Debate: Does trans activism negatively impact women's rights?

okay good afternoon everyone uh wonderful to see um so many people here for this very interesting event that we're about to experience my name is elaine mullen and i'm here to introduce this fourth event of the critical thinking series first i'd like to emphasize that this series is not a debate intended to determine a winner rather it is designed to provide a place for discussion and questions in an effort to increase understanding of issues in the words of french ethios demoralist joseph giuber the aim of argument or discussion should not be victory but progress the critical thinking series has been organized by the rational space network a loosely organized group of about 20 professors who agree that a university is a place for open inquiry critical thinking and evidence-based approaches to decision-making the network is intent on promoting academic freedom and freedom of expression on campus it has received significant funding from the faculty of arts the department of economics justice and policy studies and the society for academic freedom and scholarship and this support has greatly been appreciated and has enabled it to bring a number of interesting and provocative um perspectives to showcase at mount royal university this academic year the network has organized sections on the following questions is canada's support for israel justifiable should universities vet who speaks on campus and is capitalism sustainable and the network welcomes your suggestions for further topics that could be discussed going forward the national space network shares the assertion of jon stewart mill when he spoke of the deep slumber of decided opinion so the critical thinking series puts forward a contest a contentious question and then provides a framework to have the question analyzed and discussed in a systematic fashion and peter will be explaining what that framework is for today we believe that open examination of all ideas even controversial ones is central to the health of an academic institution today the fourth session of the critical thinking series asks the question does trans activism negatively impact women's rights trans activism has become increasingly prominent in the world today and yet there is nervousness about asking questions related to the implications this appears to be the first time in fact that trans activism will be discussed critically on a university in campus in canada i'm looking forward to this afternoon's discussion and i hope that we will all make progress and reach a better understanding of this question by listening intently and respectfully to the differing perspectives and now i'll introduce our presenters megan murphy the founder of the popular feminist website the feminist craft will be arguing that trans activism does negatively impact women's rights murphy has published work in numerous national and international publications the feminist current podcast has been on the air since 2012 and murphy's newest project is a youtube channel murphy holds a master's degree in gender sexuality and women's studies and recently completed a book critiquing third wave feminism presenting the other side of the question is julie ray goldstein an actress and voice over artist from california goldstein has been performing in a multitude of mediums over the last decade including animation video games and television she's been seen on adult swim tim and eric nickelodeon henry danger comedy central time traveling bong and most recently on the cbs show swat as the staunch trans feminist goldstein has written for time contributed to seven several pieces on salon.com and appeared on the louder with crowder show and the wrong speak podcast so please welcome me in joining megan murphy and julie ray holdstein to monroe university thank you and i'll turn this over to our motivator dr peter zizler thank you elaine i appreciate the introduction so i'd like to welcome everyone again i'm very excited about motivating this uh event ah just a few uh um comments the way we're gonna run it is as follows megan and julie will get each ten minutes to introduce their stance their positions and they're going to speak out then afterwards they'll have five minutes each to respond to each other's stances then the facilitators are mark and francis will get about half an hour 30 minutes to kind of probe into the stances and kind of digest possible questions or just clarify stuff associated with that and then we'll finally open it up for questions um the way we convert the questions is as follows if you could kindly just approach the microphone and introduce yourself and ask a question to uh either julie ray or megan and if i can just ask to maybe ask pretty much equal questions to both our panelists please so it's not one-sided and i'm expecting a very good event i'm very excited and i'm very pleased with you know all the people sitting anxious to start and to begin so i think we should begin um decision who starts first is done by the most random things still being used in the world and it's a toss of a coin oh i have a tony i think that's okay so i'm gonna toss it on the floor uh not to make a show out of it and now and now i'll ask as a mathematician i forgot to introduce myself and again i'm peter sisler a mathematician from mathematics and computing so i can ask say megan to choose and then uh it's equivalent um so making heads or tails it's hats it's heads thank yous history she was a little short good question i don't know it will be posted on the rational space network's youtube channel so if you just google rational space network and youtube it will be there hi my position is that trans rights and women's rights are not in opposition they are directly complimentary and the real question is does general critical activism negatively affect women's rights advocating against trans rights would set the framework to dismantle the advances feminists have made over the last few decades the right to body autonomy and freedom from discrimination based on biological essentialism are fundamental tenets of feminism these are the exact same principles upon which trans activism and trans feminism is rooted as emma lazarus said until we are all free we are none of us free contrary to how general critical activists depict trans rights is based on feelings misogynistic oppression discrimination harassment and violence are actually based in societal perception rather than reproductive capability no one is denying that the root of the patriarchy is a is indeed based in biology but the way we experience it in society is not dependent on it the presence of certain genitals or reproductive organs do not make someone who is perceived as a woman or feminine safer from violence on the street or discrimination and employment if anything the more one strays from what society considers the norm in either direction the more they are prone to these injustices nowhere is this more evident than when we enforce bathroom regulations aimed at preventing trans people from using the facilities that correspond to their gender identity gender critical activists will claim non-discrimination ordinances erode women's rights to privacy the truth is that when anti-trans regulations are enforced those most commonly targeted are actually gender non-conforming cisgender women we've all heard of these cases jessica rush was followed into the bathroom at baylor medical center in frisco by someone who thought she looked like a man and wanted to protect other women amy thomas was kicked out of restroom in a walmart in danbury and one of trans people in restrooms the truth is when there's a violent incident in a restroom trans people are typically the victims and extremely rarely the aggressors a 2013 survey published by the williams institute for example found that 70 of trans and gender non-conforming respondents in the washington dc area faced a negative reaction while trying to use the public bathroom including nine percent who reported physical assault look at the case of chrissy lee paulus who was beaten by two cisgender women for using a mcdonald's bathroom as the onlookers stood and videotaped her rather than helped in fact a 2016 report by media members interviewed interviewed experts from 16 states in the district of columbia including law enforcement officials and advocates for victims of sexual assault who reported no issues whatsoever as a result of non-discrimination protections this doesn't even begin to take into account the fact that anti-trans regulations would force trans men who are commonly perceived as male with male sex secondary sex characteristics to use female facilities if this is in the service of making women feel more comfortable in private how does having to share a restroom with a trans man makes this gender women safer more comfortable and in that case what would prevent a would-be criminal looking to access female facilities from simply stating he's a trans man this gets to the heart of the matter when it comes to facilities we are and have been historically better served by policing activity and not identity it doesn't matter what an individual's sex or gender identity is if they commit lewd or lascivious behavior in a restroom or locker room they should rightfully be arrested or prosecuted and prosecuted as to the issue of body autonomy the current ties between the gender critical movement and conservatives cannot be overstated enough just over a month ago ms murphy herself was in washington dc with several of her colleagues who spoke at the heritage foundation a conservative think tank on what they see as the dangers of allowing trans youth to medically transition these groups both cite a recent dutch study that found trans people on hormone therapy have an increased risk for dvt and cardiovascular events even though the authors couldn't control for smoking weight diet or other risk factors meaning they couldn't make a direct cause and effect length and they knew because they stated in the study that the