Having established norms and boundaries in society is a good thing.  Is the balance between personal freedom and what is good for society perfect?

Of course not.

But the current system which is always under small scale revision, is a reasonable way forward.  The basis of this incremental move toward a more just society is the ability of society’s inhabitants to participate freely in the decision making processes.  Individual freedom and the individual freedom of expression are two of the main cogs in the machinery of successful society.

The freedom we experience in Western societies such as Canada is not absolute.  We have reasonable limits and laws curtailing what citizens can and cannot do within Canadian society.  These laws and limits change with society over time and if we proceed carefully we can usually arrive at compromise that ensures our rights and responsibilities remain in a reasonable place for most people.

So, what happens when we forgo discussion and debate about how rights and responsibilities work in society?  In the case of Canada we get legislation like Bill C-16 which creates opacity and confusion for many Canadians.

Bill C-16 adds the nebulous idea of ‘gender identity’ to the protected list of rights and freedoms in our Canadian Charter of Rights.  Unfortunately, gender identity is quite similar to astrology in terms of having little to no basis in material reality or being able to be empirically measured.  Gender identity is completely – utterly – subjective and because of its subjective nature presents many quandaries with regards to the other protected characteristics within the Charter.

Sex is another characteristic that people may not be discriminated against in our Charter – and herein lies the problem – to protect both ‘gender identity’ (astrology) and ‘sex’ (empirical, material reality) is fundamentally untenable.  Either women are adult human females, a discrete sex class or they are not.  There is not a viable middle position to take.

Our current government seems to have forgotten about Canadian females and the protections granted to them under our Charter of Rights.  This is perhaps best illustrated by the inclusion of males who claim to be women (via ‘gender identity’) being housed in female prisons.  If we are to stick to reality based discussion – no man can ever become a woman -our distinct physiology is encoded into every cell in our bodies.  Yet, because the government is currently prioritizing the gender feelings of males over the physical safety of women in female prisons we have quite a serious rights violation with regards to females in Canada.

This situation will not be easily resolved, but a first step would be the repeal of C-16 as the addition of gender identity into the charter is making society a much less safe place for Canadian females.