Well here goes, I am about to get some nasty responses to this post (assuming anyone really reads anything I post). Fortunately, I can screen the comments before they are posted.
Typically the United States has
followed about ten years behind Canada on social issues, such as mandated
healthcare, gay marriages and, now perhaps, transgender rights. Make a note now that I have predicted in 2015
that in 2025, there will be federal legislation and various state legislation
mandating that if person feels like he/she is another gender, that we
MUST recognize their felt identification.
In other words, it’s not enough
that the person identifies as he or she wants, we ALL must affirm and accept
the identification. Failure to do so will be discriminatory.
Recently, amendments made to the
Alberta Bill of Rights on March 10, 2015, which came into force on June 1, 2015,
recognize gender identity and gender expression as being explicitly protected. Newfoundland
& Labrador recently promised to introduce a bill to amend provincial
legislation so gender assignment surgery would no longer be required to change
the sex designation on identity documents.
In April 2014, the Ontario Human
Rights Commission published its Policy on preventing discrimination because of
gender identity and gender expression. The Ontario Policy defines gender identity as
an individual’s sense of being a man, a
woman, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum, which may be
the same as or different from his/her birth-assigned sex.
Gender expression is how a person
publicly expresses or presents their gender, including behavior, outward
appearances such as dress or hair and makeup, and chosen name and pronoun.