prevalence rates of smoking within the trans population were as high as 46 percent that sounds important to me just last week the heritage foundation also published the finding of a systematic review showing another powerful hormonal medication increased bte risks and the likelihood of cardiovascular events even higher than that of hormone replacement therapy as used in trans individuals that medication is worth control these same organizations incorrectly cite dr cecilia de jean's long-term study on trans surgery to claim that gender reassignment surgery increases suicidality not surprisingly the week before heritage panel on trans rights they also had another panel where speakers cited data to claim that there was another surgical procedure that drastically increased suicidality big surprise that surgical procedure is abortion conservatives are not simply partnering with gender critical activists out of anti-trans sentiments this is a deliberate trojan horse to set the president to dismantle the advances made on lgb and women's rights over the last few decades sadly gender critical activists have taken the bait hook line and sinker by partnering with conservative organizations to limit access to medical transition gender critical activists have directly albeit maybe unconsciously assisted them in limited women's access to reproductive care as well the battle cry of feminism used to be my body my choice it appears that under gender critical activism that has morphed into your body my choice they not only actively advocate against choice in medical care for trans people that will have real life consequences on women's reproductive care they also advocate against women having the freedom to choose to do sex work that they so desire now no one is saying that we shouldn't be critical of the causes of sexualization of women in our society but the problem is that limiting choice in sex work as in reproductive care or trans-related care goes directly against the principles feminism was founded upon concerns only to further marginalization and abuse of those most vulnerable especially people of color and lgbt people the use of anti-trans rhetoric to legally dismantle lgb and women's rights isn't a theoretical we're already seeing it in practice martina navratilova's comments on trans athletes was used just a few weeks ago by opponents of lgbt equality in a montana state legislative legislature judicial judicial committee as a reason to not expand the state's human rights act to include lgbtq people in south dakota hb 1205 was introduced under the guise of allowing parents to have complete control over the decision for their children to access transgender related medical care however as the bill's sponsor representative fry mueller said during the hearing during the hearing human rights do not outrank parents rights to the child think about that for a second beyond trans-related medical care this would also allow parents complete control to their children's access to birth control and or abortion services giving them the ability to force a minor to carry a pregnancy to term as for human rights as a woman would legally be able to be undermined by parental rights now speaking of martina navratilova we seem to be hearing more commonly that allowing trans people to compete in sports endangers women's sports nothing could be farther from the truth a systematic review published a few months after the new ioc standards were released taking into account the studies of the effects of hormonal treatment and policies governing medical qualification for competition found there is no direct or consistent research suggesting trans female individuals have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition in fact the most successful transgender athletes athletes on the world stage have been transgender men the only trans athlete who has qualified for team usa as of today is chris moser for the men's duathlon team if such advantages were in aid based on assignment birth sex and not more complex medical qualifications these athletes shouldn't be able to compete on a level playing field as is the case in other areas anti-trans policies don't just negatively affect trans people they also negatively affect cis women look at the case of math bets a trans boy who was forced to compete against girls due to policies specifically designed to target trans high school students in the state of texas to the surprise of no one he won the state's girls title two years in a row thankfully he's moving on to a collegiate system with trans-inclusive policies where he has been offered a scholarship to wrestle in the men's division at an naia school and he's been winning against boys it gets even worse nevertologo's words are also being used to police the sex of cisgender female athletes caster cement is currently unbattled with the iaf who are trying to force her to take testosterone reducing medication in order to further compete these are flawed simplifications that fail to see the big picture that's perpetuated by gender critical activists who cite data comparing cisgender male athletes who do not qualify for female competition in the women's categories based on ifc regulation two cisgender women which fails to take into account the changes in muscle mass fat distribution bone density and more that occur once someone falls under their qualifications gender critical activists by comparing cis men to cis women and not trans women who have undergone medical treatment to cis women are comparing outputs to oranges that's not to say a discussion can't be had and if we see changes happen it certainly qualifies for a discussion but it has to be based in data and not feelings the data so far just does justify the current regulations and does not justify eliminating trans women from competition there's obviously many more items that we could be discussing and we should be in the future but i hope that by having these conversations with those who strongly consider themselves to be feminists which i do you can get a bigger sense of the bigger picture rather than prioritizing anti-trans sentiment and come to see the truth behind the damage the general political activist movement can cause to both trans and cis women alike me [Music] thanks everyone for coming i really appreciate it um before i get too deeply into my arguments i think that it's important for me to first define my terms so one thing that you'll find comes up over and over and over again in this debate is that those who advocate gender identity ideology and legislation refuse to define their terms in clear and coherent ways this makes genuine conversation and debate impossible without their definitions words mean nothing and communication goes nowhere so when i say sex i'm referring to biology whether an individual is male or female i define a man as an adult now human and a woman as an adult female human this is how most of the world for most of history has understood understood the terms man and woman when i say gender what i mean is the stereotypes and social roles imposed on males and females based on their sex so this is what i mean when i talk about femininity and masculinity so the ideas we hold in our society about what women and men should be uh what social norms we're expected to adhere to what kinds of jobs we should have what we should like how we should dress what our personality traits should consist of uh when i say transactivist i'm not specifically or necessarily talking about trans-identified people i'm talking about people who promote and support gender identity ideology and legislation when i say gender identity ideology or transgender ideology i'm referring to the idea that it's possible to be born in the wrong body or that it's possible for a person to change sex when i talk about gender identity legislation i'm referring to legislation and policies that allow people to self-identify as any sex they like and to access facilities spaces political positions shelters jobs grants universities sports competitions etc on that basis um i do not use the term cis which is a word created by trans activists to refer to people whose gender identity matches their sex this is because i do not have a gender identity and in fact no one does we have bodies and we have personalities and my personality is not a set of stereotypes and i refuse to identify myself with a set of stereotypes that have been used to defend sexist practices and beliefs throughout history i am also not a biological essentialist biological essentialism is the idea that an individual's personality is an innate or natural essence and that this is directly attached to their sex so for example the idea that a person is born of the gender identity that is hard-wired and that if that gender identity it's the stereotypes offered up to us by the notion of for example femininity that person must be female that's what biological essentialism is um i believe that males and females can have all kinds of personalities i believe that boys and girls should be allowed to play with whichever toys they like and wear whatever clothes they like regardless of whether or not those clothes and toys are designated for girls or for boys i do not believe that all females are inherently passive irrational emotional and drawn to makeup and heels i don't believe that all males are inherently unemotional rational and aggressive and drawn to sports and trucks i want people to be free to be themselves and free to live their lives in ways that feel authentic and fulfilling to them i don't believe any person should be discriminated against or harassed because they step outside the gender stereotypes laid out for us and in force on us in so many ways as a feminist i think we should encourage people to step out of gender stereotypes this also means that i do not believe that because for example a boy likes pink and once upon dolls that this means that he's not male but in fact female i think this is an incredibly regressive sexist and irrational point of view i don't think that boys