Women's Charter Rights Expendable in Favouring Transwomen's 'Rights'

"Perhaps not all men who claim a female gender identity are sexually motivated, but saying any man who claims a female gender identity can come in to women's changing rooms, the City has invited in sexually motivated men like him."

"It is a direct threat to women and girls for the city to say I have to see his penis and his fetish gear, let him look at me and my girl child if we change, and if we feel frightened our only alternative is to just stop using the facility."

"This denies us a public service on the basis of our female sex." 

Kathleen Lowrey, women's rights advocate

University of Alberta associate professor Kathleen Lowrey was dismissed as associate chair of undergraduate studies in the department of anthropology in March. Lowrey says she believes she was dismissed over her critical views of gender. jpg

 

In February 2025, Kathleen Lowrey, her 14-year-old daughter with her, entered the female changing room facility at the Bonnie Doon Leisure centre. There, they were confronted with the presence of a man deressed in sexual fetish gear, "a bald man wearing only a black thong outlining his penis, and a pair of artificial rubber breasts slung around his neck". On reporting the scene to the leisure centre staff, she was informed that the individual in the thong was entitled to his presence in the women's area, however he was accoutered.

 

That's when she called police. Who would, of course, do nothing, since it was the policy of the centre and others like it to allow the entry of men claiming to be women, into women-only areas. No questions asked, no 'proof' of gender required. Professor Lowrey then filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights commission (AHRC) a month later, claiming discrimination on the basis of sex. In turn the AHRC rejected her complaint in July 2025, as well as her request for an appeal of the rejection, in November of 2025.

 

They responded that Professor Lowrey had failed to demonstrate she had been discriminated against. That led to her filing for a judicial review in the hope that the AHRC would be forced to hear her case. The City of Edmonton had other plans. Lowrey's application for a judicial review was tossed by the city on the basis that the city was not named as a respondent, arguing that the city is "the entity directly affected by and implicated in the underlying human rights complaint"; moreover, that the six-month filing period for a judicial review had lapsed.  

"In 2020, the University of Alberta removed Kathleen Lowrey, a tenured professor, from her role as associate chair of the department of anthropology after she expressed “controversial academic views regarding transgendered people and the LGTBQ2S+ community” the court said."
"[The professor explained her views on feminism], a few key ideas: men cannot get pregnant, lesbians don’t have penises and that biological sex is real."
"The Association of Academic Staff of the University of Alberta, an academic staff union representing about 4,000 members, filed a grievance over Lowrey’s removal. Alleging that the university dismissed Lowrey for her “gender-critical” perspective, the union argued that the university breached their collective bargaining agreement by failing to “uphold and protect academic freedom and exercise its management rights in a fair, reasonable, equitable and non-arbitrary manner,” according to the court’s decision." 

Jessica Mach, Canadian Lawyer 

Professor Lowrey, in filing her application against the AHRC, stated she had wanted her original complaint only to be heard. She stated that the relief [she is] seeking in [her] originating application is not from Bonnie Doon Leisure Centre and/or the city of Edmonton, but rather for the AHRC to hear [her] arguments. The AHRC appeared to conflate 'sex' and 'gender' in dismissing Professor Lowrey's complaint, despite that sex is a biological reality; gender on the other hand reflects a social ideology of fluid gender self-assignment.

 

In Canada, theoretically, women are entitled through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to respect and equality and security of the person. Yet when Professor Lowrey called on her Charter rights, a legal technicality threw her case into contemptuous contention in favour of the fiction of transwomen's rights trampling all over those of genuine  women. Despite the fact that any woman who registers a complaint over her loss of privacy in favour of a man's whims is labelled a bigot and transphobic. A social curse.

 

The Edmonton Law Courts building. Photo By David Bloom

 

"It keeps going against women in legal case after legal case."

"It is an accumulating record of smug institutional disregard for women and girls in Canada, and everywhere we attempt to contest policies put in place by gender activists."

"People should be able to express their gender in whatever manner they wish (but) I don’t agree with biological sex being irrelevant. I think treating biological sex as irrelevant has some really serious policy implications. As an example, housing trans-identified men in women’s prisons is not fair to women prisoners and I think it puts women at risk." 

"Contemporary gender ideology requires active affirmation of the proposition that men can become women and that women can become men. It further asserts that to refuse to assent to this proposition is to do active ‘harm’ to trans-identified individuals. The doctrine requires uncritical reverence for retrograde gender constructs, such as the idea that a little boy who likes tea parties and pretty dresses can be deemed to have been ‘born in the wrong body’ [and so is actually, in fact, a little girl]." 

"But we are learning from each kick in the teeth, and we are not giving up."

Kathleen Lowrey  

The University of Alberta's north campus sign in Edmonton. Photo by Ed Kaiser/Postmedia