Are women still persons?

when sex based feminism becomes verboten

Posie Parker was arrested, along with two other women, by Yorkshire Police on September 20th for speaking on women’s rights in Victoria Square in Leeds, UK. The controversial feminist activist, who’s real name is Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull, in the past has speared-headed the women are adult human females campaign and paid to install an ‘I heart JK Rowling’ poster at Edinburgh Waverly Rail Station—in response to rising trans extremism threatening the sex based rights of women. Network Rail removed the poster citing as its reason the political nature of the poster—women’s rights are political—and yet the Yorkshire Police arrested Posie because ‘her event wasn’t political’, and therefore under COVID-19 restrictions could not take place. Clearly the police simply wanted to suppress Standing For Women and allied feminist voices—the organisers had a very sound COVID-19 plan, and consulted the appropriate authorities to vet their plan. Pandemic restrictions on protest gatherings seemed to provide the police and the trans extremist community with another means to suppress sex based activism. The trans community has long vilified Minshull, casting her in a trollish light and referring to sex based feminism as trans exclusionary, meaning hateful.

Feminism has now become morally reprehensible to the woke wahhabist left, which, in its jacobin style, has powerful corporate and political backing—misogyny has reached such a peak that the words ‘female human’ trigger a storm of nasty reaction from trans activists, who insist it’s nothing but a common anti-trans dogwhistle to invalidate trans women’s existence. In fact, one book reviewer recently received a directive to stop using the word ‘female’ in her reviews, apparently the word female has pejorative connotations—of course, this is woke code for ‘excludes trans people’. Anyone deemed invalidating to the trans narrative automatically becomes anti trans. Promoting female sex based rights invalidates the trans creation myth and therefore JK Rowling has earned demon’s wings for her heresy. The mere statement ‘I heart JK Rowling’ has now come to represent stoking hatred, exclusion and division, according to an elected Vancouver city official, and this chillingly reminds me of the Ayatollah’s description of feminism, a plot to destroy [human] society.

Sarah Kirby Yung, an elected representative, believes that women advocating for sex based rights is hateful—how, precisely does such a spiteful individual believe she represents any Vancouverites? The city councillor, who led the movement to stop the city’s funding of Vancouver Rape Relief, and who also demanded Outdoor BC Billboards remove the ‘I heart JK Rowling’ Billboard because it was transphobic, also led a motion opposing Québec’s Bill 21. The outrage over Bill 21 seems shallow without a similar outrage about Bill C-16’s  erosion of sex-based rights, and it seems downright insulting in light of Ms Kirby Yung’s active attempts to suppress the voices of local Vancouver feminists. If we measure societies by how well they treat female humans, then Vancouver society is a subpar society. 

Do Muslims only matter when we can serve as a token to the woke identity crusaders? Are we just some kind of cool and exotic spice the woke can put in their social justice soup?  I resent being used in these games of woke chess, I resent white saviours such as Ms Kirby Yung using hijabis as ammunition in their woke crusades and then wokescolding sex based feminist activism. Many of those outraged over Bill 21 also reacted to JK Rowling with viciousness, so I find the outrage over Bill 21 patronising, performative, and perfunctory. Is this what’s meant by ‘whiteness’, this obsessive need to colonise every situation with over-corrective moral superiority? Wokery, at its core, reeks of elitism, and as such, feels like a form of colonisation. 

We need to talk about how Bill C-16 violates women’s Charter rights and has essentially served as a state sponsored contempt of Canadian women. We need to talk about how vast swaths of social justice and political advocates have decided the existence of female humans invalidates trans people. We need to talk about how the ultimate aim of gender and queer theory is the dissolution of sexual boundaries. We need to talk about the misogyny, homophobia, and downright misanthropy of this dogmatic worship of the trans political identity. We need to talk about and take the harms of gender self ID seriously. 

Can we have these complex and nuanced conversations like mature grownups—without conflating disagreement with gaslighting and hatred and without people in positions of social and corporate and political power unduly influencing public discourse to align with their political self interests? Can we have these discussions without trans extremists showing up waving cardboard guillotines in threatening fashion whilst they claim to be the victims? Or without trans extremists leaving dead rats on the doorsteps of Vancouver Rape Relief? Or without trans extremists using words like vermin to describe female humans who set boundaries? Or without trans extremists likening sex segregation to racial segregation and white supremacy?

Can all levels of government meet the needs of trans people without violating the Charter rights of women and Muslims? Wasn’t the intention of Bill C-16 to address the needs of trans people? Then why is trans acceptance and recognition being purchased with women’s Charter rights? Did the entire country miss the part where the Oakes Test was applied to Bill C-16 to determine it’s impact on sex and religious Charter rights? Is the need of tran people for gender self ID pressing enough to warrant violating women’s sex based rights? Does it warrant violating Muslim Canadians’ religious rights? Does it seem rational to require everyone to believe a male is a woman simply because he says so? This doesn’t seem like minimal interference, it seems akin to psychological abuse of the Canadian people. 

Why are no Canadian legislators concerned about this—why is no politician who purports to represent me concerned about this? Why have no mainstream media reported on this issue in earnest? Why does the entire country sleep while this happens to women? And why is Sarah Kirby Yung performing her concern about hijabi rights in Québec, when she’s clearly on a blazing gender crusade to destroy them herself? Sex based rights are also hijabi rights. Nine decades ago, in October of 1929, the Privy Council in Britain declared that women in Canada were official persons under the law—I wonder if the Prime Minister and all the legislators still believe this. In her famous essay, Nellie McClung wrote, now that we are persons, I wonder if we will notice any difference. Will we still ask for confirmation of our stories and opinions from our nearest male relative? I wonder, what would Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy, and the women who worked on the person’s case think about gender self ID? Most of all though, I wonder—are women still persons in Canada? I’m beginning to have my doubts.

*photo is of item A17201 from the Alberta Archives: “Farm and Ranch Review, 2 January, 1930 (Vol XXV!, No. 1, pp.16), titled "Now That We Are Persons" written by Nellie McClung.”