Juno News - February 16, 2019Police are arresting people for ＂transphobic＂ tweets
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.06496
Summary
Transgender people have the legal right to be who they are, but it's not enough just to be them. You have to be tolerant enough to allow them access to public washrooms, change rooms, and other facilities based on their lived gender identity. In a pluralistic society like Canada, people with different gender identities, sexual orientations, religious beliefs, or other identifiers should be left alone.
Transcript
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When it comes to a pluralistic society like Canada, people with different gender identities,
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sexual orientations, religious beliefs, or other identifiers should basically be left alone.
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That yes, everyone has the legal right to be the way they are, just as you have the legal right to be who you are,
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But unfortunately for a great many activists, it's not enough.
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And we're seeing this unfold around the Western world right now on the transgender issue,
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where anyone who has a different gender identity than their biological sex,
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or someone who has a different gender identity than we even know are available gender identities,
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it's not enough just to accept that they have a right to be them.
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You have to darn well accept it in your personal view of them as well.
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We see this in the Human Rights Commission in Ontario, which has a washroom and change room facilities policy
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that everyone has to recognize the right of trans people to access facilities based on their lived gender identity.
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But another provision that jumps out is that it must be made clear that no one will ever have to accommodate
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someone else's preferences or negative attitudes.
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So if you're a biological woman who identifies as a woman, and you're using a washroom,
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and a biological man who identifies as a woman walked in,
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And this is something that in theory we see as being about accommodating a very vulnerable minority,
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But in practice, it's telling people that they've got to shut up if they've got any concerns or discomfort issues.
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Take this sign that I saw when walking around my old stomping grounds not too long ago,
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This was a sign adorning one of the washroom doors.
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Western respects everyone's right to choose a washroom appropriate for them.
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Trust the person using this space belongs here.
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Now in the fine print of this, it says that this is a byproduct of the President's Standing Committee
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But again, women's safety, if they feel uncomfortable with someone they see in a bathroom,
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has to be secondary to the overarching goal of equity and equality for transgender people.
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And you take this and compare it with something that someone else shared to me at Humber College,
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If you're in a public washroom and you think someone's gender does not match the sign on the door,
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If you see someone that you think is giving you cause for suspicion,
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Why this is so dangerous is not because there's an implication that people who are transgendered
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That is not anywhere near the point that I'm trying to raise.
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What the point is, is that if someone is encountering in a washroom an individual who doesn't belong there,
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who perhaps has less pure motivations for using the washroom than most,
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you are not allowed to be uncomfortable lest it be seen as violating their rights.
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when we're being told as a society to be on guard for areas where women are being threatened
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But then when it comes to the rights of transgender people,
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the rights of ordinary cisgendered women are apparently irrelevant.
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Why would someone be concerned about an individual they encounter in a washroom?
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Well, let's look at this absolutely gut-wrenching case that was reported in The Courier.
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Mum of supermarket toilet sex assault victims warns freed attacker strikes again.
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What's not mentioned in the course of this story, but was picked up on by a friend of mine,
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is that this 10-year-old was allegedly assaulted in a washroom by a transgender individual,
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This little girl, under the rules set out by the Ontario Human Rights Commission,
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would not be allowed to express discomfort that,
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hey, there's someone in this washroom that I don't think belongs here,
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and would be very quickly branded a transphobe.
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Now, this case comes out of Scotland, part of the United Kingdom,
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where we've seen a very nasty string of stories in the last few months,
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where allegations of transphobia have been weaponized by the state,
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was arrested and detained by police for seven hours
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for suspicion of harassing a transgender person on Twitter.
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And part of the way that harassment was defined
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was by misgendering and what's called deadnaming,
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which is calling someone by a name that applies to the gender they no longer use.
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a transgender woman, born a male and identifies and lives as a woman,
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was also the complainant against another case in the UK,
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where someone else was given a warning by police
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for the very same thing, for misgendering on Twitter.
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So Twitter, which has its own standards of practice and its own policies,
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when police believe that you've behaved in a transphobic manner.
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And you don't even need to do anything yourself.
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where a man was given a lengthy laundry list of complaints by police,
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but for a limerick that was deemed to be anti-trans
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that this man retweeted that someone else wrote.
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They said no, but that they would be recording it as a hate incident,
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where anyone who doesn't like it has the ability to very easily block him
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Twitter as a private company has a right to set out whatever policies it wants.
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But we do have to look very concerningly at what police are doing
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in treating it as hate speech when it actually falls or should fall under free speech.
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acknowledging that it was a violation of its terms of use
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has decided to file a lawsuit against Twitter for this policy
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saying that its ban of her was in violation of trade practices.
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and I think that this rule is one that very much threatens the mentality of free speech.
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But I think Twitter has a right to make that determination for itself.
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What I don't like is that the culture of activists believes
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that it's not enough to accept the legal equality of people.
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We need to tolerate and accept on a more intimate and fundamental level
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in everything to do with the way we interact with each other on Twitter.
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Again, you may think that misgendering someone is a jerk thing to do,
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which if it's being done deliberately to harass, I'd agree it is.
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But something being mean does not mean it should be illegal.
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More importantly, the policies we're seeing put forward by human rights commissions
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are very quickly showing that this isn't just about social etiquette.
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You have to accept it or live with the consequences