are limited to the narrow confines of masculinity i don't think that girls are limited to the narrow confines of femininity as we understand those ideas today in our society this has always been what feminism has advocated and i am continually baffled by the extent to which our arguments are misrepresented and lied about even professors here on campus who are in the gender studies department and should know better seem not to know or understand feminist theory analysis with regard to sex and genders nor do they seem to understand the history of women's oppression patriarchy or why women's rights exist in the first place uh one professor here uh kim williams who apparently teaches in the gender and women's studies department claims that feminists who argue that transactivism stimues women's rights is this is her quote incongruous to the foundational libertarian attendance of feminist practice practice um and meanwhile a university of calgary professor named rebecca sullivan who specializes in feminist media and cultural studies claimed to that even to ask the question of how gender identity ideology and legislation impacts women's rights is the antithesis of critical thinking and beneath the integrity of any university so the purpose of universities is to think and ask critical questions and learn how to form coherent evidence-based arguments yet today too many even these professors are instead invested in the opposite silencing and discouraging critical thought i am frankly shocked at how little these people know about their own discipline and the history of the feminist movement these statements are so dangerous and ironic to me because the truth is that it is trans activists that refuse to engage in critical thinking with regard to their own ideology so much so that anyone who dares even to ask questions never mind challenge their premises is silence no platform smeared bullied and threatened this in fact is beneath the integrity of any university not asking critical questions and engaging in respectful debate so one of the reasons i challenge gender identity ideology is because i think it's progressive sexist and nonsensical i think it limits us rather than allowing us a full range of options as human beings with diverse interests and personality traits but i also think that it has incredibly negative impacts on women's rights in particular and i think it's important that when enacting legislation and making sweeping changes to policies that impact women and girls we absolutely should be having a conversation about it and engaging in rigorous public debate patriarchy came to be as a means to control women's reproductive abilities in other words it is based on our bodies it's not based on our personalities or choice in clothing it's based on the fact that we're born female stereotypes around gender were imposed on us and used against us to limit our choices power and freedom in the not-so-distant past women were not allowed to vote or hold public office because of gender women's place was in the home and they were said to be too delicate too emotional and too irrational to participate in politics and public life we were kept out of universities we were kept out of certain careers the fact that we were capable of having babies meant that we want like once we made it to the workplace we were discriminated against and not given promotions for example on december 6 1989 a young man walked into a classroom at a pulley technique an engineering school in montreal and separated the students into two groups male and female he directed the men to leave the room and shouted i beat feminists before firing at the women killing 14 of them he did this because he believed those women should not be taking up space in the traditionally male dominated realm of engineering in other words he did this because these women were defying gender stereotypes gender under patriarchy is not our friend it is not liberatory it is not something to be embraced today women have specific rights based on the history and reality of sex-based oppression we also have specific sex-segregated spaces based on the understanding that men pose a threat to women not all men but only men female firefighters had to fight in order to have access to their own locker rooms and facilities because they were being subjected to sexual harassment and assault in the shared spaces they only won this fight recently in canada now we're being told that we must allow men into these spaces if they claim to feel feminine whatever that means feminists built and funded transition houses for women escaping male violence now they're being told it is discriminatory to maintain those spaces as women only in order to keep the women who need those faces safe and offer them a place to heal from the violence and abuse they experienced away from those they perceive as a threat women had to fight in order for women's sport to be taken seriously they had to fight for it to exist at all they had to fight in order to have the right to compete on fairground and now all that is being lost as sports bodies around the world are adopting policies that allow male athletes who identify as transgender to compete against and among women and girls on what basis do women's rights exist if the word woman is meaningless if anyone can identify in and out of femaleness on a whim whether we want to admit it or not males and females are physically different and this world has been built based on the idea of the male as the norm so this means that cars have been designed for male bodies medical studies have been done primarily on men office temperatures are set based on what's comfortable for the male body studies done on how certain pharmaceutical drugs impact people have been conflicted on men not women women die from heart attacks more often than men because women's heart attack symptoms are completely different than men's and so we don't recognize when a woman is having a heart attack men have more muscle mass longer limbs bigger organs and different bones than women their pelvises spines and feet are different they move their bodies differently and have a different center of gravity this all has a notable impact on athletic ability among other things and none of this can be altered substantially through surgery or hormone treatments decreasing testosterone does not change the physical body of a male to such an extent that it becomes a female body so when for example we're talking about things like health and women's sport it is actually incredibly important to differentiate between male and female bodies women and girls are at risk of losing the ability to compete at all if they're forced to compete against male athletes who will be stronger than them no matter how hard they train if we wish to maintain women's rights and protect women's faces we cannot separate women from femaleness it is irrational and dangerous it makes women and girls vulnerable beyond that there is absolutely no reason why we cannot protect the rights of individuals to step outside of gender roles and to express themselves as they like and also understand that sexual dimorphism is real that male and males and females exist and that those differences both in terms of physical as well as in terms of what this is meant socially matters [Applause] okay excellent now we go back to the uh begin uh the five minute responses um to each other so i give the flow to julie okay thank you i'm gonna be bouncing around a little there's a lot there to digest um one thing that uh megan says a lot is definitions now let's let's make sure that we have certain definitions uh clear gender identity and i i like to make this distinction a lot is a very misleading term when you say gender identity it makes it sound like it just has to do with gender as to social socialization and social accused that's actually not true gender identity is a complex interconnection of sex and gender you have to understand that in order to state what gender identity is and basically stated as regressive or not which it's not in the sense that the trans activists actually were the ones who pushed for the dsm-4 to dsm-5 change in the dsm-4 a gender identity disorder was conflated between gender non-conforming behavior and gender dysphoria the dsm-4 did not distinguish between these two that's why you had those high rates of desistance it wasn't gender kids with gender dysphoria it was gender non-conforming kids who later went on to become gays or lesbians that's an important distinction to make the dsm-5 specifically differentiates gender non-conforming behavior from gender dysphoria and that is because trans activists fought for decades to get that changed now as to what woman is woman is actually a social construct it's there's no concrete definition and the reason for that saying if you want to define it there's no way i i'm going to throw the question back is there a way that general critical activists can define woman to exclude trans women without excluding some cis women there's no possible way of doing that and that's because woman is a social construct based on observations assigned at birth that are a lot more complex than that biology is not just genitals biology is not just secondary sex characteristics it's complex yes you have chromosomes you have hormones you have secondary sex characteristics genital genitals reproductive uh capabilities and the brain too it's interesting to me that gender critical activists are so quick to point out that genitals are sexually dimorphic yet they deny that brains are sexually dimorphic as well and i'm not stating that as a qualitative thing it's not to say that women are better than this or better than that or man or better that at this or better than that but there is neurological distinctions which is currently thought to be the cause of gender dysphoria as for the sports medical definition i again go back to the data 15 years the ioc has allowed trans athletes to compete guess how many trans athletes have competed at the olympics since zero and it just