Maëlys McArdle

Category: Trans Rights

Discussions on trans rights and perceived gender non-conformity.

  • United States follows Russia in labeling trans people a terrorist threat

    The White House has released its new counter-terrorism strategy, which includes the following quote:

    In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.

    2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy

    This is the same White House that said that trans people were “mutilating children” by advocating an end involuntary conversion therapy and being able to access the same puberty blockers already prescribed to cis children. That it was “gender ideology extremism” for trans people to update identity documents. This is what they mean by “violence”. They’re equating a 9/11 with trans people filing paperwork and cis parents loving their gender non-conforming children.

    This lack of proportionality is a feature of authoritarian governments. Russia under the dictatorship of Putin added “LGBT movement” to the list of extremist and terrorist organisations.

    Trump 2.0 has been obsessed with trans people from the start. The president has been inserting attacks on this population at every opportunity while his administration and those of Republican-led states wield the full powers of the government to persecute them.

    It’s a scary time.

  • Anti-Trans Rally a Failure

    A few weeks ago I got wind of an anti-trans rally occurring in Ottawa. It was the same old actors peddling conspiracy theories about trans people. The new one by its keynote speaker, who was flown in from the US, is that estrogen turns trans women into mass shooters.

    They started off the day with a press conference at 10:30 am in Room 135-B of the West Block of Parliament Hill. CPAC described it as “a group of activists opposed to what they see as “gender ideology” in public policy”.

    They might have directly reached out to the Parliamentary Press Gallery to get booked, which doesn’t require the backing of an MP or senator. That might explain the absence of a politician in the presser or mention of one in their social media posts.

    Then at 1 PM, they had a rally on the Hill. About 30 people were present. It was a pittance compared to the two unrelated demonstrations on the Hill happening at the same time, one of which had an entire marching band. The transphobes were relegated to a small corner of the lawn. Opposing them was at least 17 counter-demonstrators.

    This rally was by all accounts a failure: there were more organizers and influencer wannabes than attendees. It appeared to be fairly disorganized; people remained clustered in small groups taking videos for their livestreams or whatnot – I didn’t observe any speech.

    Signs included “WE’RE HERE! WE’RE QUEER! WE’RE COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN! -PRIDE PARADE CHANT NYC, 2023” and “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TRANS CHILD“. I also saw one with a crossed out pride flag that I recognized from an earlier anti-trans rally.

    Finally at 6PM the bigots gathered at the Biker Church in Vanier for what they termed a town hall. Given the ample ties both the church and this event’s organizer have to the Covid conspiracy convoy that occupied Ottawa, the location isn’t surprising.

    The rally’s dismal attendance was the best possible outcome, short of it not happening altogether.

    It was a show-and-tell for a handful of miserable people to each other. No one will remember it.

  • Shame

    Shame

    I feel shame at not being enough of a man. When I can’t pull off a male-coded task, I fear a man glancing at me with the “don’t you know this?” look. I feel like a pig with lipstick when I femme up. I feel emasculated when I lose my cool. I replay a moment from gym class in high school. I dread correcting my bank for the umpteenth time that it’s miss not mister. It’s shame inherited from my youth.

    I also feel shame at being too much of a man. When a woman is ahead of me on the sidewalk for more than a few seconds, I’ll deviate to a longer route to avoid being clocked as a threat. I avoid entering the women’s clothes section and instead walk on glancing at items from the aisle. I beeline in and out when I spot what I want. God forbid there’s a child entering a public washroom ahead of me: I might sacrifice my plans outright to use the toilet at home.

    This shame I inherited from the news and social media that frames trans women like me as predators. Even sympathetic coverage starts from this framing. I’ve witnessed malevolent fabrications poison the attitudes of strangers around me.

    Topping it all is this other layer where I entered adulthood believing my needs were too much – the same message being told to trans women everywhere.

    How do I undo this shame when my shame isn’t just the perceived disgust of others, but how this disgust moves them to violence. Where my world is a minefield and simple tasks like going to the washroom has to be paired with asking myself whether this is the time, because other times were that time. Where I remember not just the perpetrators, but that no bystander ever stood up for me.

    Every self-help book around shame promotes self-acceptance as the way out. But none of them discuss how to deal with shame when self-acceptance accomplishes nothing. The problem isn’t whether I accept myself, it’s whether others do, because they’re the difference between whether I’m going to be hospitalized or not.

  • Headlines from the global anti-trans panic

    Conservative strategists concocted a panic around trans people as a proxy issue to rob cis women of their agency. This manufactured panic has been so successful that even liberals are portraying trans people as threats to be eliminated:

  • The invention of being cis

    The invention of being cis

    So much contemporary discourse frames transness as being an aberration, but what if it was being cis?

    To be cis and straight

    To be “gender conforming” is to adhere to a specific set of unwritten rules of a particular culture.

    It’s one narrow interpretation about:

    • What gender you’re allowed to love
    • What qualities in a partner you’re allowed to value
    • What gender you’re allowed to be friends with
    • What clothing you’re allowed to wear
    • What name you’re allowed to go by
    • What pronoun you’re allowed to go by
    • What haircut you’re allowed to have
    • What occupation you’re allowed to do
    • What field you’re allowed to study
    • What hobby you’re allowed to partake
    • What sport you’re allowed to enjoy (eg. women’s hockey)
    • What toys you’re allowed to play with (eg. dolls)
    • What movies/books you’re allowed to love (eg. romantasy)
    • What intonation you’re allowed to speak in (eg. gay accent)
    • What words you’re allowed to use (eg. using “like” as filler)
    • What colour you’re allowed to like (eg. pink)
    • Whether you’re allowed to cry
    • Whether you’re allowed to be assertive
    • Whether you’re allowed to show affection with friends
    • Whether you’re allowed to be emotionally vulnerable

    Answer in one specific way to all of these and you’re gender conforming. You’re cis. You’re straight.

    It’s not universal, of course. These answers vary culture to culture or even within the same culture at different points in time. They’re just rules made up by people.

    The lie

    We’re told is that being trans is a special case that deserves exclusion. Exclusion from bathrooms. Exclusion from library books. Exclusion from public office. Exclusion from care like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy – care rendered to gender conforming individuals. Exclusion from the mouths of teachers who want to use the right name and pronouns. Exclusion from being able to update identity documents to reflect the correct gender.

    I say that the special case is hitting yes on everyone of those made-up rules. It’s not bad to be that person who is all yes. It’s not anything – it’s who they are. But we’re being fed this message that it’s bad to say no to any one of these made-up rules. That it’s undesirable and should be prevented to the point of inflicting harm on the person.

    This hinges on portraying gender diversity as a myth, yet we can see this diversity all around us if only we would only look. Being cis is not a fixed superior state of being, that supposed ideal is as made-up as the ever-changing rules it adheres to.

    It’s everywhere

    This lie of being cis as the only correct way to be has found new champions in the past decades as conservative strategists tried to find ways to force women back in the kitchen. Manufacturing a panic around trans people is a proxy issue for them to deny any agency around these made-up rules.

    But the lie has spread and has reared its head in legislative chambers and from reporting by major outlets like the New York Times. The harm being done to gender diverse people is immeasurable.

    I firmly believe that if these rules didn’t have so many hammers, you’d see a lot more people signal preferences other than the one proscribed to them by this violent culture.