Transgender persons are more at risk than anyone of being harassed or assaulted LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Editor, I’m completely astonished at the subject matter that appeared on the front page of the last edition of the Manotick Messenger! For those who may have missed it, the story concerned a Manotick parent who attended an OCDSB meeting wanting to talk about transgender washroom policy, but who found himself dismissed from public delegation before he had delivered the first two minutes of his presentation. The Messenger didn’t print his speech verbatim, but it did say his comments, “were aimed at protecting his children from potential predators,” which probably explains his dismissal. If anyone reading the article felt a sense of deja vu, it’s possibly because every decade or so, it seems someone feels the need to revisit this issue despite the fact that it was debated and settled years ago. The last time I saw anyone trot out the old “transgender predator” canard was in an article by Ken Gallinger that appeared in the Toronto Star on January 4, 2014, which elicited the following, still-relevant response from Barbara Hall, then Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights commission:

“There is a stereotype of connecting transgender people with wrongdoing and being sexual predators. We have never seen a documented case of a heterosexual man gaining access to a woman’s change room by posing as transgender. In fact, in washrooms and changerooms, and in society at large, transgender persons are more at risk than anyone else of being harassed, abused, assaulted, or even killed. Also, there is no new transgender “bathroom” policy. For more than 15 years, transgender people in Ontario have had the legal right to use the washroom – or changeroom – according to their lived gender identity. The elected Ontario legislature, not the human rights tribunal, put these laws in place.”

I’m not sure where this Manotick parent got the idea that school boards in Ontario have the power to ignore the Ontario Human Rights Code when they draft policy, but he really ought to get himself up to speed. As Hall clearly states, “the elected Ontario legislature...put these laws in place.” That would seem to indicate that instead of disrupting school board meetings, this fellow would be better advised to take his concerns directly to his MPP, or to Premier Doug Ford.

Andy Braid, Kars