It is entirely accurate that South Carolina's HB2 is appalling, but until the final paragraphs this article fails to mention that what Poilievre said is in no way comparable to HB2. In fact, what he said is very much in line with the UK's Equality Act, supported by all parties including Keir Starmer's Labour Party. At the moment, Canada has self-identification as the sole criteria for access which invites abuse and has caused issues in various change rooms. If Poilievre had wanted to embrace this issue he would have said that his government would pass a UK Equality Act equivalent, but he explicitly ruled out any change to self-ID.
In my view, Poilievre took a note from the media's attempts to trap conservatives with gotcha questions on social issues; for instance, the way Andrew Scheer was repeatedly asked about abortion. Instead of saying, "I personally oppose abortion, but I respect the Supreme Court's ruling which affirms it", he dodged and media and progressive parties had a field day portraying him as having a hidden agenda. So, Poilievre has taken the issue off the table by saying his personal position but making clear he doesn't see it as a federal matter.
I also think there's a bit of a "gotcha" in the demonization of the word "biological". Surely "women with penises" is more offensive. Every decent person supports trans civil rights and the right of anyone to present as they wish; the points at issue (sports, change rooms) concern biology; the only reason the term "biological males and females" has arisen is because activists have attempted to swap self-identified gender for biology.
As a final aside, I think far too much has been made of Westlock's decision. I'm gay and appreciate that there are rainbow crosswalks in cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver that have identifiable LGB and T areas. But we're talking about a little town of 4,800 souls with barely enough crosswalks for a single can of white paint. In that context, I'd feel totally embarrassed to have crosswalks specifically celebrating my sexuality. It's as absurd as crosswalks painted to celebrate races, religions, and national flags. It was clearly advanced by a handful of well-meaning high school students who have no idea how in a small live-and-let-live community, such overt peacocking encourages backlash.
"Every decent person supports trans civil rights and the right of anyone to present as they wish; the points at issue (sports, change rooms) concern biology; the only reason the term "biological males and females" has arisen is because activists have attempted to swap self-identified gender for biology. " Well said Allen. 100%.
Rahim, I appreciate the broader perspective that you offer on the impact of the bathroom bill, and your caution against wading into bathroom and birth certificate territory.
In years past, I too thought that maybe conservatives were inflating or exaggerating this issue to appeal to their base.
I tend to lean centre-left. I think adults should be free to make their own choices about their bodies.
But.
The years since then have been a shitshow. Men can literally wake up one morning and declare themselves to be women. That gives them access to women’s bathrooms and change rooms.
Are there a lot? No. But there are men that will do this in order to attack women. Reddux and the Daily Mail have been reporting these cases for years while MSM looks the other way.
Even if I accept that most trans women do not want to harm women and “just want to pee” there is overwhelming evidence that men who are predators will use this access to harm women.
So then my question is, how many women are supposed to bear the brunt of this, to keep the economy, the NBA games and the Netflix productions humming along?
Every time I hear the term "women with a penis", I do recall as a youth paging through the Eaton's and Simpson's Christmas catalogues. To this day I remember turning the pages (rather slowly) of the women's clothing and underwear section. I honestly cannot remember any photos of a woman with a penis. Eaton's and Simpson's always had a stellar reputation for honesty in advertising. This is how I know that Mr. Poilievre is on very stable ground.
There's something of a double-standard in evidence. If you looked for evidence of harm for trans people in jurisdictions with restrictive policies, you would also not find that evidence in police reports. What you do find is that trans people avoid those spaces, in a way that significantly constrains their lives. Most accept that as a real harm.
Where's the comparable evidence on how these policies affect how women use public space? Women are not going to stick around if something seems off to wait for something worth filing a police report about. That response to perceived unsafety (or the kinds of low-level harassment that are unlikely to show up on police reports) cannot be seen as a 'genuine' harm for one group and not the other. I suspect that the best way to balance concerns is different for locker rooms than washrooms, but the interests of women have absolutely not been put on even footing with the interests of trans people in these policies.
I could not disagree more with you on this, Rahim. I love and respect you but in case you haven't noticed you are not a woman and therefore not being subjected to this intrusion into YOUR privacy. I'm personally glad that COMMON SENSE is somewhere in Canadian politics. Pierre is correct. Biological men claiming to be women do not belong in women's spaces. If we feel compelled to recognize this, then set up separate spaces for trans people. I find it interesting that trans men are not an issue. I'm guessing they continue to use women's facilities of they have not gone through body altering surgeries.
