing Third Reading in the House of Commons and a first look in the Senate, the election was now only a year away. Any bill that hadn’t yet become law by that time would be killed.

Meanwhile, any amendment would throw the bill back to the House of Commons. If it landed there, it was unlikely to pass in time for the election.

However, the introduction of an amendment became inevitable. During the time that Bill C-279 languished in the Senate, Bill C-13 was introduced, passed both the House of Commons and Senate and received royal assent. Bill C-13 added sex, age and disability into the hate crime provisions of the Criminal Code. Bill C-279 added gender identity. If C-279 passed without amendment, it would erase the protections C-13 had introduced. So an amendment was now necessary.

The meeting started and as it progressed the addition of two amendments was confirmed. This included the expected amendment to be compatible with C-13. The majority Conservative government had won – the bill they had opposed would all but certainly die on the floor. There was only a glimmer of hope that it could pass.

Then something else, wholly unexpected happened. The Conservatives, through the former president of the Conservative Party Senator Don Plett, introduced a third amendment that would turn Bill C-279 from legislation to prohibit discrimination into one that would support it. It added the following exception to the Human Rights Act:

15. (1) It is not a discriminatory practice if

(f.1) in the circumstances described in section 5 or 6 in respect of any service, facility, accommodation or premises that is restricted to one sex only — such as a correctional facility, crisis counselling facility, shelter for victims of abuse, washroom facility, shower facility or clothing changing room — the practice is undertaken for the purpose of protecting individuals in a vulnerable situation;

The intended effect of the amendment as judged from Don Plett’s previous comments in the Senate was to protect discrimination under law. I replaced slurs for trans women in the following quote from Senator Plett with [trans woman]:

I want you to tell me, Senator Mitchell, when you say that 0.3 per cent of society is trans, how their rights can trump the rights of my five-year-old granddaughter walking into a change room, a [trans woman] walking into a bathroom … How can this 0.3 per cent of society trump the rights of my grandchildren, my granddaughters?

And later Senator Plett added:

Mr. Dyck, you have in your testimony used a comparison of trans people not being allowed in certain areas. You’ve used a comparison of Blacks not having been able to be allowed. Mr. Garrison used the same analogy when I asked him about my five- or six-year-old granddaughter not wanting to go into the bathroom or a change room with a [trans woman]. He inferred that it was the same as my granddaughter not wanting to go into the bathroom with an Asian or a Jew. I found that tremendously offensive. I do not believe there is any comparison, when we talk about colour or race, to somebody who is biologically male or female.

The bill had gone from prohibiting bans on trans women seeking to use the women’s washrooms or men seeking to use the men’s washroom to supporting these bans. Likewise for denying abused women access to women’s shelters, sending individuals to the wrong correctional facilities, and denial of service to any gendered service, facility, accommodation or premises. Trans women were portrayed as a threat to cisgender women and children.

The vote for the contentious amendment passed, with unanimous support from Conservative senators, to the incredulity of the bill’s supporters. Members of Gender Mosaic, who had lobbied for this bill walked out. I followed.

Whatever glimmer of hope I had for this bill faded at that time. The Conservatives had opposed the bill from the get-go and the supporters would now have to oppose its newest form too:

“We still want to support the bill, because it’s important for the trans community, but if it’s going to have the amendment in it that restricts our use of washrooms and public facilities… no,” said Amanda Ryan from the advocacy group Gender Mosaic.

“It’s a bad bill with that amendment in it. We want to fight as hard as we can to have that removed,” she told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics on Thursday.

The implications of the new amendments were quickly picked up by the biggest media outlets, to my surprise. The Toronto Star reported “Trans rights bill amendment would bar trans people from public washrooms,” while Maclean’s opined “How discrimination got in the way of the federal transgender rights bill.” Even the right-wing Toronto Sun ran the story “Senate guts transgender rights bill” that took a supportive angle. Though as expected, the readership for all these publications overwhelmingly expressed vitriolic views towards trans people invoking tropes of “mental disorder”, “threat”, “special rights”, etc.

How things had changed. Just a year ago those headlines might have read “Trans rights bill amended” or something equally devoid of critical analysis. But how had an anti-discrimination bill come to support the very discrimination it had been designed to oppose?

History

Predecessors to C-279 had been introduced as private member’s bills in 2005, 2006, and 2009 by NDP MP Bill Siksay.

The first two attempts did not get off the ground, but the third had passed Third Reading only to die in the Senate when the 2011 election was called. It was reintroduced by NDP MP Randall Garrison in 2011 following Bill Siksay’s retirement.

The Original Bill

The bill as it was introduced in 2011 would amend the Human Rights Act to include gender identity and gender expression. Section 2 of the Canadian Human Rights Act would be replaced with the following:

Purpose

2. The purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.

The bill would also amend the Criminal Code to include gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds for discrimination. Subsection 3(1) of the Act would be replaced with the following:

 Prohibited grounds of discrimination

3. (1) For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for which a pardon has been granted.

