Losing Touch With Biological Reality

"Two weeks after a panel for the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives ruled that I was guilty of unprofessional conduct for sharing my views on sex and gender ideology, Vancouver Coastal Health authority fired me from my job as a registered nurse of 13 years. I was given zero severance pay."

"I have never once had a patient complaint. Echoing the language of the BCCNM ruling, my former employer accused me of 'erasing' and 'denying' the existence of transgender identified persons -- including via my writings for National Post. The decision to fire me was bolstered by the BCCNM ruling."

"Also like the BCCNM, Vancouver Coastal Health has completely lost touch with reality -- biological and otherwise. In their confidential investigation report: they used scare quotes to insinuate that I was sharing incorrect facts: such as: only women give birth, and women do not have penises."

"Sharing such 'facts', they wrote, 'den[ies] the reality of trans people without surgical interference'."

Amy Hamm, veteran registered nurse and journalist

 

"Over 75 percent of incarcerated women have been victims of some form of physical, sexual, emotional or psychological abuse, primarily at the hands of men."

"[Some prison inmates are] so traumatized by their experiences that they are unable to deal with men at all."

Expert testifying at the 2001 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal 

"Many of these women are psychologically damaged, as a consequence of the physical, psychological and sexual abuse they have suffered at the hands of men."

"Like transsexuals, female inmates are a vulnerable group, who are entitled to have their needs recognized and respected."

Human Rights Tribunal report

 

In Canada, under the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, a champion of the LGBT2+Q social/cultural movement, Parliament passed Bill C-16 to fully recognize the human rights of gender-differential individuals, leading to women's prisons becoming open to the presence of transgender males: "Offenders will be placed according to their gender identity or expression in a men's or a women's institution, if that is their preference, regardless of the sex (anatomy)." Doors of women's prisons have been opened to trans-identifying male inmates with fully intact male genitalia.

 

Translated, that means female inmates face risk of sexual assault by trans inmates, risk sexually transmitted infections and must cope with stalking, where women are followed to the bathroom and showers; trans-identifying males standing directly outside private stalls.Women in prisons lodge complaints of being subjected to sexual comments, they experience anxiety, anger, depression, hopelessness, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidality. They experience flashbacks of stressful, violent, emotionally disturbing events with men.

 

Canadian Women's Sex Based Rights (CAWSBAR), a women's advocacy group, filed a Charter challenge of the policy in Federal court, claiming harms, if proven in court, that constitute a violation of female inmates' Charter right to security of the person. Forcing female inmates to share intimate spaces with trans-identifying men undermines the privacy and human dignity of women, argues CAWSBAR; cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Charter.

 

Prior to Bill C-16, preoperative males were not permitted into women's prisons. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2001 heard testimonies from numerous experts, that most male-to-female transsexual inmates remain sexually attracted to women, posing risk of preying on female prisoners. 

Re: Brief submitted by Lara Forsberg, member of the Canadian Women’s Sex
Based Rights (CaWsbar) initiative
Dear Parliamentarians,
The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has implemented an interim policy of placing
male prisoners in women’s prisons if these prisoners identify as women1.
This policy has resulted in violent prisoners being transferred from men’s to women’s
institutions. It also runs counter to the Geneva Convention that female prisoners should
be confined in separate quarters from male prisoners.
As such, we are asking that CSC respects female prisoners’ rights to dignity and safety.

While the total size of the male prisoner population in women’s federal prison system is
currently unknown, violent individuals in men’s institutions have been requesting
transfers to women’s institutions since the interim policy’s implementation. For example:

Between June 1, 2017, and December 3, 2018, 7 of 8 individuals transferred
from a federal penitentiary for men offenders to a federal institution for women
offenders, had been convicted of violent crimes, including two prisoners
convicted of sexual offences (see Attachment B).
Given that there are currently less than 700 women housed in Canada’s federal prison
system, even a handful of transfers will have a deleterious impact on women’s security -
especially since considerations of the safety of female prisoners seem to rarely
influence a decision to house a male prisoner in the female estate. 

Photo credit: Leah Hennel