The public view on this issue has changed considerably since 2016. Recent polling is very clear that the majority of Canadians support PP's position. To your point, PP is a careful politician. In my view, he took the position he took publicly because he believes it, and all recent polls show that is what the vast majority of Canadians believe as well.
Would have been my point as well. The landscape in 2024 is considerably different than in 2016. The outrage over gender-transitioning processes in schools - which makes them look a lot like cults - was not even on the radar in 2016. Poilievre is no dummy.
I think the most important thing is that we have to be free to discuss this without fear of being publicly shamed, as we are now. Do I think a genuine transwoman should be forced to use the mens room? I guess not. But currently any man can just *pretend* to be a transwoman and go right into any womans space he wants. That's the problem. There's no way to distinguish between a genune transwoman trying to live her life, and a bad actor using that as a disguise to be a pervert. What's the solution? I don't know, but we can't figure it out if we're not free to talk about it.
I agree that a conversation needs to be had about trans women accessing any number of 'women only spaces''. But does anyone have any actual stats as to how frequently men are pretending to be trans to access women's washrooms. I keep seeing comments indicating that this happens, but have yet to see any actual proof.
You can't determine what is/isn't a problem without knowing how frequently it occurs. Perverts will always look for the easiest way to try to get what they want. I don't think that pretending to be trans is particularly easy.
Nobody is even allowed to collect stats about this phenomenon, because that would violate too many of our new enforced pieties. The point of that film is to demonstrate the existence of a small subset of paraphilic men who are using Trans as a fig leaf for the fact that they get their jollies by transgressively invading women's spaces. The existence of this is not allowed to be acknowledged and pointing it out is dismissed by framing it as tarring all trans people as predators.
Stats would be great! But how can you tell who is 'a man pretending to be trans' when the only requirement of self-ID is: Saying The Words
For example, this week Kurtis Mawson was caught filming in the women's toilets. he said he was a woman.... or she said she was a woman... And therein lies the problem. Just a tiny switch of pronouns makes something icky turn into something mundane. So any stats we hope to compile first has to clear the pronoun reporting hurdle, ie: are we talking about apples, or oranges?
Poilievre was stating a position. As you say, he has no intention (nor power) to legislate such a matter.
Consider this, the past two Conservative candidates for PM have foundered on the rocky shores of the media, who repetitively played gotcha with "please state your beliefs" lines of attack.
Poilievre is taking that whole line of attack away. It's pretty easy to pin down "where he stands" on culture war issues. He is betting that MOST Canadians agree with him, and he is probably correct.
It is not ten years ago anymore, the pendulum is swinging back.
Whatever the consequences of this law might have been, the times have changed, and it is no longer “controversial” to take the position that bathrooms, which are essentially plumbing facilities, have been, and should continue to be, tailored to human plumbing which bears a consistently high correlation to biological sex and chromosomes. One does not require a birth certificate to ascertain which of the two, and only two, types of human plumbing a person has - it is binary. We are finally starting to see some backlash against this most advanced bridgehead of woke nonsense, with DEI also under attack. North Carolina may simply have been ahead of the curve. We may all bemoan the various battlegrounds that constitute the culture wars, but in cases where reality versus “self-identification” (or delusion) is at stake, defence of reality is always the right thing to do, hurt feelings be damned.
People are rightfully concerned about the erosion of the rights of women to their own spaces for the sake of safety. To have you discount us as “bathroom crusaders” is disappointing.
And one for the Line Editors. I’m not one for all these stupid made-up days on the calendar in the name of inclusion, but thank you, I guess, for posting this today instead of tomorrow, which is International Women’s Day.
"One ill-conceived bill nearly flushed all of this down the toilet..."
This confident announcement of a causal relationship between economic performance and one seemingly unrelated bill would be all the better for proof. The economic ups and downs of geographic areas over time are usually mediated by so many variables that finally determining what caused what becomes a mug's game.
According to the article's own account, one could more plausibly assign a heavier weight of responsibility for North Carolina's woes to irrational cancel culture "backlash" than to the bill-framers. Even here, though, it's obvious we'd need considerably more information before we could begin reliably identifying causal connections.