That was it – four words repeated in two sections.

Journey Through the House of Commons

It was after its introduction in the House of Commons that the first instances of of the kind of language that Senator Plett used would surface.

Conservative members would openly dub the bill “The Bathroom Bill” in reference to their strategy to drive support: focus on trans women and go into scare tactics about their day-to-day activities such as using washrooms. In this case, by portraying them as sexual deviants who were a threat to presumably cisgender women and children. One Conservative MP, Rob Anders, had started a petition which was available on his website in 2012:

Other Conservative MPs would use a slightly different approach where it was alleged that trans women were indistinguishable from sexual predators. As MP Dean Allison stated in the House of Commons:

I find this potentially legitimized access for [trans girl] in girls’ bathrooms to be very disconcerting. As sexual predators are statistically almost always men, imagine the trauma that a young girl would face, going into a washroom or a change room at a public pool and finding a [trans girl] there. It is unconscionable for any legislator, purposefully or just neglectfully, to place her in such a compromising position.

Conservative MP David Anderson wondered:

The first question to the member opposite is this: does he actually believe that there is no one who will try to abuse the situation that would be created by his deliberately vague legislative agenda?

The fear mongering around washrooms was rooted in prejudice but was also a distraction from talking about the real reasons behind this bill’s introduction. There was denied access to education, work, medical care and government recognition of identity. Safety in public venues was a big issue. The environment in Canada was so hostile that 77% of trans Ontarians had “seriously considered suicide” and 43% had attempted suicide. As for washrooms, 57% of trans Ontarians avoided public washrooms “because of a fear of being harassed, being read as trans, or being outed.” Provinces in Canada and the federal government were still requiring trans people to undergo forced sterilizations, a practice condemned by the World Health Organization. Unemployment for trans people in Ontario was at 20%, double what it was for cisgender people. Conservatives did not wish to discuss any of that, or address any of that, it was about appealing to the bigots.

The Conservatives would also key in on protections on the basis of gender expression, the lack of definition for gender identity, and opposition to expanding existing laws. Conservative MP Robert Goguen wondered out loud:

If this ground were to be added to the Canadian Human Rights Act, what sorts of new complaints of discrimination will be brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal? How will employers know what kinds of workplace behaviour and expression would be prohibited? The answers to these questions are not clear to me and they are questions that we should carefully consider.

In an effort to get Conservative support, gender expression was taken out and a definition for gender identity was introduced. Those two were big blows for the usefulness of the bill. Removing gender expression eliminated protections for a whole swath of people who ran afoul of gender norms or did not identify with a binary gender identity. They would not necessarily be covered under a gender identity clause.

Meanwhile a definition for gender identity was being required where none had existed for other categories such as race and disability. This would have the intended effect of further constricting the applicability of the law. The bill had been eviscerated but gender identity remained, and given the violence faced by trans people throughout Canada, I thought it could be better than no law at all.

With modifications the bill passed but just barely with 149 votes in favour and 137 against. Unsurprisingly, the opposition came entirely and only from the Conservatives: 136 of those 137 votes against were from the Conservative Party, with the remaining opponent being a former (and soon to be reinstated) Conservative party member. The other parties were all unanimous in their support. The tiny fraction of Conservatives who voted in favour of the bill (12%) was just enough to make the bill pass.

By this point it was only two years after the 2011 election. There was plenty of time left to pass through the Senate and become law. I was optimistic.

The Senate

The bill would languish for a year and a half in the Senate with no action. Finally, there were hearings in October 2014. I documented my experiences on this blog.

Conservatives would again focus on making the case for persecuting trans women. During one of the hearings, Senator Plett read a letter out loud:

For this last one, I will read a letter — and I have received many — before I ask my question:

Dear Mr. Plett,

As a father and a care-giver for children, as well as my 84-year-old mother with dementia, I thank you for fighting to keep washrooms a place where we do not fear the awkwardness of sharing with the opposite gender.

It goes on to say:

My wife grimaces at the thought of trying to help our handicapped daughter or our mother in anything but a female-only washroom.

May God grant you wisdom.

It is signed ”Carl.”

Now he is not suggesting that his wife is afraid of people. There’s an awkwardness. I’m not suggesting my granddaughter is afraid of these people. There’s an awkwardness.

Do you not believe, Mr. Dyck, that these people also have the right to their own privacy at all costs? Apparently 0.3 per cent of the people in our country are trans. Are we not infringing and trumping somebody else’s rights by giving trans people the right to go into these areas?

It was a continuation of this distraction to avoid talking about the discrimination that people faced because of their gender identity. The Conservatives were in the territory now of alleging that not discriminating against this group of people would itself constitute an infringement of rights.

