Category: Trans Rights

Discussions on trans rights and perceived gender non-conformity.

  • Transphobia and the intelligence apparatus of the right

    Transphobia and the intelligence apparatus of the right

    I gave a five minute talk as part of a panel I was on today at a conference discussing transnational far right movements. This is that speech.

    You’re no doubt aware that trans people are the subjects of a moral panic in the United-States and in the UK.

    This year in the US, Republicans have introduced hundreds of bills to eliminate anything that makes trans people visible. The dog whistles are access to washrooms, inclusion in sports, access to hormone therapy, etc. Racism is inextricable here as cisgender black girls and women are disproportionately having their gender scrutinized and these same politicians and talking heads pair their transphobia with fear mongering about Critical Race Theory.

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  • The radicalization of an Ottawa teacher

    The radicalization of an Ottawa teacher

    In this article, I’m going to document how an alleged high school teacher in Ottawa went from being supportive of LGBTQ students to making her entire public persona about being a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist).

    Though she used to put a full name on Twitter, and there is a teacher by that name currently working at an OCDSB high school in Nepean, I’m not going to reveal her presumed name or this school. I am against doxxing and for all we know this could be a pseudonym or there could be someone else with the same name. This article will only show her public tweets and I will only refer to her by the initials A.M.

    I’m treating this as a case study in anti-trans radicalization.

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  • Beyond the Baseline

    Beyond the Baseline

    This week, the Aquatic Federation of Canada, a body representing Diving Canada, Canada Artistic Swimming, Swimming Canada, and Water Polo Canada, voted to effectively ban trans women from women’s events. This vote was for a policy with the international body FINA governing its events of which the Aquatic Federation is a member.

    Contrary to assertions, this was not about fairness in sports. I’ve already debunked that line of reasoning with the Rugby ban. The reason we’re having this moment about a topic as specific as trans inclusion in swimming is because conservatives successfully created a panic out of the minor success of a single trans swimmer, Lia Thomas.

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  • Cultural templates

    Cultural templates

    This past weekend, a man on the TTC called my best friend and I faggots and warned us not to look in his direction. I had rested my head against my best friend’s / ex’s shoulder. The man’s demeanour suggested he might be mentally ill.

    This interaction made me think of Panthea Lee’s words during an interview about the long history of violence against Asian women:

    We have seen officials and elected officials treating these attacks and these murders as isolated incidents, as exceptions to the norm, the work of mentally ill individuals. But mental illness is a red herring meant to distract us from the truth.

    And the truth is that these attacks are an epidemic that was seeded and nurtured by the American state and by American culture and we’re seeing Asian communities paying the price. When asked for comment for Christina Lee’s murder, New York City Eric Adams replied that “the city must do more to address mental illness.” But I’ve been to far too many rallies around stopping Asian hate and vigils for slain Asian women that I can’t go anymore, it’s become a political circus that is disrespectful to these women, to their lives, to their families, where officials line up to lament yet another tragedy, say “this must stop”, point the finger at mental illness, and then hang around for photo ops.

    But thing is, treating perpetrators as aberrations, as if they’re deviants from the norm really misses the point because mental illness operates within specific cultural contexts, and I actually interviewed a forensic psychiatrist who has treated the most violent of offenders around this, and the mentally ill still draw upon existing cultural templates which they may distort or act upon in more extreme ways. And so when it comes to Asian women, the cultural template has long been dehumanization and sexual denigration. And so I think for officials and some of the media reporting we’re seeing around this repeatedly denying the role of race while pointing the finger at mental illness really serves to absolve the state of responsibility. But these attacks are not strange coincidences, they’re not just the actions of crazy people, and we are seeing actually where the state has fallen short. Martial Simon, the man who pushed Michelle Go to her death in the Times Square subway, he’d been in and out of hospitals for years, the New York Times found that in 2017 a psychiatrist at a state mental institution had noticed that Simon had said it was just a matter of time before he would push a woman on the tracks. Despite this, he was still discharged. So who is to blame here? Is it the mentally ill, or the system that should be taking care of them? And are these lone instances? Is Martial Simon from the norm? Is Assamad Nash who plunged a knife 40 times into Christina Lee an exception? Is Steven Zajonc who assaulted seven women through Manhattan an exception? Is Tammel Esco who punched an Asian elder 125 times an exception? Are the ten attacks on Asian women every single day in this country, are they all exceptions? Because if every single one of these attacks is an exception, then I guess we must be living in some exceptional times.

    Panthea Lee

    While I face nothing like the violence described above, the concept of how cultural templates shapes who is targeted is palpable as a queer and trans person. I draw a direct connection between Netflix releasing multiple comedy specials that implicitly advocate to exclude and/or mock people for being trans, and the 40% of trans 15-17 year olds in Canada who attempted to end their lives this past year. This might seem far-fetched to others, but they’re not privy to how these comedy specials share the same language as the street harassment, the bullying, the parental rejection, and gatekeeping faced by these kids. The words used might differ in sophistication, but the meaning remains the same: you shouldn’t be you, you don’t belong, you’re repulsive, because, gender. Previously I might have used a “pyramid of prejudice” to explain the relationship between seemingly disparate events like the release of the specials and suicide.

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  • Who is posting anti-trans stickers around Ottawa?

    Who is posting anti-trans stickers around Ottawa?

    Note: I will only keep to Twitter handles and screenshots of public Twitter posts.

    Starting last year, anti-trans stickers began appearing all over Ottawa. It was the work of a small group linked to the new wave of anti-trans organizations in Canada that co-opt women’s rights language to argue that gender diverse people are a scourge to society. After a brief pause, the sticker campaign has resumed, this time capturing a bit of media attention. Neither article covered who was doing this.

    There’s evidence that the individuals associated with the following Twitter accounts either put up the transphobic stickers or know who has:

    • @MrsDrBee
    • @Mason134211f
    • @Karrie__2019
    • @StellaDoves
    • @lakefemme (defunct)
    • @radicaldata
    • @argeliapeagui
    • @_CryMiaRiver

    They all follow each other as well as accounts on Twitter devoted to purging trans people from society, accounts representing organizations who sell these stickers to raise funds, so it tracks. Among the groups they source stickers from are Cawsbar and Women Matter, the latter’s innocuous name being a ruse:

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