The real message emerging from the article seems to be a threat: antagonize cancel culture mobs and they'll do their best to hurt you in some way, whether the issues arousing their ire warrant such reactions or not. Surely catering to this kind of bullying, vindictive sensibility would itself be "ill-conceived," even if the prospects of remaining indefinitely on its good side weren't so remote, and it would be craven for politicians to try. I'm all for Pierre Poilievre standing up to the mob and speaking his mind on issues.
...a small quibble about the Westlock vote. It has been widely reported as a 'ban' on Pride crosswalks, but it was no such thing.
It was a vote to uphold the standards of the Traffic Act, in reaffirming that there is a proper way to mark a crosswalk, so as to be consistent with all other crosswalks.
Yes, the "effect" is no more Pride paint, but also no other commemorative paint or murals of any kind.
Is it possible that maybe (just maybe) the time for Pride paint on public streets has passed...?
The point has clearly been made, with tremendous redundancy.
I've always felt that rainbow crosswalks are a bit performative. IMO they make sense if they're in an area like Church/Wellesley in Toronto as a reflection on the community, but elsewhere, not so much.
I've always thought that putting an identity flag on something people literally **walk and drive on** was a stupid idea.
Seems a little too similar to the Iranian university painting Israeli and American flags on the floor so students could show their contempt for those people by walking on their flags.
Putting flags up high in a place of prominence always made more sense to me.
The world has changed a lot in the last eight years. Countries which were leading the gender-affirmation charge (England, Sweden, France) are now tapping the breaks wondering, "hey maybe we should look at this a little more closely", while Canada and the U.S. are now leading a parade of two.
It is entirely accurate that South Carolina's HB2 is appalling, but until the final paragraphs this article fails to mention that what Poilievre said is in no way comparable to HB2. In fact, what he said is very much in line with the UK's Equality Act, supported by all parties including Keir Starmer's Labour Party. At the moment, Canada has self-identification as the sole criteria for access which invites abuse and has caused issues in various change rooms. If Poilievre had wanted to embrace this issue he would have said that his government would pass a UK Equality Act equivalent, but he explicitly ruled out any change to self-ID.
In my view, Poilievre took a note from the media's attempts to trap conservatives with gotcha questions on social issues; for instance, the way Andrew Scheer was repeatedly asked about abortion. Instead of saying, "I personally oppose abortion, but I respect the Supreme Court's ruling which affirms it", he dodged and media and progressive parties had a field day portraying him as having a hidden agenda. So, Poilievre has taken the issue off the table by saying his personal position but making clear he doesn't see it as a federal matter.
I also think there's a bit of a "gotcha" in the demonization of the word "biological". Surely "women with penises" is more offensive. Every decent person supports trans civil rights and the right of anyone to present as they wish; the points at issue (sports, change rooms) concern biology; the only reason the term "biological males and females" has arisen is because activists have attempted to swap self-identified gender for biology.
As a final aside, I think far too much has been made of Westlock's decision. I'm gay and appreciate that there are rainbow crosswalks in cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver that have identifiable LGB and T areas. But we're talking about a little town of 4,800 souls with barely enough crosswalks for a single can of white paint. In that context, I'd feel totally embarrassed to have crosswalks specifically celebrating my sexuality. It's as absurd as crosswalks painted to celebrate races, religions, and national flags. It was clearly advanced by a handful of well-meaning high school students who have no idea how in a small live-and-let-live community, such overt peacocking encourages backlash.
"Every decent person supports trans civil rights and the right of anyone to present as they wish; the points at issue (sports, change rooms) concern biology; the only reason the term "biological males and females" has arisen is because activists have attempted to swap self-identified gender for biology. " Well said Allen. 100%.
Rahim, I appreciate the broader perspective that you offer on the impact of the bathroom bill, and your caution against wading into bathroom and birth certificate territory.
In years past, I too thought that maybe conservatives were inflating or exaggerating this issue to appeal to their base.
I tend to lean centre-left. I think adults should be free to make their own choices about their bodies.
But.
The years since then have been a shitshow. Men can literally wake up one morning and declare themselves to be women. That gives them access to women’s bathrooms and change rooms.
Are there a lot? No. But there are men that will do this in order to attack women. Reddux and the Daily Mail have been reporting these cases for years while MSM looks the other way.