It was with this history then that this amendment was introduced. As Senator Plett stated in his speech accompanying the amendment:

This amendment will protect those operating sex-specific facilities in federal jurisdiction for example, bathrooms, military base change rooms and shower rooms, and women’s shelters on first nations reserves if they decide not to allow for example a [trans woman] self-identifying as female into a sex-specific facility for the purpose of protecting vulnerable women.

By putting in an exception in which a person discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity would explicitly be denied a legal recourse because the discrimination was gender related made the bill not just useless but actively harmful. Living in a country absent of an anti-discrimination law would be better than living in one where the law explicitly permitted and supported discrimination.

The Future

The bill will now be debated in the Senate and sent back to the House of Commons. If the bill passes as-is, discrimination will be legalized.

Realistically, the passage of the bill in its original form would not have had an immediate impact on the day-to-day activities of those who live with the effects of discrimination. Most obstacles, such as health care and education, exist at the provincial level. For Ontarians, Toby’s Law passed in 2012, brought the changes originally proposed by Bill C-279 including gender expression into provincial legislation. With the passage of something like C-279 on the federal level, I’d imagine you would have seen cases to address the current passport requirements from mandating compulsory sterilization and two genders to something like Australia’s system, which only requires a letter from a doctor and offers a genderless option. It might also have helped bring in new policies for the correctional system as well as make government-funded services accessible, etc. Those would have been legal cases years down the road.

The hate crime provisions, meanwhile, would not have contributed to a better environment. It would have done nothing towards addressing the discriminatory policies embedded in institutions. Arguably the bulk of the discrimination faced by people. Nor would it have prevented the perpetrators of assault from engaging in these attacks as assault is already illegal. It would have meant that police forces would have recorded instances of transphobic violence that were reported.

Laws don’t do much to address all the tiny manifestations of discrimination or their staggering cumulative impact. When opportunities are systemically denied due to discrimination, then it’s not just laws like what C-279 proposed that come into play, but Canada’s repressive laws against sex workers and toxic attitudes towards the poor or those without post-secondary education. It’s also the hierarchies of administrators and policy makers unwilling to introduce change that would address obstacles disproportionately experienced by trans people. Bill C-279 was never going to fix all those things but act more as a symbol for where we want to be.

Given the supportive reaction to this bill’s outcome, however, a future where violence against non-cis people isn’t regarded as normal might not be as out of reach as I once imagined.

It’s been almost two years since I made the following comment:

I’m currently spending lots of my time questioning how I see myself, in particular in relation to my body. I identify as male, that lines up with my sex, I use male pronouns, and have a mostly masculine gender expression. I don’t expect that to change. Nevertheless, there are parts of me that really don’t jive with that. So I’m exploring.

If I divulged that on this blog, it means that I had been thinking something for a while and I thought it might go somewhere. Of the three main digital platforms I write about myself in, this blog is the most sanitized. Prospective employers read this, for instance, so anything too personal is usually omitted. For me to then talk about gender incongruity was a big step.

A little while I made that first comment above, I informed you that I was pursuing hormone replacement therapy. Then that my name was now Maëlys and that my pronouns were she/her. I later disclosed that I was self-administering hormone replacement therapy, frustrated of having waited on legitimate channels for a year to no avail.

I documented by evolution in 2013 with the following explicit selfie essay:

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That I’m topless in most of these has to do with my never having been comfortable with my body before this point and finally embracing it. Part of that had to do with my body-image issues around weight, but also the dysphoria I hadn’t been aware that I was carrying until it started to dissolve with transition.

Through this two-year stretch I legally changed my name, changed my sex marker on my driver’s license and health card (still waiting for those in the mail), moved twice, dropped out of school, quit a suffocating job and went to work for a start-up, came out to my immediate family, my friends, and to work. I froze my sperm. I nuked my Facebook and Tumblr profiles. I went low-contact with my parents and as it stands they do not know where I live.

I eventually started hormone-replacement therapy. It’s been five months now and there’s been noticeable changes. Breast growth – I’m perhaps an A now. My hair isn’t greasy in the morning anymore. I’m no longer producing semen. I’m still exclusively read as male in public, but my comfort with my body has grown to heights I never thought were possible.

The last two years in particular have opened my eyes. I thought I understood what transphobia looked like. I went to a trans march three years before I came out. As it turns out, I had no idea. It wasn’t these overt display of hostilities, so much as the constant grinding away of people by those with power over them. I became interested in communicating part of those difficulties to the sexist/transphobic/homophobic eighteen year old me. I wrote a few pieces.