hasn't changed we can have these conversations but they have to be based on data now as to the idea of socialization it's a true idea but the problem is based on your perception is not the full picture of socialization socialization is how you absorb what society is telling you a trans girl who knows she's a girl but is treated as a boy is still going to take in those same social cues telling her what a woman should be and that's why commonly you have trans women having to be hyper feminine in order to be taken seriously historically by the medical profession this was commonly referred to as gatekeeping where if you did not fall under the perfect model for transgender people you were denied medical treatment you were denied surgery that affected trans people just as much actually it affected us even more because we couldn't access health care unless we quote unquote performed femininity um as for as for stereotypes trans people have the same hardships with falling out of these same stereotypes just because of certain genitals or certain reproductive systems it doesn't make you safer it doesn't make you less likely to be paid less i actually have had to fight that that exact same battle when i found out that a male colleague of mine was hired for the exact same position as me for a higher wage didn't matter how i was born it just mattered that i was considered to be a woman and he was considered to be a man so the other thing i want to say is i've always been against threats i don't think we should be saying stating threats physical threats any type of threats on either side now what i want to finish with is the idea of bathrooms and specific spaces you have the right to be safe you don't have the right to feel safe there is no data that shows that non-discrimination ordinances and allowing trans women the right to access spaces based on their gender identity makes anybody any less safe if you want to make the argument that it makes you feel safer that's one to be made but you don't have the right to feel safe you have the right to be safe and there is no safety concern and until we have that data things are just going to keep going in the direction towards being more trans-inclusive [Applause] not megan please okay uh lots to respond to so yeah i'll probably be dancing around a little also um so i wanted to respond to a couple things that julie said at the beginning there i've never spoken at the heritage foundation before i support women who want to speak to right-wing people my politics are not the same as the heritage foundation's politics we have nothing in common i'm a socialist i support public health care i'm opposed to privatization i support access to abortion for all women all the time i support lesbian and gay rights yes so uh i mean the idea that somehow we change all our politics by having conversations with people we disagree with makes no sense i mean we're all having a conversation right now about things that we disagree on um so that's one thing i wanted to clarify uh i you know whether or not a person is male or female can be determined very easily it can be determined by a blood test researchers can tell if bones that are thousands of years old thousands of years old belonged to a male or female i don't understand why in order to accept people as they are and to oppose discrimination and harassment we need to pretend that a person is literally the opposite sex and in fact pretending that we'll endanger that person like if your doctor doesn't know if you're male or female that endangers you your doctor can tell of course uh your doctor is a turf but uh that's an important thing for people to know uh sex matters um i don't understand why we're focusing so heavily on bathrooms because i don't ever really say anything about bathrooms i think that it's a way to derail the conversation there are much more important issues at hand i think the bathroom issue can be dealt pretty easily i'm sure that trans women have been using women's bathroom for bathrooms for a long time and it's not made a difference to anyone i think that we should be making single cell gender neutral bathrooms everywhere this is a responsibility of public facilities in city buildings and universities um i don't think anyone should feel unsafe in a bathroom as far as spaces go i don't understand why uh women who are subjected to violence within hands of men need to be made vulnerable or feel unsafe because trans identified males also are subjected to violence at the hand of men so we need to be dealing with male violence i don't think that it's necessary for women to be put at risk in order to also protect men from male violence um and that's not on us you know like it's a feminist fault that men are perpetrating violence against women and other men that's what we've been fighting this whole time male violence um so the main issues that i've focused on are the right for women to organize amongst themselves we have a right um as an oppressed group of people so women are it's been determined under law that women are depressed some of us this is kind of depressing uh oppressed based on their sex so we have the right to organize amongst ourselves on that basis indigenous people also have the right to organize only among indigenous people and have spaces and services that are specific to indigenous people so i feel like this argument that you know like a transition house that's for women only needs to welcome men in would be exactly the same as demanding that a service that's offered to you know indigenous mothers to include indigenous men or white women yeah again i mean i think that i think that feminists and trans activists could be on the same page if there was any respect at all for the work that women have done in terms of gaining rights and gaining spaces and we would fully support trans-identified people in building their own transition houses and we support the creation of services specifically for trans-identified people but that doesn't mean we give up our rights and our spaces um gender identity has nothing to do with sex julie said it did i have no idea how sex is physical it's how you're born there's nothing you can do about your body or sex um i think that again it's important for us to all accept people as they are i don't think that entails lying [Applause] thanks [Applause] thank you to both analysts um thank you very much and now i turned the floor to the facilitators uh francis and mark they'll spend about 30 minutes folding into every panelist's position by asking questions uh i assume it will be kind of collegially divided into two halves on their own thank you okay thanks very much uh this is great this is very intellectual and this is what we want um the uh mark and i haven't really coordinated ourselves very well here because mark insisted and he said that he had to be more authentic and less you know prepared so i'm not as prepared as i would like to be um but that's good because we're supposed to be we're thinking to be digging out our feet here so this is good um so when mark and i just had a brief conversation ahead of time um we thought it would be a good idea for each of us to try to summarize what we think the arguments are that are being made to prevent us from going down a a blind alley and not being fair to the presenters and um so i said that i would try to summarize julie's arguments and mark will try to summarize uh megan's arguments and i'll ask the questions try and summarize your arguments julie and then i'll ask you a question this is very very hard i i i i don't think i really understand the arguments very well but i'm going to take a stab at it um one thing that that that struck me was something that you said um which was societal perception is the importance in terms of oppression so oppression comes from societal perception not biological reality you said that so i think that's kind of almost at the crux of this kind of dispute that exists and because of this your argument is is that trans people actually face probably more oppression than uh what you would call cis women because society reacts to trans women more negatively and more oppressively than they do to what you would call cis women to women who are born biological women and this is how that has a number of consequences in terms of how trans people are treated but it also has terrible consequences you argue for what you would call cis women um because um for example uh butch i assume butch lesbians who try to use women's washrooms come under attack because um the all the sort of the antagonism towards trans people that they're facing also spills over towards the oppression of uh butch lesbians in washrooms and people try to stop them from using women's washrooms because of all the debates that are going on about about trans issues um the second area is the conservative think tank this is another problem um because um many uh gender critical feminists what's called gender critical feminists are aligning themselves with right-wing organizations this is having um a negative impact on women's rights because conservative thinkers are discriminatory towards women's rights in terms of allowing women access to abortion and birth control so the point of that is that uh it's very obvious that conservatives are using gender critical feminists to argue against the anti-trans perspective as a trojan horse because they're making the same arguments against trans people that once they set those precedents they can easily be turned against both lgb and women's reproductive rights okay um and then uh so that's about reproductive choice and then there were the arguments about sports um which i'm not sure if i understand what this is but one thing i thought was possible was that if we're going to start getting into and i guess this would be the argument of some people that if you have xx chromosomes you can compete in women's sports and if you have xy chromosomes you can uh you should compete in men's sports then for example uh women like caster cement yes i think that's her name