With the passing of Bill C-389 the government moved one step closer to legally protecting the rights and self determination of trans people. As some people celebrate the passing of Bill C-389 this week, others wonder where it will go from here. It may be another thing that gets clogged through the appointment seats of the part of government with the least amount of accountability to a votership.
I worry about this, and my worry comes from what I see as a separation of understanding. People who are resisting this change, people and parties who are framing trans people as predators, are doing so from a comfortable distance from trans community resistance, and trans lived realities of mistreatment, unemployment, homelessness and other things that a bill like this may have a impact of change around. Trans people are not a part of their everyday lives, their families, their communities. For large part due to the economic segregation of people facing oppression like transphobia, but also in a culture that extols gender variant people as sex offenders, not including them, even in your own families seems natural. I don't know of any specific trans people who have been excommunicated from their politician families, but I have seen it happen across other socioeconomic and cultural landscapes. So what is it in the values system of people on the "moral right" that thinks that this type of behavior should go unnoticed, unprotected? I attended a service this morning, at the Unitarian church. The sermon was talking about moral and religious involvement with politics. This is a complicated and many faceted topic, but one thing that really came in to my head from the sermon and following conversations was this:
The "moral right" is bringing "religion" into politics, so without the moral logic of social justice minded individuals creating a balance, where democratic thinking and ideas, human rights and equality within diversity can be shared on the same platform, the platform will by default be overwhelmed with the attempts to de-humanize individuals by forcing fucked up power driven decision making "values" down our throats.
Another thing that was re-brought to my attention, both this week and over the last little while in general is that the bible, the supposed moral compass of so much of this fucked up shit we see from the barring of trans rights and protections to the shutting down of women's health centers to the barriers to accessing clean rigs, is FULL of things like this:
Isaiah 10
1 Woe to those who make unjust laws, 1 to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights 2 and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, 2 making widows their prey 2 and robbing the fatherless.
Guess what "moral right", we can read your scriptures too, we can see what you are supposedly basing decisions off of. And I call BULLSHIT! You want to know who are oppressed of your people?
The people you are posing as villainous creeps out to molest your daughters; our own daughters and sisters who continually get fucked over by the presumptions that people make about their identities because of parts of their bodies or pasts. The people that have been stolen, murdered, fired, evicted, beat up, raped and terrorized; the women, queers, trans people, indigenous people,immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities... need I go on. And guess what, some of us fit into more than one of those categories! And fucked up shit happens all the time, especially to those of use who fit in these up little boxes (which have their own complication as they restrict us down to one element of self) . We are the widows become prey, widowing large segments of a generation ravaged by the effects of HIV and stigma. We are the fatherless, as more and more trans youth end up finding themselves at younger ages, parents still kick people out, cut people off because they are self determined. Are these the people that the "moral right"want to "save the world" from with their unjust laws? Look at your moral compass conservative party, there's a very clear direction. Are choices being made by values? Cause I'd like to call yours to question.