I also made the comic below. It doesn’t speak to the institutional difficulties, because I’ve been lucky. My friends have dealt with schools refusing to change their name, causing them to be outed to their class and not wanting to be there. They’ve dealt with provinces that said they couldn’t change their ID without undergoing surgery – even if there is no medical need for that surgery and they don’t want it. Not being able to change their ID means that they’re outed every time they show it. That makes getting jobs that deal with vulnerable peoples, which is what they went to school for, impossible. Being outed still means being treated very poorly in so many fields. There are so many stories of them turning to higher ups in each of these institutions for assistance, only to be met with resistance and things not changing.

Anyways here’s that comic, my latest attempt to communicate my thoughts on tranphobia:

I’m scared that some of the most wonderful people I’ve come to know won’t be here in five years.

They share stories of abuse and I bear witness to a creeping apathy to life. I see them become numb to the words of kindness from those who love them. I see those who love them feel so small because they know they lack the power to make it right.

Life is slowly bled out through mundane interactions, each seemingly too insignificant to act upon.

Simple tasks are hindered at every step. Walking outside. Attending school. Going to work. Seeing family. Hanging out with friends. Shopping for clothes. Going to the washroom. Interacting on social media.

Looking between myself and my friends in the last year, there’s been regular street harassment, multiple assaults, continued parental non-acceptance, denied medical care, denied access to education and employment discrimination. I live in a world that hurts some of the sweetest most gentle people I’ve ever known because of the minority to whom they belong.

You don’t have to know my friends to know this is going on. Just look at the environment we live in. Our government likens us to sexual predators. Both national newspapers blast our acceptance. Multiple provinces force trans people to undergo sterilization. Our local publicly funded schools ban projects that talk about us. Our religious leaders publicly admonish tolerance of our existence. Entertainment ridicules us regularly; I see transphobic remarks in television and film about every two weeks. This is all right now in 2014 and it informs how people are to treat us. The result, the predictable outcome of life being made impossible to live, is that we’re dying in large numbers in Canada.

I’m tired. I’m tired of seeing individuals use their authority to encourage this violence towards us. Not that they’d even recognize it as such. Our gender was never real to them so any harm that comes to us from undermining that is seen as self-inflicted. I’m tired of these actors being so quick to wish hardships on others that they’ve never known themselves. I’m tired of all the fellow party members, editors, family members, administrative staff along the way who could have stopped them but chose not to. An action unto itself.

I’m tired of seeing them spew their deadly vitriol under the pretense of fair debate and religious freedoms and find everyone be seemingly satisfied by these empty arguments. I’m tired of all those who stand silent now knowing they will one day turn around and insist that they stood with my friends all along. Who will believe it’s coincidence that they only spoke out once it became fashionable and a boost to their social standing to do so.

We’re taught to expect evil to be draped in hate. It’s not. It’s far more banal. Those who do this evil to us don’t hate us. They don’t even know us. All they’re running on is this image they’ve made up of us. Their prejudice is such that they have no interest in amending that image with reality. When conservatives want to find out about trans people, they don’t attend trans community events, consult those who work with trans people, or ask trans people about their lives. They turn to known hate groups who don’t know anything about trans people other than their own unrealized fears. They act against this imaginary foe. The fictitious nature of their opponent leaves no place to appreciate how real people are then harmed. They continue to engage in evil because imaginary foes never go away. Imaginary foes are always strong and immune to harm, not the weakened gentle souls of my friends.

Sometimes evil is even more mundane. It takes the form of apathy. Where people with power over our lives believe their own life experience to be universal and therefore regard any particular action on account of our differences as an unreasonable imposition. They wouldn’t have such needs, so why would we. Existing barriers consequently remain firmly in place; to employment, to education, to medical care.

I feel so powerless. After all, what can I realistically achieve. I can just pick up the pieces after the harm’s been filtered down to the realities of the every day. Console my friends, visit them in hospital, make them dinners at home, talk to already sympathetic politicians, write blog posts to the audience that needs it least, and chant in marches that only those who attend will remember.

I just love my friends so much and I’m tired of seeing them hurt over and over. I guess saying “please stop hurting these wonderful kind people” wouldn’t mean anything huh.

Last Thursday, I attended the meeting for the Senate committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. On the agenda was Bill C-279, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to add protections on the basis of gender identity. The plan was that I’d work from home from 5 AM until 9 AM, head over to the Parliament for the 10:30 AM meeting, and then return home at 1:30 PM to finish off the work day.

This was the second such meeting by the Senate, the first had taken place the week previous and I had watched the proceedings online. What was particularly striking for me in that first meeting is that none of the people involved in the discussions about trans people, including the witnesses, were trans. The bill’s terminology is “gender identity”, which I equate to transgender. Explicit protections for all other forms of gender variance, including genderqueer and non-binary identities, were removed at the behest of the Conservative party. That was the “gender expression” terminology.

I said that the lack of trans people was striking. What also stood out was how absolutely ignorant the two witnesses were on the very subject of the bill.