she's from south africa um she has like high testosterone and though so she's sort of outside the norm for women but i think she she has got the chromosomal some of the polarities to women people like that outside the norm women like that outside the norm who are not trans women they're just women with abnormal levels of testosterone will end up being discriminated as well so we're kind of encouraging discrimination against actual what you would call cis women who don't fit the norm of uh what what women are perceived to supposed to be like biologically yeah basically you're making a simplification by making it just about one thing rather than seeing the whole picture and where i bring that up is you can't compare um male athletes who haven't gone through the ioc regulations against women athletes to make this specific argument you actually have to look at trans female athletes who have gone through that medical um regulations to be able to compete with the current standards for the ifc state and compare those to cisgender women uh in order to make that point you can't compare apples to oranges in this case which cis men are biologically different from trans women who have undergone that procedure those procedures and that's that's a fact and so the final thing that i i saw that you were saying um had to do with um biology and i think this is going to be a major area of difference between you and and megan so you said i believe that what you said was woman the term woman is a social construct and so that's that's that's what you said and so i'm having a hard time understanding this um i i know that there are we do have sexual dimorphism between men and women there are sort of you know in between categories but they're sort of out like that's not the standard thing we're dealing with and i don't think really that's what we're dealing with with trans many trans people so i'm just trying to think about what that means and i don't i don't quite understand what i mean so that's going to be my question so what do you mean when you say that woman is a social construct well when i say woman is a social construct i mean that's based on perception it's based on things we observe and actually it is uh pertinent to bring up both intersex conditions and as well as trans people because if we're looking at brain structure as part of sexual dimorphism you can make the argument that there is a certain level of intersex when we're looking at biology and sex biology i think it's a simplification to just look at genitals uh biological dimorphism sexual dimorphism actually includes chromosomes it includes hormonal levels secondary sex characteristics genitals reproductive capabilities and brains and by looking at just one thing and making the definition based on that one thing you're excluding you're going to exclude people that you don't intend to you have to look at the bigger picture and the sense that trans women if you look at those who can get currently um identify for identification purposes change their sex uh they've changed several different portions of that biological reality either hormonal secondary sex characteristics genitals and if you put brains in there that's that's certainly part of the equation thank you thanks uh so just for the record uh i didn't say that francis and i shouldn't prepare i did quite a bit of preparation uh what i said was that we should react to the back and forth in the moment and it's not pre-vet or script our questions um yes and i'll just pick up on that mistake a little bit more i also didn't i i what i did say is i'm actually very uncomfortable being uh build up here as a critical thinking facilitator i teach computer science i have no disciplinary expertise in this field and so i don't bring any sort of theoretical or practitioner critical lens to the subject at all and so i agreed to participate on with the condition that uh the way i brought my critical lens to the topic uh is not constrained in any way so uh first of all i want to preface my uh reflecting back of of megan's position just so i understand it uh just with with a a statement that um i'm keenly aware that we're discussing real people and people who can be vulnerable in society and people whose open place in society is tenuous and my appeal is just for all of us to bear that in mind even to those in the room who are almost entirely certain that transgender activism is wrong-headed uh or a threat i think we should all have some intellectual humility and if there's a chance that um that you're wrong about that again remember we're discussing real people um and uh i can pat myself on the back and walk away saying we've had a good discussion um but uh i don't belong to any of the equity seeking groups that we're discussing here other than my hair is getting gray and my back hurts a lot so i'm joining um maybe one equity seeking group but i would appeal to that we keep that in mind uh so ms murphy if i understand your position correctly uh it's this um you've argued essentially that protection of legal protection of gender identity and gender expression is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of gender because it's a social construction as distinct from the physical reality of being male or female and that in your view unlike females males who call themselves transgender women could avoid discrimination by simply choosing not to assume various gendered affectations um and that if we did offer legal protections to uh the transgendered around gender identity and gender expression it would then uh remove spaces that are currently safe spaces um for women uh for example uh with respect to women's shelters um and so forth is that an accurate understanding um sure yeah i mean so my opinion is that what what we're calling gender identity and gender expression so people breaking out of gender stereotypes for example so like a male not behaving in a traditionally masculine way um that or like a woman behaving in ways that we would perceive as traditionally masculine that's protected under sex-based rights so part of the reason that we have sex-based rights for women is so that we aren't forced into this role of femininity um so i don't think that it's necessary to have laws to protect whatever is called gender identity i think that what we need to do is ensure that people aren't discriminated against based on you know their expression and that people are free to exhibit whatever characteristics they like and wear whatever clothes they like um and the issue around things like transition houses for example in terms of protecting women's sex-based rights and how gender identity legislation and policies interfere with that i mean that's happening already just yesterday in vancouver the city voted against um renewing uh a grant that was about thirty thousand dollars to vancouver rape relations women's shelter which is canada's longest standing transition house and rape crisis center and that's because they they offer services only to women and up to men um and women should have the right to those spaces like i do think that women who've suffered it i mean the women who come to vancouver rape relief have suffered like violence that none of you or some of you might but many of you probably can't even imagine like it is horrific and what those women who work at that shelter do and have done for decades and decades is incredible they've done it as volunteers um they've built this transition test themselves they've fought for funding they work really hard to help these women and now we're taking away grants because they disagree with this idea that it's possible for a man to become a woman and that that man should be welcomed into the shelter with women who have just been like beaten up for who knows how many years by their male partners or another man um and like i said i think that there should be services specific to trans identified people who suffered violence and i think that vancouver rape relief has said many times that they would support those services i would for sure support those services i can't imagine a feminist in the world who wouldn't support those services but i also want women to feel safe and to have access to those spaces as well thank you uh so i'll move to my question then uh which is uh that uh by contrast with your with your position uh some uh both women and gender studies um uh scholars and others have argued that a binary model of sex in which there's a strict uh male female dichotomy is a flawed and a reductionist notion and that it is itself as it is itself a social construction in fact um in your opening remarks uh when you defined your terms uh you you made an appeal to the fact that they were time-tested uh definitions uh it was an appeal essentially to the status quo and through what's been established socially throughout history um so the they would argue that that view doesn't uh accurately take into account multiple biological contributors to an individual sex where that's an array of organic character organic characteristics notwithstanding that some are more outwardly apparent than others um and they have argued that a more nuanced view appears to be supported by the empirical observations of uh recent researchers some people who have a view different than you have also argued that uh because this is a social construction uh of sex it oversimplifies the sex of individuals and it actually reinforces conservative and patriarchal nor social norms of identity so my question is given that knowledge of human biology which is complex is also imperfect does your certainty about the appropriateness of your definitions derive more from ideology or is it based in the empirical um is there no possibility that when the transgendered say that they have a strong internal sense of their identity that that couldn't actually have an organic basis i mean sex is binary there's nothing that anyone can do about it that's science-based i mean there's male and female there's people who have intersex conditions really easy to tell who's male and