Even if I accept that most trans women do not want to harm women and “just want to pee” there is overwhelming evidence that men who are predators will use this access to harm women.
So then my question is, how many women are supposed to bear the brunt of this, to keep the economy, the NBA games and the Netflix productions humming along?
That was my thought.
So women, and young girls, just have to deal with these men in their bathrooms?
The economy matters more than 50% of the population?
I see.
Agreed.
I guess women’s lives don’t matter.
Pretty much. I guess the rights of women and girls are trumped by economic interests and men.
Every time I hear the term "women with a penis", I do recall as a youth paging through the Eaton's and Simpson's Christmas catalogues. To this day I remember turning the pages (rather slowly) of the women's clothing and underwear section. I honestly cannot remember any photos of a woman with a penis. Eaton's and Simpson's always had a stellar reputation for honesty in advertising. This is how I know that Mr. Poilievre is on very stable ground.
There's something of a double-standard in evidence. If you looked for evidence of harm for trans people in jurisdictions with restrictive policies, you would also not find that evidence in police reports. What you do find is that trans people avoid those spaces, in a way that significantly constrains their lives. Most accept that as a real harm.
Where's the comparable evidence on how these policies affect how women use public space? Women are not going to stick around if something seems off to wait for something worth filing a police report about. That response to perceived unsafety (or the kinds of low-level harassment that are unlikely to show up on police reports) cannot be seen as a 'genuine' harm for one group and not the other. I suspect that the best way to balance concerns is different for locker rooms than washrooms, but the interests of women have absolutely not been put on even footing with the interests of trans people in these policies.
💯
I could not disagree more with you on this, Rahim. I love and respect you but in case you haven't noticed you are not a woman and therefore not being subjected to this intrusion into YOUR privacy. I'm personally glad that COMMON SENSE is somewhere in Canadian politics. Pierre is correct. Biological men claiming to be women do not belong in women's spaces. If we feel compelled to recognize this, then set up separate spaces for trans people. I find it interesting that trans men are not an issue. I'm guessing they continue to use women's facilities of they have not gone through body altering surgeries.
The public view on this issue has changed considerably since 2016. Recent polling is very clear that the majority of Canadians support PP's position. To your point, PP is a careful politician. In my view, he took the position he took publicly because he believes it, and all recent polls show that is what the vast majority of Canadians believe as well.
Would have been my point as well. The landscape in 2024 is considerably different than in 2016. The outrage over gender-transitioning processes in schools - which makes them look a lot like cults - was not even on the radar in 2016. Poilievre is no dummy.
I think the most important thing is that we have to be free to discuss this without fear of being publicly shamed, as we are now. Do I think a genuine transwoman should be forced to use the mens room? I guess not. But currently any man can just *pretend* to be a transwoman and go right into any womans space he wants. That's the problem. There's no way to distinguish between a genune transwoman trying to live her life, and a bad actor using that as a disguise to be a pervert. What's the solution? I don't know, but we can't figure it out if we're not free to talk about it.
I agree that a conversation needs to be had about trans women accessing any number of 'women only spaces''. But does anyone have any actual stats as to how frequently men are pretending to be trans to access women's washrooms. I keep seeing comments indicating that this happens, but have yet to see any actual proof.
You can't determine what is/isn't a problem without knowing how frequently it occurs. Perverts will always look for the easiest way to try to get what they want. I don't think that pretending to be trans is particularly easy.
Theres a documentary called "what is a woman: wrong answers only" which will provide you examples of this. Examples you may wish you hadn't seen
Not sure that a video produced by some anonymous person counts as actual stats :-)
Nobody is even allowed to collect stats about this phenomenon, because that would violate too many of our new enforced pieties. The point of that film is to demonstrate the existence of a small subset of paraphilic men who are using Trans as a fig leaf for the fact that they get their jollies by transgressively invading women's spaces. The existence of this is not allowed to be acknowledged and pointing it out is dismissed by framing it as tarring all trans people as predators.
Even I could pretend to be trans (I have a beard), since it only requires self identification, it should be pretty easy.
Please explain exactly how pretending to be trans is difficult.
Stats would be great! But how can you tell who is 'a man pretending to be trans' when the only requirement of self-ID is: Saying The Words
For example, this week Kurtis Mawson was caught filming in the women's toilets. he said he was a woman.... or she said she was a woman... And therein lies the problem. Just a tiny switch of pronouns makes something icky turn into something mundane. So any stats we hope to compile first has to clear the pronoun reporting hurdle, ie: are we talking about apples, or oranges?
