Mia Ashton writes on Canadian Bill C-36 and its implications for women and feminists who have taken up the mantle of defending female rights and boundaries in Canadian society.

 

“There is the same complete lack of understanding surrounding this proposed hate speech legislation. Most people in Canada are not aware that a small subset of the population believes a simple statement of biological reality should be treated as a hate crime. Nor do they know that women’s groups fighting to maintain their right to the safety of single-sex spaces are considered hate groups. Furthermore, most people still have faith in our legal system. It seems preposterous to the average person that the legal profession could be captured by a political ideology, but a quick look at British Columbia shows that our legal system is far from immune. In December 2020, BC courts issued new directives requiring participants to introduce themselves with their titles and preferred pronouns, and in 2019 a BC Human Rights Tribunal ruled that a Christian minister referring to a trans-identified male as a male in a pamphlet amounted to denying the existence of transgender people. This is an argument one would expect to find among gender ideologues on Twitter, but not in a legal setting.

Love it or loathe it, social media is now the town square. It is where almost all political discussions take place, where people go to get informed, test ideas, debate and organise. Gender critical feminists already play the Twitter language game, in which a statement as simple as only women have a cervix is enough to earn a permanent ban. Therefore, we all carefully word our tweets in the hope of evading suspension, but until now the worst that could happen to us for accidentally stating biological facts was Twitter or Facebook banning us. Now Canadian feminists have a much bigger reason to fear speaking or writing what everyone knows to be true: the very real threat of hate speech allegations, a fine of up to $70,000, and a costly and stressful court battle.

If this bill is reintroduced and becomes law, it will have a disastrous effect on a movement only just getting off the ground. For Canadian trans activists, of course, that is the point. Earlier this year, a prominent Ottawa trans activist, Fae Johnstone, tweeted: “I actually do want a political environment in which TERFs are so vilified they don’t dare speak their views publicly, let alone act on them. Shut. Them. Down.” It is frightening to think that this bill would give those with such undemocratic, authoritarian beliefs the power to report feminists for hate crimes from behind a veil of anonymity.”

The notion that stating mere biological fact could be a ‘hate crime’ in Canada is chilling.

For the record these facts include the following:

1. Women are only adult human females.

2. Sex is immutable in humans.

3. Gender is not the same as sex, and gendered feelings do not overrule the common physical reality we all share.

C-36 is a dangerous bill if you value the marketplace of ideas and the idea of free speech.