Bill C 16 What say you?

When I was a young Turk, in my 20's I'd say, I had very little patience for the arguments of transpeople.  I believed that they were indulging a fantasy, and that no matter how much a transwoman might believe herself to be a man, genetics said otherwise.

Then my long-suffering wife took me to school on the difference between "sex" and "gender"  The idea was that "sex" was the stuff you were born with, the way dogs and cats and lots of plants are born with certain biology, but then, regardless,  some of us would prefer to adopt a different social role, and that's gender -- an abitrary decision that ladies like flowers and chocolate and pretty pictures, while men prefer raw meat and nachos and pictures of tanks and wrestlers.

Sorry, I guess I didn't quite finish that thought.

So, gender is/was a social role, as I then understood it, and saying "I want to be referred to as a woman" wasn't the same as saying "my biology is clearly that of a female" when it's not, and I was OK with that because I didn't have to suspend my disbelief about chromosomes or body parts -- it was the social term "gender" not the biological term "sex.

Except now we seem to be back there again and we should all belive in "female penises".  We  seem to have jumped from re-writing social relations -- which have always been a construct -- to re-writing biology as well.

Thanks Sineed that was a very good article. Some of the stories reminded me that being able to claim rights based on one's own perception of oneself is potentially subject to abuse on a grand scale if those rights allow easy access to supposedly safe spaces for women and children.  

It seems that I have both the right to claim that my gender identity is a woman and the right to also claim that I have a sexual orientation for the gender I flee inherently like. I think that a transgendered lesbian woman in a woman's space would be very similar to having a hetrosexual man in the room when to came to sexual tensions. The above thought is only part way down the slippery slope to the absurd.

You know that slippery slope cartoon was satire regarding the absurdity of those fears, right?

But sure, we have used foxkins already, so why not the weather. I suppose god is next up.

That article is just insulting.

Indeed, Bill C-16 helps to redress incomplete protections for some of the most vulnerable women in Canadian society today: transgender women, who face unconscionably high rates of physical, sexual and fatal violence.

So, males have successfully positioned themselves as the most oppressed of all women.

Look. According to the article that Smith posted, a transactivist had her computer hacked and her home address disclosed against her will as a deliberate and targeted threat. This kind of activity is very disturbing and serious. It highlights exactly why transgender people need society's protection and support. It also highlights why they need human rights legislation.

However, this act does not have any amendments in place which distinguish this type of hate crime from say a group of 30 plus radical feminist activists wanting to meet to discuss abortion and reproductive issues regarding women and wanting the attendees to be restricted to biologically born women only. 

Now, surely this law could have added a clause which upholds the fact that biologically born women are a marginalized and oppressed group in society with distinct issues that are unique to them and that they have a right to organize collectively as they see fit without being harassed for being discriminitory to transgender women.

And this is not a lot to ask for. 

And instead of targeting these computer hackers for hate crimes, transactivists instead target radical feminists who uphold that biologically born women are a distinctly oppressed group in society with unique issues specific to them only.

i feel that this legislation was too impulsive and not well thought out and it is radical feminists and biologically born women who are going to suffer in the long run. 

Biologically born women need to have the right to collectively organize as women and the right to exclude who they choose.

i am also very worried about the safety and rights of women who are incarcerated. Radical feminists seem to be the only ones who care about their safety and needs.

@ Misfit

They are right to raise those concerns, because they are real. The article posted up near the top of this thread goes over some of the situations where it can be a problem, and points out that gender protection cannot be absolute. But there is no indication this legislation will have an effect on that. So far the right to those safe spaces has been upheld in the courts.

What isn't necessary is things like claiming it is about men being more oppressed than women. In the first place no one is saying that. In the second place that has nothing to do with what is in the legislation. It is about people being discriminated against based on gender.

And I agree finger pointing and accusations are a bad thing... from both sides.

@ TB

Yup. Though there is good reason to point it out as invasion, even though it may be legal. Because really, it should not be done to anyone.

Also worth pointing out (as Misfit did) the mistake of targetting people who didn't commit the offense, rather than those who did. To my mind that is what sucks most about this vicious circle.

Interesting article by senator Linda Frum, who voted in favour of Bill C 16:

The big problem with Canada’s transgender rights bill

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/06/17/the-big-problem-with-canadas-transg...

I voted in favour of Bill C-16 because it is obvious that in a just society transgendered individuals should enjoy the same protections as everyone else.