female like i said you can tell by a blood test you can tell by bones things like that uh and i don't understand i mean the idea that sex is binary and that male and females exist isn't a conservative view or a patriarchal view it's just a reality um it's how we reproduce it's human um so yeah and i did want to i did want to mention something that isn't directly about your question but we were talking about caster symmania early and cast here symmania has an intersex condition um so she has internal testes and then more testosterone as you mentioned so i just wanted to clarify that um and it has nothing to do with your brain so sex doesn't have to do with your brain and intersex conditions don't have to do with your brain it's it's a physical condition does that answer your questions can probe a bit more later but i mean i think it's fair to turn it over to francis for the next one okay okay so i guess i should ask megan a question then since i asked julie a question so we'll try and rotate things around a little bit so we can mix and match a little bit so megan um i'm interested in probing your your thoughts about patriarchy because i think that is probably a big difference between you and julie's views you probably have different conceptions of what patriarchy is about and um what is why do you think that there is this uh male oppression of women you did mention that it was biological differences that you think is at the root of it um and i've often wondered it myself but looking at feminist theory as to what what is the at the root is it reproductive so men want to know who their children are is that what we're talking about are we talking about physical strength but men are generally stronger than women and therefore they just use their power to the extent that they can and because they're stronger they're able to do that um and also there's some views about it that it's property this is comes from the socialist tradition actually um frederick engels about you know origins of the family private property in the state that it was actually when property started to be accumulated that men began to be concerned about controlling women so what's what are your thoughts on on the origins of patriarchy i think you've done it mostly right it originated so that men could tell who their children were and control their bloodline um and it also manifests itself today in terms of male violence against women which is you know in large part because men are stronger than women for the most part there's not much we can do about that and it also happens because males are in a position of power in our society so it started with biology and then connected to gender and gender so these stereotypes and these roles that are enforced on people whether or not they're male and female are imposed on people so like i said women were said to be you know they're natural places in the home they shouldn't be involved in public life in politics in certain careers because they were too delicate and too emotional and hysterical and irrational and passive whereas men were inherently another way so they're naturally suited towards those positions but yeah it originated because of reproductive capabilities so just as a follow-up then um do you think that there's any oppression of um male to female transgender people does that enter does this patriarchy play a role in the oppression of male to female translators i mean patriarchy enforces masculinity on men so men are punished when they step outside those gender roles and bullying like little boys are bullied if they don't you know perform masculinity properly properly if they wear dresses if they don't act in masculine ways if they're emotional if they cry the way that people respond to boys who don't who don't properly do masculinity is in a way that teaches those boys not to do that i do think that patriarchy is bad for everyone thank you so just to probe a little bit further on on my earlier question so some of the research that has emerged over the last few years has concerned the structure of structures in in the brains of transgendered people as compared to cisgendered people and there is research pointing to actually some biological differences or some structural differences in the brain so i'm just wondering if you know with my previous question in mind um how you would uh essentially reduce how you can justify reducing the notion of uh of sexual identity down to something as simple as a blood test who like who are we talking about when we're talking about transgender people how are we defining that word so those who identify uh as a different has nothing to do with like a brain test it's just somebody who stands up and announces that they're actually a woman or actually a man well how do we let's see if we were defining transgender based on some kind of medical test then we could have that conversation but we're not we're talking about self-identification so i'm criticizing ideology and legislation that is based entirely on somebody you know filling out a form and saying yep i'm male and we just have to go with that so i don't think we can talk about brain differences i don't think that there's good evidence that shows these brain differences based on who is wearing a dress and who isn't wearing a dress but like that's that's not how we're defining transgender anyway so i think that's a bit of a derail so let me try the question a different way um we're not talking about sexual orientation to be very very clear but let's use that by analogy until very recently it was fairly uh well it was common wisdom that people who were not heterosexual were either suffering from a mental illness or it was a choice some some um some aberrant behavior uh and it's much more uh widely maybe not universally but much more widely accepted now that when someone actually says that they are not heterosexual and that's based on an internal sense that that is not simply a social construct but we have the definition why is it why is it why why do we not extend the same uh uh uh because who cares i mean at least first of all we should be supporting people who are same sex attracted regardless of whether it's natural or children people have the right to love who they want to love and be in a relationship with who they want to be and there's a there's like we have a definition for a lesbian it's a woman who's attracted to other women who wants to partner with other women we don't have a definition for transgender so i don't know how we can have this conversation what does it mean what are we talking about who is this group how are we defining this group what are you okay so i should ask really quick a question to give you some equal time um so i i i just want to get into this um the biology i still am having a hard time understanding this kind of there's transgender people who are not intersex they're they're just standard biology one way or another i think standard is again a simplification there's so many different aspects that encompass biological biological sex essentially that we're just focusing on the aspects that we can see the problem is that there's so much that we can't see and we don't understand that we're starting to only understand in the last decade when we're looking at brain structures that we don't have the capabilities right now to do on a cheap level as to understand those brain structures maybe in the future it'll be possible um as uh clark's third law says any uh sufficient enough uh technology is indistinguishable for magic you know it's that same idea this idea that it's based on feelings it's magic it's not there could be a biological there is evidence pointing towards a biological aspect and soon we will hopefully understand it better but right now we have a very limited understanding um okay so just to probe a little bit deeper into this area um so there there are certain there are some uh biological bases to all trans people like like there's something biological going on for all trans people it's not just as megan is saying um this seems to be the difference between you is that megan is claiming that there's some people who are transgender who just have a psychological belief that they are transgender and there's nothing about them biologically that makes them be the of the the be the what i don't i don't know i'm not afraid of the terminology but you know what i mean like they're they're there's something there's always something biology biological going on well there obviously is something biological going on because that's the entire reason why dysphoria presents itself if there was no neurological disconnect um people wouldn't be going through the extreme depression and suicidality when they don't receive the medical treatment that they need or transgender related medical care and you see that in study after study both hormonal therapy um social acceptance as well as surgery reduces significantly suicidality and depression now if that when you look at how much it reduces it it tells you that there's actually something biologically wrong there this isn't just something that somebody woke up one day and decided otherwise they wouldn't be suicidal and depressed to a level that you know for i believe the latest study is 48 of trans people have at least attempted suicide attempt once and that's usually before transition uh it transition reduces it in every study that has been done comparing pre-transition to post-transition it's been reduced drastically if there were no biological condition going on why is it occurring even outside of society in the biola biological sense okay so we're coming up to time for the q a so but i'll i'll give the last question to mark as to whatever whatever you desire mark service or sure so um i noticed a pattern developing here but uh back to a question for for manga um so a lot of the discussion around uh the what what might be viewed by some as the negative implications of of extending uh legal protection to gender identity and gender expression uh is often framed around of course bathrooms