I'm About to Make Some Folks Mad at Me: Transgender rights/laws Exploding All Across Canada.

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.

Accepting Gender Based on Self-Identification:

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal made it clear in 2012 that it is discriminatory for an employer to insist that an employee be treated in accordance with the gender assigned at birth because this  fails to treat that person in accordance with his/her “lived and felt” gender identity. Tribunals/Courts in Ontario and Alberta have held that the former requirement for changing sex designation on birth documents is discriminatory and unnecessary.

Use of Preferred Name/Pronoun:

It is expected that employers should support a new transgendered employee or a currently transitioning employee by using the employee’s preferred pronouns and names and, where possible, updating corporate records to reflect the same. Where documents reflecting an individual’s legal name/gender are issued, the individual’s preferred name/gender should be included alongside the legal name, wherever feasible.

A Flexible Dress Code:

If an employer has a dress code in place, such rules should not have a negative effect on transgendered employees. Employees must be allowed to dress in accordance with their expressed gender, and dress code policies should be flexible and accommodate transgender or gender non-conforming individuals (e.g. employees should not be required to wear clothing stereotypical of their birth gender, such as ties for men or skirts for women).

Legislation pertaining to transgender rights in all of the Canadian provinces is evolving at a rapid pace and Canadian employers would be well advised to ensure their workplace policies are inclusive and up to date.

Conclusion:

Please don’t think I am being flippant, gay-bashing or being mean-spirited to transgenders, but if the standard is now how we “identify” regardless of our DNA or even our physical appearance, then why can’t I “identify” as an American Indian and get all the benefits of Tribal nationhood (a piece of the casino pie?)

Who else could I “identify?”  Would it be okay for me to identify as a Black man and get the benefits of affirmative action? Better yet, if I “identify” as having a physical or mental disability, my disability insurance would be mandated to provide me with long term disability income so that I quit working so damned hard and start a hobby.

For some reason the following quote keeps ringing my ears:

“Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way.  Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded.  And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!”