Juno News - February 16, 2019


Police are arresting people for ＂transphobic＂ tweets


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

170.06496

Word Count

1,379

Sentence Count

62

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 When it comes to a pluralistic society like Canada, people with different gender identities,
00:00:07.360 sexual orientations, religious beliefs, or other identifiers should basically be left alone.
00:00:13.680 That's the goal, I think, in difference.
00:00:16.120 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,
00:00:21.160 and I have the legal right to be who I am.
00:00:23.800 But unfortunately for a great many activists, it's not enough.
00:00:28.040 You need forced tolerance.
00:00:30.100 And we're seeing this unfold around the Western world right now on the transgender issue,
00:00:34.980 where anyone who has a different gender identity than their biological sex,
00:00:39.460 or someone who has a different gender identity than we even know are available gender identities,
00:00:44.960 it's not enough just to accept that they have a right to be them.
00:00:48.280 You have to darn well accept it in your personal view of them as well.
00:00:53.740 We see this in the Human Rights Commission in Ontario, which has a washroom and change room facilities policy
00:00:59.660 that everyone has to recognize the right of trans people to access facilities based on their lived gender identity.
00:01:06.320 But another provision that jumps out is that it must be made clear that no one will ever have to accommodate
00:01:13.840 someone else's preferences or negative attitudes.
00:01:17.420 So if you're a biological woman who identifies as a woman, and you're using a washroom,
00:01:21.840 and a biological man who identifies as a woman walked in,
00:01:25.640 their right trumps your right.
00:01:27.660 And this is something that in theory we see as being about accommodating a very vulnerable minority,
00:01:33.960 transgender people.
00:01:34.880 But in practice, it's telling people that they've got to shut up if they've got any concerns or discomfort issues.
00:01:41.040 Take this sign that I saw when walking around my old stomping grounds not too long ago,
00:01:45.060 Western University in London, Ontario.
00:01:47.560 This was a sign adorning one of the washroom doors.
00:01:50.100 Western respects everyone's right to choose a washroom appropriate for them.
00:01:55.280 Trust the person using this space belongs here.
00:01:59.120 Now in the fine print of this, it says that this is a byproduct of the President's Standing Committee
00:02:04.600 on Safety of Women on Campus.
00:02:07.300 But again, women's safety, if they feel uncomfortable with someone they see in a bathroom,
00:02:11.760 has to be secondary to the overarching goal of equity and equality for transgender people.
00:02:17.020 And you take this and compare it with something that someone else shared to me at Humber College,
00:02:22.180 a sign on a bathroom that says,
00:02:23.680 We are respectful.
00:02:24.900 If you're in a public washroom and you think someone's gender does not match the sign on the door,
00:02:29.640 follow these steps.
00:02:30.760 Number one, don't worry about it.
00:02:32.920 They know where they belong.
00:02:34.540 Number two, well, there's no number two.
00:02:36.680 Number one is the only one.
00:02:38.020 If you see someone that you think is giving you cause for suspicion,
00:02:41.540 it's your problem, not theirs.
00:02:43.840 Why this is so dangerous is not because there's an implication that people who are transgendered
00:02:49.820 are more likely to be sexual offenders.
00:02:52.240 That is not anywhere near the point that I'm trying to raise.
00:02:55.840 What the point is, is that if someone is encountering in a washroom an individual who doesn't belong there,
00:03:01.740 who perhaps has less pure motivations for using the washroom than most,
00:03:06.640 you are not allowed to be uncomfortable lest it be seen as violating their rights.
00:03:12.200 And this is so terrifying in the Me Too age,
00:03:15.540 when we're being told as a society to be on guard for areas where women are being threatened
00:03:20.320 or areas where women feel threatened.
00:03:22.860 But then when it comes to the rights of transgender people,
00:03:25.580 the rights of ordinary cisgendered women are apparently irrelevant.
00:03:30.700 Why would someone be concerned about an individual they encounter in a washroom?
00:03:34.440 Well, let's look at this absolutely gut-wrenching case that was reported in The Courier.
00:03:39.000 Mum of supermarket toilet sex assault victims warns freed attacker strikes again.
00:03:45.220 What's not mentioned in the course of this story, but was picked up on by a friend of mine,
00:03:49.740 Jonathan Van Maron over at the Bridgehead,