as has been pointed out uh uh women's shelters um and and the the world of sport um but what about all other uh domains of of of human life and and social uh social life so for example if if it's not possible for for uh gender expression and gender identity to be protected under human rights legislation uh what protections would there be or should there be protections or not for transgendered people whether they're transgender women or men or they have some other gender identification if say they were denied a job after after interviewing should there be no legal protections for that type of discrimination is it is in other words do we take an absolutist view uh to to rights or do we view rights as something to be balanced uh and uh we don't throw the baby out with the bath water because there are a few problem areas yeah i mean as i said like i think that you need to ensure that no one is discriminated against based on whether or not they properly perform masculinity or femininity but i don't think that means that we need to create laws that allow people to literally self-identify as the opposite sex in order to do that and those are the kinds of laws that we're creating so we're creating laws that ensure that you know a person can fill out a form and change their id from male to female based on nothing based on you know you know not being diagnosed with gender dysphoria you know nothing biological like i said like a lot of this that frustrates me is the lack of definition in terms of terms we don't know who or what we're talking about and so it can just be anything and i do think that it's dangerous for males to just be able to announce i'm a female and i should be allowed to compete in sports against girls and women or use women's facilities enter into a transition house enter into a woman's change room i mean do we really not see any problems with this idea at all you should do the q a okay so thank everyone i'm very pleased i'm very excited about this event um i can see there's a lot of emotion in the crowd and folks are trying to stay calm and i strongly appreciate it you have no idea how appreciative i am so thank you now i know let's see how it goes in the qa period but uh again i want to thank you again for ie i'm hinting at continuing this ah so the idea was as follows uh line up kindly at the microphone do we have just one microphone i think we just wore it okay so obviously line up at the one microphone should put my glasses [Music] of the filming i know on filling in audience members and we're about to film all the questions so i'm just wondering if you're questioning as far as like people that have privacy concerns and can't be filmed or don't want to be filmed and how they get removed from this after if it's being posted or maybe everyone is going to be filmed if you don't want to be filmed you should not speak so sorry we've been filming the audience so i'm just i'm concerned about privacy because the audience has been filmed so i'm just wondering what's going to be happening if there's someone we can tell afterwards that we'd like to be removed as there was no signs posted or anything outside of this actually there was nothing posted and i didn't sign so i'm actually right now saying i will not be filmed which means everybody in this cone is not going to be filmed i just want to make sure privacy is protected that's all okay well you'll have to talk to the documentary filmmaker no i don't know you can delete any footage of the goal of my face in the face of anyone else who might be with my face this is a public university no expectation of privacy i think it's important maybe to kind of put a hold on this one oh if you don't mind because otherwise we won't have the question and you know and it's all fair not to derail this um i completely respect you but at the same time we should continue all right so i'm sorry but these are there are vulnerable populations here and i think that the cameras should be turned off right now because these populations are asking for that to take place and this is not derailing the conversation oh you don't need to control the event it's a respectful request from the audience to please stop filming it's not going to happen it's not going to happen so we will not feel if you do not that's why and miriam is saying if you want to if you want to ask a question without being filmed she will hold a handhold mic at the back and you can ask a question without being filmed so that's a compromise position okay so let us begin so if you could kind of line up in the microphone and if you could introduce yourself should be comfortable with that yes and uh ask a question now before you begin kind of if folks come up if you could kindly alternate the questions to both panelists i know as a mathematician random doesn't mean switching but let's have some at the end fifty percent that target thank you okay uh there was a lot going on there so i just took down a few notes so as a preamble i'm just going to say i've heard a lot of words like equality seeking we should all be um not assume expectations an affectation is me wearing a leather jacket in the summer uh not a gender um shelters etc a resource like the entire conversation so far seems to stem from the inability of some faculty members to expand beyond their own discipline to take a look at things like actual biological uh studies that have been done regarding the wide spectrum of not only physiological but also neurological uh variants in the human body as relates to gender and in gender expression i think that the way we conceive of gender the whole idea that it is time tested and traditional is scary as hell because so is a lot of spousal abuse there are there are arguments that are being fallen back on which do not in any way refer to statistics or science but merely to the opinions of a certain member of the faculty and my question to you then is if you are going to be telling people that they are faking their gender or that they are undergoing violence australian exclusion persecution long wait times with medical professionals psychological evaluations that they're doing all of this just so that they can get into the women's bathroom i think you overestimate the desire of some people to get into the women's bathroom also we need to if we're going to have this discussion perhaps get a clear definition of what exactly you mean when you say man or woman since you seem to have very very definitive ideas of what falls into that and i need to know what that means biologically behaviorally and how all of that ties together to give one exact coordinate to which i must angle my star if i'm going to present as male or to which i'm going to present my star if i were someone who's going to present this female because right now you're using a lot of wishy-washy words to kind of dive in between giving an actual definition that can then be challenged thank you very much how do you define woman how do i define a woman someone who defines themselves as a woman there are too many things what are they defining themselves as when they're defining themselves as a woman they're designing they're defining themselves as a noun in the english language which carries that noun if i can i would like to check at this point obviously to ask a question and listen to the answer the important thing in a kind of a rational discussion is to ask a question and thank you very much and let uh make a response and another question sir that is good i'm just shutting it down actually now so uh let's make a response to your question and then you can certainly follow up but i don't want this speak wants you to be like 15 hertz or something thank you i mean it's just so as i said in my opening remarks it's really difficult to have this conversation if we're not defining terms in a clear way so i define a woman as an adult female human i define a man as an adult male human and then what trans activism i mean i can't tell if what you're saying is there no such thing as a man or a woman like does that not exist do you feel males and females female is just a thesaurus word for woman right so what's a woman does that you know what i'm trying to say like no you have it is there no such thing as male or female is that not a real tangible thing we have orders and money both of which are constructs and yet real see you can answer the question it's impossible so manipulative i honestly just i don't know so what is a female then biologically speaking what is the actual goal post that says this person here is a member of this species that's able to uh grow babies inside of them okay so i think you're here okay are you not getting anywhere with these questions i think thank you i appreciate it thank you next question now the format i would like to run is to ask a question please and then maybe have time to respond and sure there is a question on the question i understand that but let's please keep the frequency down otherwise it becomes a shouting match and that's not what we intended and that's not what i want here thank you i will use my voice this question is actually for both megan and julie so i would appreciate both of your responses on the matter and julie you have such a lovely smile so thank you for keeping such a positive vibe um my question to both of you is if you s so megan i'm kind of going off a term that you used if you say binary sex so terms like male and female are terms tested in time what do you have to say for places languages cultures around the world who define or have defined gender in more than two categories for example two spirit identities who are part of the indigenous community on turtle island before pre-contact so that's my question to both of you um i don't have an answer i'm genuinely curious what the two of you think about that if i can have julie respond now so we alternate uh epidemic i think they're happy the the truth of the matter is that even as we understand it now there have been trans people throughout history even in societies that have a binary there was a roman