Poilievre was stating a position. As you say, he has no intention (nor power) to legislate such a matter.
Consider this, the past two Conservative candidates for PM have foundered on the rocky shores of the media, who repetitively played gotcha with "please state your beliefs" lines of attack.
Poilievre is taking that whole line of attack away. It's pretty easy to pin down "where he stands" on culture war issues. He is betting that MOST Canadians agree with him, and he is probably correct.
It is not ten years ago anymore, the pendulum is swinging back.
Very well stated and bang on.
Whatever the consequences of this law might have been, the times have changed, and it is no longer “controversial” to take the position that bathrooms, which are essentially plumbing facilities, have been, and should continue to be, tailored to human plumbing which bears a consistently high correlation to biological sex and chromosomes. One does not require a birth certificate to ascertain which of the two, and only two, types of human plumbing a person has - it is binary. We are finally starting to see some backlash against this most advanced bridgehead of woke nonsense, with DEI also under attack. North Carolina may simply have been ahead of the curve. We may all bemoan the various battlegrounds that constitute the culture wars, but in cases where reality versus “self-identification” (or delusion) is at stake, defence of reality is always the right thing to do, hurt feelings be damned.
People are rightfully concerned about the erosion of the rights of women to their own spaces for the sake of safety. To have you discount us as “bathroom crusaders” is disappointing.
And one for the Line Editors. I’m not one for all these stupid made-up days on the calendar in the name of inclusion, but thank you, I guess, for posting this today instead of tomorrow, which is International Women’s Day.
Didn't occur to us. We wouldn't have checked that, anyway. We just publish stuff as it's ready.
And that’s what I love about The Line. You and Jen are journalists doing journalism.
This is how things should be.
EDI is a blight on society.
But somehow it also feels like the price for admission on these conversations.
Maybe you should ask women next time you reach for a conclusion that mainly affects them
"One ill-conceived bill nearly flushed all of this down the toilet..."
This confident announcement of a causal relationship between economic performance and one seemingly unrelated bill would be all the better for proof. The economic ups and downs of geographic areas over time are usually mediated by so many variables that finally determining what caused what becomes a mug's game.
According to the article's own account, one could more plausibly assign a heavier weight of responsibility for North Carolina's woes to irrational cancel culture "backlash" than to the bill-framers. Even here, though, it's obvious we'd need considerably more information before we could begin reliably identifying causal connections.
The real message emerging from the article seems to be a threat: antagonize cancel culture mobs and they'll do their best to hurt you in some way, whether the issues arousing their ire warrant such reactions or not. Surely catering to this kind of bullying, vindictive sensibility would itself be "ill-conceived," even if the prospects of remaining indefinitely on its good side weren't so remote, and it would be craven for politicians to try. I'm all for Pierre Poilievre standing up to the mob and speaking his mind on issues.
...a small quibble about the Westlock vote. It has been widely reported as a 'ban' on Pride crosswalks, but it was no such thing.
It was a vote to uphold the standards of the Traffic Act, in reaffirming that there is a proper way to mark a crosswalk, so as to be consistent with all other crosswalks.
Yes, the "effect" is no more Pride paint, but also no other commemorative paint or murals of any kind.
Is it possible that maybe (just maybe) the time for Pride paint on public streets has passed...?
The point has clearly been made, with tremendous redundancy.
I've always felt that rainbow crosswalks are a bit performative. IMO they make sense if they're in an area like Church/Wellesley in Toronto as a reflection on the community, but elsewhere, not so much.
I've always thought that putting an identity flag on something people literally **walk and drive on** was a stupid idea.
Seems a little too similar to the Iranian university painting Israeli and American flags on the floor so students could show their contempt for those people by walking on their flags.
Putting flags up high in a place of prominence always made more sense to me.
Bless Pierre for speaking simply, based on common sense, with confidence and aplomb.
The world has changed a lot in the last eight years. Countries which were leading the gender-affirmation charge (England, Sweden, France) are now tapping the breaks wondering, "hey maybe we should look at this a little more closely", while Canada and the U.S. are now leading a parade of two.
Incorrect.
No one?
Women and young girls say hello.
Husbands, fathers and grandfathers wave back