“We know that transgendered individuals, 95% of them are male…”

-Witness from the first meeting

For instance, one of them stated that 95% of trans people were “male”, by which they meant trans women. The absurdity of that figure would have been immediately evident to anyone a rudimentary knowledge of trans people. The misgendering was further indication that they’d never been acquainted with a trans person. It made me believe that their opinions weren’t rooted in expertise on these matters, but rather unsubstantiated fears.

Neither witness stood up for trans people, and the leading Conservative’s arguments in opposition of the bill were horrific. If we protect trans people, it was argued, then we’re protecting child molesters. This in a country where 26% of trans people are assaulted, where 40% attempt suicide due to a hostile environment, and where 74% of trans youth reported being harassed. The NDP sponsor of the bill made a great speech at the beginning and contested this bigotry but the mood was set.

“Apparently 0.3 percent of the people in our country are trans.  Are we not infringing and trumping people’s rights by giving trans people the right to go into these areas?”

– Conservative senator during the first meeting

I decided I would show up for the next meeting, so that when these people spoke, they would at least see the faces of the people they’re equating with sexual predators. I would put on a skirt as they would otherwise believe me to be a cis male, undermining my purpose of being there.

I showed up on Parliament hill quite anxious. I wasn’t too sure of the protocol, if I had to have contacted the clerk before hand for some kind of clearance. Nope. Just literally walk up to the right building, sign in at the front desk, and make my way to the right room. I ran into people I recognized from Gender Mosaic and introduced myself.

I arrived and took my seat next to a woman. We talked a bit. She explained that she had been “transgendered” but later had changed her mind. She opposed the bill as it could mean that trans women might be able to use women’s shelters. Despite her own beliefs, I strongly question the veracity of her story. She believed stuff about trans people that would be among the first things to be dispelled if she had walked in their shoes for a day. The term she had for trans women was misgendering them, the awfulness of which would be understood if she had been trans or around trans people. It reminded me of how ex-gays talked. Nevertheless, we were both very kind to each other. I don’t think she caught on that I was trans despite the skirt. I tried to let her know that the reality was the reverse from what she believed – trans people are way more likely to be assaulted by cis people than the other way around.

This second meeting had six witnesses.

One of them was trans. He was a youth that had just won a case in Ontario through protections enshrined in the province. He relayed his story, which Maclean’s had covered in an article:

For Thompson, an avid hockey player now in Grade 12, the issue became acute about four or five years ago when he hit puberty.

“I’m just a boy. I’m just like any other kid out there growing up. I’m just a teenager,” he said.

“(But) once you get to a certain age, you are forced off into a different room, or basically a closet — sometimes they didn’t even have change rooms for girls.”

Thompson’s mother, Ailsa Thompson, said it was “very upsetting” when a coach booted her son from the boys dressing room on the basis that “she’s a girl.”

Other parents could also show a lack of understanding, she said.

“Parents would come in and kick Jesse out of the girls change room because it was for girls only.”

These attitudes made it very difficult for him to enjoy the sport that had been a significant part of him. The other witnesses were from EGALE, from the right-wing REAL Women of Canada, from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, from the Ottawa Police Services, and a lawyer representing himself.

If the mood of the last meeting was of opposition, this was of support. All the witnesses safe for the one from REAL Women of Canada were supportive of the protections suggested by the bill. The lawyer had been brought in by the conservatives, but he too turned out to favour the bill. The Ottawa Police Services, who are respected by the right-wing, were in support of the bill. Meanwhile, REAL Women of Canada made some pretty horrific statements – but it was actually not any worse than what the leading Conservative had already said. That undermined its effectiveness but it did not deter the Conservatives. To my surprise, they did not alter the arguments from the last meeting.

They equated trans women with sexual predators. To validate this, they brought up three individual accounts of sexual assaults. The Conservatives were using the actions of perpetrators who might not have even been trans to portray an entire people as a potential threat and undeserving of protections. That was really ugly rhetoric to witness. At one point they argued that it was a matter of competing rights. It was an infringement of a cisgendered person’s rights if they were not allowed to deny people access to spaces on the mere merit that they might be trans. The targets of this vitriol was exclusively trans women under various monikers including “biological males” or “transgender males”. Trans men didn’t come up at all, perhaps because they were seen as women and therefore not a threat.

What the Conservatives managed to do is to drive the conversation away from the subjects of this bill, the many thousands of Canadians who are trans, and focus on horror stories that had nothing to do with their lives. But it had everything to do with the misconceptions and fears that cisgender people have of trans people. As astute politicians, they had to have known that their arguments were untrue. The most populous provinces in this country have similar legislation proving those fears unfounded. The Conservative’s interests were not in the wellbeing of the subject matter. They were not interested in even hearing from a trans person and bringing them on as a witness, they only brought on those opposed to their recognizing their existence such as REAL Women of Canada.

