Jay said:
For every analysis that says C-16 is harmless, there’s one that says it isn’t.I called it the “pronoun law” because it’s sometimes referenced that way. I understand it’s not literally about pronouns, but it has the potential to be used to defend their use and punish those who mis-gender.
All I know is that activism is slowly replacing reason on the left and seeing what it’s doing to the tech community right now is enough to make me leery of any law that encourages more of it.
Hi there, I’m someone who’s affected by C-16. Can I interject a moment to say: No, the law does not cover misgendering, unless said misgendering is used to advocate genocide, or to incite/inspire other forms of hate crimes. It is an ammendment to the law that grants federal levels of protections from discrimination on the basis of Gender Identity and expression. It adds no new language beyond that. That is to say, Trans people have no perks from this that any other protected class doesn’t.
On top of that, what are we defining as misgendering? If it’s a matter of not knowing any better, whether because of bad first impressions or because the person misgendered isn’t out yet, pretty much no one is arguing for that to be illegal, because that’s absurd and impossible. Are we talking about someone who made an honest slip up and apologizes for it? Again, pretty much no trans person I know wants that illegal, because it’s absurd to expect people to be absolutely perfect.
Are we talking about a case where someone refuses to correct themselves after being told otherwise, or even doubles down on it? Then yeah, they’re being a dick, and might fall into harassment. If it does become a harassment case, however, there’s usually more involved than just misgendering.
Wait, so maybe I wasn’t completely off-base. The CBA seems to take a broader interpretation of the law that I would oppose. I don’t think we need laws to protect people from being humiliated or offended. Am I reading that correctly?
My understanding is it’s less, “aww, they called me a loser, I feel bad now,” and more, “Hey, they consider me a lesser form of human due to something I can’t control, and are treating me as such.”
And I really don’t see the distinction they are trying to make here. It’s okay to express hateful views, but if a member of a protected class is exposed to those hateful views, then it’s not okay? This seems vague and confused.
From what I’m understanding it as, it’s, “You can debate whether trans inclusive bathroom policies make it easier for men to assault women, but you should try to avoid insinuating Trans people are all sexual perverts who want to invade women’s spaces to rape them.”
EDIT: Actually, for an example of an incident that did happen, there was a guy in Alberta who used the relatively lax process of getting your gender designation changed on your ID in order to save money on car insurance. That’s a situation where you can have a meaningful discussion on how loose should these documents be, or if adjusting insurance prices based on gender is fair either. However, making the statement that Trans people are all just frauds trying to save on insurance premiums would push into the questionable zone of whether it’s hate speech or not.