Trans activists plan protest against controversial speaker at McGill

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“The rights of transgender people cannot be separated from the rights of homosexuals and lesbians and are not in conflict with the rights of children, nor of CIS women,” the open letter said.

Posted on Jan 10, 2023 • 3 min read

37 comments “McGill actively contributes to the attack on the dignity and safety of trans people,” says Celeste Trianon, a law student at the Université de Montréal and coordinator of the Quebec Trans ID Clinic. Photo by Alan McInnis/Montreal Gazette

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Update: The event was canceled amid protests. More details here.

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A protest was due to take place at McGill University on Tuesday to oppose a speaker whose event drew condemnation from trans activists, LGBTQ2+ rights groups and the wider community.

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The event, called ‘The UK Gender vs Gender (Identity) Debate and the LGB Divorce of T’, was hosted by the Faculty of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. The speaker, Robert Wintemute, is a professor of human rights law at King’s College London with links to the LGB Alliance, an advocacy group described by various LGBTQ2+ organizations and activists as a transphobic hate group.

The event page on McGill’s website describes the UK debate (mentioned in the event title) as being about “whether or not the law should be changed to make it easier for transgender people to change their legal gender from their birth gender, and to exceptional situations, such as women-only spaces and sports, where an individual’s birth sex must take precedence over gender identity, regardless of their legal sex.”

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The LGB Alliance is an outgrowth of that debate, the event description continues, and “rejects the LGB and T political coalition and challenges some transgender demands because they conflict with the rights of lesbian and bisexual women or the rights of children who may grow up to be LGB adults .”

In an open letter posted online, trans activist Celeste Trianon and student groups RadLaw McGill and Queer McGill — all of whom are hosting Tuesday’s protest — questioned the school’s decision to put a person with trans exclusionary views on a platform.

“The sheer irony of its platforming through the Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism cannot be understated: transgender rights cannot be separated from gay or lesbian rights, and are not in conflict with the rights of children, nor of CIS women “, the letter says. “Undermining the human rights of trans people does not benefit any member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community or the feminist movement.”

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The letter also points out a number of questionable positions taken by the LGB Alliance, including opposition to a ban on conversion therapy for trans people.

Trianon, who is also a law student at the Université de Montréal and coordinator of the Quebec Trans ID Clinic, said in an interview Monday that the event will add to the distress the trans community faces on a daily basis.

“McGill is actively contributing to the attack on the dignity and safety of trans people by not necessarily endorsing the speaker’s views, but … giving them a platform where they are allowed to discuss trans rights,” she said. “I think by putting someone like that in a human rights think tank, it legitimizes these anti-trans views as human rights. It’s as if we use anti-discrimination laws to protect people who discriminate. Bigotry should never be tolerated.”

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In an email, McGill University’s media relations team said the events organized by the Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism — which include a variety of human rights issues — are not an endorsement of the speakers’ views, but rather “ serve as a platform for critical conversations about topics that can be productively and robustly debated in an academic setting.”

He added that he would ensure there was time for discussions during Tuesday’s event.

The open letter calls on the school to hold itself accountable for the harm it causes the trans community and demands that “an event like this never happen on campus again.”

“The problem is that this event actively contributes to the entire climate of hostility and attacks on the dignity and safety of trans people,” Trianon said. “This event is directly contributing to that happening.”

kthomas@postmedia.com

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