Category: Trans Rights
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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…
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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…
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Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation & What You Can Do
This is the transcript of a session I led at my company, a San Fransisco start-up in the solar energy space where I work as senior software engineer, and where I also volunteer on its rainbow ERG. The slides are available here. Who Am I My name is Maëlys (she/her), and here I’m a backend…
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More troll than threat
In the past five years, I’ve documented two new forms of transphobic organizing in Canada: 2016 – 2019: A rise in violent anti-trans and anti-gay nationalist groups 2019 – Present: A wave of anti-trans groups under the pretence of women and gay rights This is in addition to the organizing by various Conservative parties and…
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Ottawa’s Covid Party
Lead Up FOX News, Tea Party & Trumpism A dozen years ago, I went to Washington, D.C. for a Tea Party mass event with my friend Jon and partner Jay. The movement at the centre of this this “Restoring Honor Rally” arose in the wake of Obama’s election; its makeup almost exclusively white people, aggrieved…
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“The first trans person in Canada”
While researching the archives of The Ottawa Journal, I found this article from the March 22, 1954 edition of the paper, on Page 30. It denotes “Canada’s first sex change” of Frances Marie Jefferson, age 24. I always find any assertion of “first” with the media deeply dubious; first known to the author no doubt.…
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Comically uninformed books about trans people
Some history Up until very recently, gender diverse people were shut out of the publishing world. If they wanted to exchange ideas in print, they had to do it in their own newsletters and zines such as in Friedrich Radszuweit’s Das 3. Geschlecht – Die Transvestiten (translation: “The 3rd sex – the transvestites”, 1930-1932) or…
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Sparing the ugliness
Bill C-4, the legislation that bans conversion therapy, is now law. It happened very quickly. The bill was introduced on November 29, 2021 by the Liberal government. On December 1st, a Conservative MP asked for unanimous consent for the proposed legislation to pass the House of Commons. They got it. On December 7th, a Conservative…
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New branding for old tactics
There was another anti-trans protest in Ottawa this week. It was organized by a group whose foundational beliefs are labeled trans-exclusive radical feminism (TERFs) or “gender critical”, depending who is doing the naming. This follows an incident a week ago where a man from Vancouver who makes a living crowd-funding anti-trans actions and is affiliated…
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The writings of Barbara Kay
If anyone ever wanted to study attitudes on gender nonconformity in Canada during in this period in history, I’d point them to opinion writer Barbara Kay. Her prominence is fading now that newspapers and books are losing ground to competing forms of entertainment, but not too long ago she was one of the few authoritative…