However, I have serious concerns about the drafting of Canada’s new “transgender” law and fear that it will not create rights for the transgendered as much as it will take away rights from women and girls.

Importantly, Bill C-16 does not provide explicit protections for the transgendered. Instead, it creates protections for “gender identity” and “gender expression”: vague concepts with no precise legal definitions.

During hearings at the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee, the Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson Raybould declined to provide a definition for “gender expression.” 

But I can. Gender expression is an individual’s choice of clothing, hairstyle and makeup. It is a person's appearance, look, and countenance.

By amending the Criminal Code and Human Rights Act to include the words “gender expression” as protected grounds (as opposed to “transgender” as protected grounds) Bill C-16 effectively redefines what it means to be a woman from something biological to something defined by external appearance. 

What an extraordinary diminishment for women who have struggled for centuries to unshackle ourselves from a value system that apportions our worth based on our physical appeal and sexual allure.

But why did she vote for it despite these concerns? She could have pushed for amendments that clarified a definition of transgender or gender identity/expression. But the bill passed with no amendments.

The activist community has made it plain that trans rights means the right to enter female-only spaces, and women are bigots to object. Says the woman whose bepenised spouse was not allowed into the woman-only Body Blitz Spa, a space where women are naked, “You can argue until you’re blue in the face that someone with a penis can be a woman, but being trans inclusive is the law.”

Did Frum even read the legislation before she voted for it? Or has she been reading too many editorials after the fact?

Here it is again: http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/third-reading

Frum is confusing gender expression and gender identity. And she is also mistaken because C-16 doesn't define anything, and it has nothing to do with what a man or a woman is. Sex already was in the legislation.

The definitions of gender expression and identity which are in existing provincial legislation don't apply to anything except grounds for discrimination, so they don't change anything, and have nothing to do with defining what a man or woman is.

Gender expression is the right thing to be protecting, because it does not only apply to transgendered people, but to anyone who is discriminated against because of gender stereotypes. Someone who gets bashed or thrown out of someplace because they have the wrong colour hair or the wrong clothes.

It protects all of us.

Anyway, here are more people weighing in on what they think it means. Bruce Pardy, who argued against it:

http://news.nationalpost.com/opinion/bruce-pardy-meet-the-new-human-righ...
 

And the Anti-Choicers still seem to think people are going to wind up in jail because of it:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-canada-passes-radical-law-for...

(edit)

And regarding the women only spaces fight, remember that the Nixon case went all the way to the door of the Supreme Court of Canada, which declined to hear the appeal. So that right of association stands.

PS: Bill C 279 was the predecessor to Bill C 16. The story about Bill C 279 is from 2013, FWIW.

Here is an article from the Toronto Star from, yes, 2013, and read how scandalously the article treated the notion of biologically born women organizing to discuss abortion and reproductive issues. Cheri Di Novo referred to this organization as being "reprehensible", and the women involved were treated by the article like a bunch of nasty bigots.

And yes, the Toby Act is the Ontario Bill 33.

Here is the article...

Obviously the Nixon case has not and will not stop future challenges and complaints from being made to the Human Rights Commissions across Canada. If it did, there would not be the levels of concern being expressed right now.

And as far as I can tell, the Nixon ruling decided that womens shelters had the ultimate decision on who gets to determine who is a woman. I am of the impression that Bill C-16 overrides the Nixon decision. I'm not a lawyer, and I would welcome legal opinions on this  matter rather than relying solely on assurances from Smith that everything is ok.

If it did, it would already be overridden by BC's Human Rights Code, which now includes gender.

And the appeals court did find that they had discriminated against her (so it is not as if that would change), but that they had an exemption as an organization serving an identifiable group. Which is precisely what people are asking for, no?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/transsexual-loses-latest-b...

And no, I don't know that nothing would change. But there is no indication that it will.

I suppose what would be nice to know is whether Nixon v. VRR failed because rights of association necessarily come before the right to not be discriminated against on the grounds of gender expression (the way four of a kind necessarily beats a full house, and everyone knows this) or whether one justice decided that in this specific case, it did.

As a silly aside, IIRC when the Nixon case was still fresh and new, I initially sided with Nixon.  Having read much since then, and times a'changin', I don't know that I'd have the same opinion now.

Quote:

I really wish that we had legal input into this rather than just speculating all the time.

That's a foolhardy wish straight out of Aesop's Fables, or the Brothers Grimm.