The answer appears to be that the bill is intended to be interpreted by the human rights tribunals and the courts in order to extend its reach to a number of other problematic sexual activities, including pedophilia. That is, the broad definition of the expression, “gender identity”, included in this bill, will eventually have to be interpreted by the appointed human rights tribunal and courts to determine the meaning of these words.

– REAL Women of Canada Brief on Bill C-279

There were breaks between pairs of witnesses. In them the supportive politicians and lobbying groups in attendance mingled. Amnesty International was there, passing their latest document on the matter. Gender Mosaic was consulting the politician who had sponsored the bill. I got to shake hands, which was neat. I kind of stood out as seemingly one of the few not representing an interest group.

As the day progressed, the Conservatives shifted tactics. The questions led on that they were looking to make an ammendment to the bill. Either by including protections on the basis of sex or by removing the definition of gender identity. The original bill had no definition but the Conservatives insisted one be put in in order to get the few votes they contributed for it to pass the House of Commons. If an ammendment were to go in the bill now, however, it would die. It would be sent back to the House of Commons and not be passed in time for the next election, killing it. This would be nothing new – the two previous incarnations of this legislation died in such a fashion. This had been going on since 2005. It was clear that the Conservatives would try to kill this bill through any means possible and this was a very clever way to go about it.

If I focus on the Conservatives, it’s because they’re the reason why this bill has yet to pass. Why any witnesses were there. Everyone else was in support. This spectacle was for them.

If this bill dies, so too will many people. That 40% suicide rate should be counted into the statistic of how many trans people are violently killed. Many of them would still be here if it wasn’t for this environment so hostile to their existence. Bills of this nature are no panacea but they are progress. For one it means that the federal government would no longer force trans people to undergo castration if they want their gender identity respected. It means that police services would start to track transphobic assaults. It also sends a message that helps facilitate a shift in attitudes.

As an aside, the woman beside me ended up playing another role in the proceedings. She had approached the Conservative senator the day before. During the proceedings he invoked the story of this ex-trans to legitimize his stance.

I came out of that meeting room with mixed feelings. Happy at the effective witnesses. Frustrated that EGALE had not selected an out non-cis person to represent them despite their candidate’s good performance and impressive qualifications. I felt that perhaps someone who was out and trans would have been more adept at bringing things back to the bigger picture. I was also impressed with Noa Mendelsohn Aviv from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

I ate lunch downtown, came back home, and went back to work.

Totally worth it.

I think Ottawa’s Capital Pride serves as a good case study on the mechanics of prejudice.

Capital Pride purports to represent the interests of the queer community in Ottawa and Gatineau. In practice they only serve white, upper or middle class, able-bodied, working-age, anglophone, cisgender gay individuals. For the purposes of this article, I’ll shorten this latter group to cisgays, but know that when I use that term I mean all of these qualifiers.

In this article I’ll focus on Capital Pride’s prejudice against trans people, people of colour, and francophones. I would assert that participation by these communities is despite of, rather than due to, the board of directors for Capital Pride. Though their exclusion is well-known to members of these communities, I will nonetheless substantiate these claims.

The Theme

The theme for Capital Pride this year is “Free to Love.” It is focused on sexual orientation to the exclusion of gender-related issues. It speaks to the attention by cisgay activists to issues abroad this year, in particular Uganda and Russia. It also speaks to a general lack of awareness for queers at home. There is a perception among cisgays that Ottawa-Gatineau is a done deal.

This is substantiated by comments made by Jodie McNamara, the chair of Capital Pride:

After last year’s record-breaking attendance of 75,000 spectators, the Parade will once again march down Bank Street through Ottawa’s LGBT Village on Sunday, August 24 under this year’s theme, ‘Free to Love’. ‘Free to Love’ is about celebrating the rights and freedoms that many of us in Ottawa enjoy, while standing with those for whom the struggle continues.

This talk of “standing with those for whom the struggle continues” is not referring to others in the area. It’s talking about people abroad. The fight in Ottawa is thought to be over.

This is in a city where half of the homeless youth are queer. Where in Gatineau, transgender people are forced to undergo sterilization. Where politicians equate trans people with sexual predators on television.

Just this week both of Canada’s national newspapers published pieces portraying trans people as delusional and a threat to children. Barbara Kay of the National Post wrote the article Transgendered advocacy has gone too far, railing against acceptance. Margaret Wente of the Globe & Mail wrote an article entitled The march of transgender rights. It’s concluding paragraph sums up the sentiments within quite well:

But today, people demand affirmation for their “personal truth,” no matter how distorted that truth might be. Transgenderism is not so much the “next civil rights frontier,” as Time magazine declared it, as a way for intimidated liberals to declare their bona fides. Enough is enough. And for God’s sake, leave the kids alone.

