The past month across Canada, everyone witnessed through a number of incidents covered by the media just how real and unprecedented the discrimination towards trans, non-binary, gender diverse and Two Spirit people truly is. We saw a Toronto Public Library allow hate speech towards the trans community and specifically trans women. The same speaker, Megan Murphy, was also recently allowed to speak at a Vancouver library. We saw the Manitoba provincial government deny a non-binary person the right to have an X marker as the gender on their identification. On top of that, we also saw a major public debate around the inclusion of gender identity and sexual orientation as rights in the code of conduct at the Toronto Catholic District School Board. We are so proud of our community who has shown up and stood by each other through each of these issues. These widely publicized issues are merely a drop in the bucket when it comes to the daily discrimination faced by trans, non-binary, gender diverse and Two Spirit people. Based on statistics from stats Canada, we know that hate crime is on the rise and so now more than ever, we need to stand together and protect the most venerable of our community. We are looking forward to the upcoming inaugural Canadian Trans Summit, for which Egale is the fiscal sponsor. The summit is the first of it's kind and will bring together committed trans, gender diverse, and Two-Spirit community members from across the country to discuss strategic collaboration in pursuit of trans rights throughout Canada.
For more information, visit trans-summit.ca. Sincerely, | |
Helen Kennedy
Executive Director, Egale Canada | |