Discuss it all you wish -- that's what we're here for, and I'll surely join you -- but sleep sound tonight knowing that you don't actually have to decide this, because there's no possibility of a win-win here.  Any time laws change faster than society does, it's a mess.

I'm concerned by what you just posted, Magoo.

You wrote that, "any time the laws change faster than society does there's a mess." 

What you said is very wise and true. However, your statement also implies that these concerned radical feminists are just slow at coming around when what they are expressing is alarm at a possible reduction in the rights of women and children. I think this is quite different from them not just getting on board with the change in societal attitudes towards transgender people.

Now, I think that there was a different option. The MPs could have consulted with all parties concerned and written the needs and protections for women and children into the legislation. They knew about these concerns from the Ontario Bill 33. I just linked earlier to two articles about it.

Smith wrote:

"That case was a shop offering service to the public. It was something else entirely. Plus it was in Ontario."

Yes but they were both provincial Human Rights Tribunal rulings. They both covered issues of two distinct marginalized groups  and whether one disadvantaged group can discriminate against another disadvantaged group because of their own unique constraints and issues. The barber case came down to which group's rights  trump the other group's human rights as Magoo had alluded to earlier.

And women's shelters offer services to the public as well.

Dp.

@ Misfit

Yes, those attacks are bad, and should be challenged; I completely agree. They have nothing to do with human rights law.

And the difference in the Ontario case wasn't that it was two identifiable groups. All that mattered was that it was a barber shop offering haircuts which discriminated against women. The fact the barbers were Muslim is irrelevant. They were not being discriminated against, and their religion does not give them the right to discriminate against others. Whether they hire another barber (and we don't know how that was resolved, only that it was) doesn't matter, but they can't run a business which discriminates based on sex.

This is similar to the justice of the peace here in SK who tried to get an exemption from marrying a gay couple and was told he had to do his job without discriminating. His religion was irrelevant. That case is different in that it involves provincial services and an officer of the court, not a business.

Also on that, we already have rights protection based on sex, but we don't see successful complaints by men wanting to get into women's washrooms or change rooms. Adding gender doesn't change anything that wasn't there already.

In the Kimberly Nixon case, the appeals court agreed that VRR discriminated against her, but they had an exemption in B.C. rights legislation (see article above) because they were a non-profit organization providing services to an identifiable group and so had the right to limit who gets in the door based on that. And the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear a further appeal.

So might this new law mean that women's spas have to provide a change room for transwomen? I don't know, but one presumes that it wouldn't be automatic, and that any tribunal would also take into consideration the other women who might feel threatened. And more importantly, technically that protection is already there, because businesses aren't supposed to discriminate based on sex, yet there are many businesses which are men only and women only. It is one thing when it involves cutting hair; one expects it would be quite another when it involves people getting naked, because it does have an impact on other people.

It is still not an excuse for discrimination. No one is forcing them to do anything. They didn't open a mosque; they opened a business providing services to the public, and they aren't allowed to discriminate in doing that. Their religion is irrelevant.

By the same token, someone can't walk into a business and demand service that complies with their religion - like being served by a man or woman. The business just can't refuse service to anyone based on them being an identifiable group.

Anyway, tangent.

It was a Porter flight in 2015 and not Air Canada.

edit to add...

Here is the link.

End of tangent.

Smith wrote:

"Yes, those attacks are bad, and should be challenged; I completely agree. They have nothing to do with human rights law."

if you are referring to the article where transactivists lobbied to get a rad fem conference shut down because the conference was for women-born-women only, then yes, this pertains directly to human rights law. And they have used every arm of the law at their disposal to force their way into women only spaces and to disrupt and shut down women only gatherings.

These laws are designed to target and harass radical feminists who are the only ones voicing concern about the rights and needs of biologically born women. They want to shut down any feminist dialogue which contradicts their views on gender and gender identity. They want to force themselves into spaces where women need to feel safe from men, and they want the laws to back them up every step of the way and they are getting it.

Trans women are not targeting the men who commit violence against them.  They are going after feminists and invading their spaces.

Except that the conference happened, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission took no action other than to monitor it, even though there was a complaint.

You can't stop people from making complaints, even if they are groundless. 

I agree there are some in the trans community who are going after some feminists. Those misdirected attacks are equally matched by the rhetoric being used against transpeople. Both are messed up and and ignore the real oppression.