Both newspapers are seen as authoritative and the pieces they published will perpetuate the misconceptions that feed the violence faced by trans people. Yet to the likes of Capital Pride’s Chair, there is no problem here.

That ignorance extends beyond the personal beliefs of the organizers. It constricts all the rights-oriented discussions that would occur during Pride. The mandates that Capital Pride put together do not allow the space to have these local marginalized voices heard. The events are to explicitly focus abroad.

The description for the human rights vigil:

This year’s vigil will look at what it means to be “Free to Love” around the world, and will be hosted by special guest Stephanie Battaglino.

The description for the awareness-raising conference:

This is a free event that plays off the festival’s 2014 theme, “Free to Love”, and will feature Stephanie Battaglino as the keynote speaker.

The speaker at both of these, Stephanie Battaglino, is a corporate vice president at a large American insurance company. She will have no knowledge of the context in this area.

If the ignorance is this lack of awareness for the plight of queers in Ottawa, the prejudice is silencing these voices by assembling mandates that make them unwelcome.

Capital Pride Marginalizes Francophones

Capital Pride’s mission statement states that it represents the Ottawa-Gatineau region. There are approximately 314,000 individuals whose mother tongue is French across both municipalities. This does not include the higher number of whom speak French but don’t have it as their mother tongue. Many are not fluent in English.

All 45 of the 45 events at Capital Pride will either be unilingual English, or in English with a French component. 0 of the 45 events will be unilingual French. Anything of substance will only be offered in English. The speech by Stephanie Battaglino at the human rights vigil will only be in English. Her keynote at the conference will only be delivered in English. There will be no translator. Three of the three panels at the conference will be conducted in English. Six of the six films presented are either with an English audio track, or if they’re in a foreign language, given English subtitles. There will not be French subtitles available for films whose audio is not in English. The one discussion group will only be conducted in English.

So what’s in French? The latter half of the guide, which describes these English-only events. The French portion is a translation job, given that there was no original content in that language. The translation is sometimes done with comically poor results. For instance:

Portez vos vêtements en cuir et votre engin de fétiche avec Fierté!

This, along with a token few words in French at a flag raising and introducing the next musical performer at one event, constitutes what Pride organizers believe to be accessibility. This view was affirmed in an article by the Ottawa Citizen a few years ago entitled “Pride party adds francophone flair”:

”For a long time, a lot of francophones and people of Gatineau have not had a lot of queer-oriented events,” Capital Pride spokeswoman Lauryn Kronick said. ”It’s pretty sad that there’s a lack. We want to make it more accessible so that francophones will come out and not feel as though they’re being neglected.”

This year’s official Pride Guide is available in English and French, there will be more francophone performers and MCs will speak in both official languages, Kronick said.

This year, every single performer will do their act in English. But the MCs will introduce them in both official languages.

It is ignorance to entertain the idea that describing unilingual English events in French in the guide constitutes accessibility. Or that having stating the name of the next all-English performance in French makes it accessible in that language. It is also ignorance to think that making an event that excludes a third of the local population by virtue of an accessibility barrier is anything short of prejudicial.

Racism, Transphobia, Fat Shaming in the Guide

There are other cues that speak to who an event is for. Some of them are not in words, but images. I’ve compiled a list of all the faces more than a few pixels wide found in the guide Capital Pride distributed for 2014. I omitted the faces of five young children which were accompanying their (white cisgay) parents. That leaves 52 faces.

The organizers of Capital Pride’s mission statement is:

The mission of the Capital Pride Festival is to perpetuate the spirit of pride in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, two-spirited and questioning (GLBTTQ) community in Canada’s National Capital Region of Ottawa–Gatineau.

Some observations:

• 0 of the 52 people are actually trans.
• 2 of the 52 people are fat. It would need to be 27 people to accurately reflect Ontario.
• 2 of the 52 people are queer youth.
• 4 of the 52 people have grey hair.
• 4 of the 52 people are of colour. It would need to be 12 faces to accurately reflect the diversity in Ottawa.
• 52 of the 52 people are presented to be able-bodied.

Also:

• There are 7 drag queens but 0 drag kings.
• There are more straight cisgender male actors depicting trans people (1) than actual trans people (0).

Note: The exact figures are not known. I based the above on making assumptions about each face. Please see update #3.

In short, the organizers have put together a guide that replicates the racism, ageism, ableism, toxic beauty standards and cis-sexism that exists in society.

I think it bears mentioning again: in an event that purports to represent trans people as one of the six identities explicitly mentioned in its mission statement, Capital Pride’s booklet with fifty-two faces did not include a single trans person.

The bias favours one specific group: white, thin, middle to upper class, able-bodied, working age, cisgender gays. If the guide accurately reflected the diversity in Ottawa, there would be three times as many people of colour. Instead, those faces are replaced by white people. If it accurately reflected the queer community, there would be a number of trans and genderqueer folk. Instead, it’s even more gay men and women.