00:03:51.700 is that this 10-year-old was allegedly assaulted in a washroom by a transgender individual,
00:03:57.640 a biological male who identified as a woman.
00:04:01.120 This little girl, under the rules set out by the Ontario Human Rights Commission,
00:04:04.680 would not be allowed to express discomfort that,
00:04:07.500 hey, there's someone in this washroom that I don't think belongs here,
00:04:10.520 and would be very quickly branded a transphobe.
00:04:13.880 Now, this case comes out of Scotland, part of the United Kingdom,
00:04:16.940 where we've seen a very nasty string of stories in the last few months,
00:04:21.360 in the last couple of years,
00:04:22.800 where allegations of transphobia have been weaponized by the state,
00:04:27.620 by police agencies.
00:04:28.760 Most notably, a story that broke last week,
00:04:31.300 where a 38-year-old woman, a mother,
00:04:33.420 was arrested and detained by police for seven hours
00:04:36.400 for suspicion of harassing a transgender person on Twitter.
00:04:41.420 And part of the way that harassment was defined
00:04:43.660 was by misgendering and what's called deadnaming,
00:04:46.980 which is calling someone by a name that applies to the gender they no longer use.
00:04:51.600 And this individual who made the complaint,
00:04:55.280 a transgender woman, born a male and identifies and lives as a woman,
00:04:59.460 was also the complainant against another case in the UK,
00:05:02.640 where someone else was given a warning by police
00:05:05.960 for the very same thing, for misgendering on Twitter.
00:05:10.660 So Twitter, which has its own standards of practice and its own policies,
00:05:14.460 is now the subject to police intervention,
00:05:17.840 when police believe that you've behaved in a transphobic manner.
00:05:21.900 And you don't even need to do anything yourself.
00:05:24.640 There was a case a little over a month ago
00:05:26.520 where a man was given a lengthy laundry list of complaints by police,
00:05:31.000 not even for anything he said,
00:05:33.380 but for a limerick that was deemed to be anti-trans
00:05:36.600 that this man retweeted that someone else wrote.
00:05:40.220 He asked police point blank,
00:05:41.900 are you going to charge me with anything?
00:05:43.620 They said no, but that they would be recording it as a hate incident,
00:05:47.540 what this man was putting on Twitter,
00:05:49.620 where anyone who doesn't like it has the ability to very easily block him
00:05:54.060 and never see his comments again.
00:05:57.420 Twitter as a private company has a right to set out whatever policies it wants.
00:06:01.260 And despite my frustrations with the platform,
00:06:03.380 I know that I could leave it at any time.
00:06:05.300 It's not itself the force of state.
00:06:07.420 But we do have to look very concerningly at what police are doing
00:06:11.140 with comments and content that is on Twitter
00:06:14.560 in treating it as hate speech when it actually falls or should fall under free speech.
00:06:20.560 Twitter put a policy in effect not long ago
00:06:22.680 acknowledging that it was a violation of its terms of use
00:06:25.300 to misgender or deadname someone.
00:06:28.220 That's fine.
00:06:29.100 When police adopt a similar policy, it's not.
00:06:32.460 Megan Murphy, the Canadian feminist blogger,
00:06:35.700 has decided to file a lawsuit against Twitter for this policy
00:06:38.620 saying that its ban of her was in violation of trade practices.
00:06:42.440 Now, I don't agree with the lawsuit.
00:06:44.500 I think that Twitter is full of hypocrites
00:06:46.140 and I think that this rule is one that very much threatens the mentality of free speech.
00:06:51.220 But I think Twitter has a right to make that determination for itself.
00:06:54.820 What I don't like is that the culture of activists believes
00:06:57.420 that it's not enough to accept the legal equality of people.
00:07:01.340 We need to tolerate and accept on a more intimate and fundamental level
00:07:05.560 in everything to do with the way we interact with each other on Twitter.
00:07:08.940 Again, you may think that misgendering someone is a jerk thing to do,
00:07:12.840 which if it's being done deliberately to harass, I'd agree it is.
00:07:16.600 But something being mean does not mean it should be illegal.
00:07:20.440 More importantly, the policies we're seeing put forward by human rights commissions
00:07:23.920 are very quickly showing that this isn't just about social etiquette.
00:07:27.900 It is about the force of the state.
00:07:30.360 You have to accept it or live with the consequences
00:07:33.200 and they won't be pretty.
00:07:34.880 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.
00:07:36.540 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.