Representation is important. It’s messaging about who is actually welcomed, the results of good words put to practice. The faces in the guide are about who organizers envision as being part of Pride. Right now, that vision is one without people of colour, fat people, trans people, or people with disabilities.

One could pass off the prejudice as mirroring the bias’ of its corporate corporate sponsors, as most faces come from their advertising. However, Capital Pride’s own record fared no better. Representation in the portions where Capital Pride had full creative control was worse than the corporate advertisements.

Incentivized Against Accepting Marginalized Queers

If prejudice against marginalized queers is embedded throughout Capital Pride, it does little to help that it is incentivized against their acceptance.

This is a consequence of Capital Pride’s dependence on corporate sponsors and positioning itself as a city festival, both of which rely on public approval.

It wasn’t always the case.

When Capital Pride had its inaugural event in 1986, it was a celebration for this society’s most reviled. Public approval was not a requirement.

This was at a time where gay bashings were a fact of life. Where police conducted mass arrests of gay people. Newspapers ran fearmongering pieces. It was twenty years before same-sex marriage. There was little public support and no major company wanted to be associated with that kind of movement.

Pride was a beacon in all of this. Pushing acceptance.

The dynamics are different now. Corporate funds do not come without strings. It means Capital Pride does not want to risk pitting corporate brands against public opinion by proxy through their association with people that society does not like. It means less leverage to oppose prejudiced representation in advertising. It should be noted that corporations never lead public opinion on matters of acceptance. This is as a principle of financial self-interest. Capital Pride’s dependence on them thus curtails the organization’s capacity to lead the way on matters of acceptance. That also ties in with Capital Pride’s relationship with City Hall, which again is sensitive to public opinion as a matter of political survival. There is a reason why Capital Pride would never allow the voices of the marginalized, like sex workers, to front public facing events like flag raisings.

Given it’s history, it’s a most unfortunate evolution.

Nothing About Us Without Us

Capital Pride only organizes to serve cisgays. They speak of inclusion, but their actions demonstrate otherwise. Talia Johnson has a quote I very much find relevant:

Many people in these communities see themselves as being accepting and inclusive, but when one looks at the situation in more detail how they see themselves isn’t necessarily the reality experienced by the people who are supposedly accepted and included. When this disparity of thought and experience is pointed out the first response on the part of the community is often defensive, “of course we’re inclusive and accepting, see, we say so in our welcoming statement!”

Marginalized queers have been speaking out against Capital Pride’s exclusion for years and offering paths to move forward. Take for instance the article Ottawa Pride Invisibilizes Trans People, published in 2008. The board of directors have ignored these voices while maintaining they’re inclusive.

This brings me to the last thing I’ll examine for this article. This is the board of directors for Capital Pride:

Six out of seven board of directors are white. Seven out of seven board of directors are middle class. Seven out of seven are able-bodied. Six out of seven are cisgender.

They are not recipient to the kind of prejudice they facilitate. None of them stand to benefit from making their event more accepting. It is more likely that they would see it as a net loss. There are no voices of marginalized people on the board to raise those interests. The representation problem then is not limited to faces in the guide, but extends to the make-up of the organization itself. It becomes easier to understand why Capital Pride is prejudiced and only serves cisgays. It is a sad reality that this same prejudice places obstacles for marginalized queers to take on leadership roles, further inhibiting the removal of those barriers.

Conclusion

This is not an article on how Capital Pride can move forward to be more accepting.

It will come to be more inclusive in time, but not be because it led people there. Rather, it’s tied its own hands so that it can only trail the march of progress.

It’s unfortunate that there is such a fantastic opportunity for awareness raising that is being squandered away.

Pride is dead but it’s reputation lives on. I see it every time a baby queer wants to go to their first parade. It’s still important.

Will I participate in the festivities?

Probably.

There’s not a lot of alternatives out there.

Update #1: This article has generated a bit of activity in other places. In particular, it’s being misconstrued by some cis gays as an attack on their identities. This is a discussion on the desire to see inclusion at Capital Pride match its own mission statement. Identifying the ways in which it fails to do so is not an attack, nor is having a more diverse Capital Pride that treats others as well as it does them.

Update #2: I said that seven out of seven board of directors are white. The correct figure is six out of seven.

Update #3: A criticism has been brought forth that I passed off the figures on the identities represented in the guide as fact, when instead it was based off of assumptions I was making on each face. I find that criticism entirely valid. There is a representation problem that is immediately visible in the guide and I was trying to put numbers to it. The approach I took relied on assumptions that were rooted in my own bias. I could have erased someone’s identity. I apologize if I did so. Were I to re-write this article I would handle that section differently.