they are known to have been transgender and wanted to be referred to as an empress and wanted to actually go through medical transition look at people like um les chevalen who um was a french spy and it's there's evidence that they used a primitive form of hormonal treatment um so outs even outside of the third sex like the hijra in india and the two-spirit indigenous people um there have been all sorts of forms and both just gender expression as well as biological sex as to the need to knowing that something is wrong with your body and i think one of the things that kept keeps falling on a lot from gender critical sides i'm not saying you specifically but what i hear megan um is that if this is actually a biological reality what was hap where were these people 50 years ago and the truth is where were people who had diabetes 50 years ago when we didn't have treatments for that i mean the more treatment we have the more people were able to save their pro they're likely i i can tell you as for myself i probably wouldn't have survived to adulthood if i hadn't been able to receive medical treatment but thankfully i don't live in that era um so the more medical treatment and the medical capabilities we have the more people we're able to save and that that should be the direction we're going in i mean to be clear i'm not opposing medical treatment for anyone um and if an individual adult wants to get cosmetic surgery that's their choice um i am critical of cosmetic surgery when women get it so i do think that we should ask critical questions about these surgeries and the impact of hormones on people but i'm not trying to stop anyone from having those procedures if they want to and if that'll make them feel better and happier then they can do that um in terms of the question around two-spirit and things like that i mean i none of us i mean indigenous cultures are very diverse um so there were lots of different systems and cultures we can't act like there's this big blanket and indigenous culture is just indigenous culture it wasn't the same everywhere and what my indigenous sisters in the feminist movement have told me about that idea of two spirit was that you know they didn't erase the idea of biological sex so they didn't say that a person who was acting outside of one of our gender roles gender norms was literally the opposite sex they just accepted that person as they were which i think is what we should do also thank you question please i am here talking as a mother my my one of my daughters is a miu student the year of one cabinet here and one day she came home and she said can you believe mom that in the washroom there was a guy and you are not allowed to ask that person if what he was doing better because he identified as a woman and as a mother who is concerned about the kids safety and julie mentioned something about the right to feel safe i i cannot remember exact words but how can you explain a woman who in a lot of cases and the numbers are very high have been sexually molested in their own bathrooms at home in on the street on the train everywhere if i don't think that our main concern is about the transsexual males who are in our washroom we are afraid of the men who can identify as a woman who are going to go actually deliberately into washrooms to abuse kids a woman like myself i have the strength i guess i wish to defend myself but a lot of kids a lot of young women like my daughter can be sexually abused in the bathroom and that is a fact women are sexually abusing bathrooms so i would like you to explain me as as a woman right and i'll respond back as a woman as well so what i said uh is that you have the right to feel to be safe you don't have the right to feel safe and what i mean by that is that the legislation that we should be seeking should be based on data rather than feelings uh it's it's a fact that still in today's society you know if someone is walking down the street and sees a person of color walking towards them they'll cross the street or grab their purse a little tighter because they don't feel safe but the truth is they're not any less safe by that person being there in public with them it's the same in this case now as to the individual being there i think you can still ask somebody it's like hey are you is it okay are you in the right bathroom just making sure but if that person says yes i i am leave them alone unless they actually do something again we have to set legislation and we have to enforce regulations based on behavior and not identity if someone is doing something suspicious go ahead and definitely report them i i definitely say you should record them you should say something they should if they're doing something uh lascivious or lewd they should be arrested but we don't police people's identities because then we're going down a rabbit hole that the most affected people are going to be gender non-conforming cisgender women in this case which we see in the data the majority of people who are harassed in bathrooms because of trans regulation are gender non-conforming cisgender women not trans women trans women are just killed and beat up in women yes yes chrissie lee paulus i mentioned the case of chrissy paulus yes you're looking at another one okay so thank you we'll stick to the questions so next question hello uh thank you both for being like so communicative i really appreciate it i think it is an important conversation to have i think that um it would be really interesting to uh have a conversation if we had all like read any of gina rippon's work on neuroplasticity or cordelia finds work on socialization and how gender actually kind of changes the way your brain lights up when you see things that you're interested in and it's not brain sex it's more like neuroplasticity anyway um for julie uh you drew a line between uh gender critical feminists and conservatives with regard to the heritage foundation um i would like to have both of you speak um specifically about the no platforming of gender critical feminists particularly megan regarding jonathan jessica yanu and uh whether you support the uh the platforming of feminists like if we are not allowed to talk if we're if we're getting kicked off of off of our off of these platforms for questioning any of these things because you know that questions are verboten when it comes to gender critical activism or anything we're not allowed to say what do you mean when you say woman you're not allowed to say men can't be women we can't ask these questions i literally got a 12-hour suspension for telling a guy to get his child prostate checked because he can identify as a woman but that doesn't make his prostate disappear and i also said surrogacy is not cloning and it's still i got like it was ridiculous so can you talk about how you expect gender critical feminists to react when we're being no platform then we're being offered these platforms i don't by the way necessarily disagree with you that uh that super conservatives in the states are using gender credible um views in order to bolster their anti-women's rights stuff but that does not mean that gender critical feminists are conservative especially since the talk that you're talking about at the heritage foundation they didn't have anybody on the conservative side postulating they had just strictly feminists talking that was a really interesting topic thank you yes well on that specifically i think you have to question specifically on the heritage foundation stuff let me start there because it's the most current thing in my mind you have to start questioning when a group you don't agree with asks you to advocate on their behalf of something you agree with you really have to start questioning why they're doing it in this case and i'll give you an example personally something that i don't agree with with liberals in in the states specifically is i actually have some very strong second amendment views but regardless of that i would not go on dana lash who's a very very conservative pro-gun advocates program to espouse views that we both agree with because i have to think in the back of my mind that she has an agenda in that case if we vote if i'm espousing something that she's actually agreeing with you have to start thinking about like how are these people planning to use it and that's why i bring up the heritage foundation specifically there might not have been conservatives on there but you can bet that conservatives are using that exact same those exact same words uh as i mentioned to uh bring forth anti-women's reproductive sure but they weren't asked to speak on behalf of the heritage foundation i don't know how exactly that that event was set up but those women have been like julia back because she got the boot from a from a lesbian like from uh from the gay what is it commission i guess in portland like she got kicked off of that and like nobody was watching nobody would host her anymore so i i think it's important to to distinguish that she that they weren't asked to come be like hey come talk about how conservative radical feminism is um but yeah so how do you feel about the d platforming of gender critical feminists sure so what i'll say about uh the deep platforming thing i think we have to make a distinction of what is a public space versus a private space and in terms what is uh what is a business in itself for example i might not agree with the policies of twitter but they're a company they're they have terms of service if you agree to them you have to go by them now that's not to say that you can't or that you shouldn't ask them hey can you do things in a different way but as a company as a private company they have the right to have their position now that's not stopping somebody else from creating let's say a gender critical feminist version of twitter and having that out there and booting trans people i mean if that's a private business that's absolutely their right but maybe that makes me more of a capitalist than uh to talk about it we should be it's okay that that people like megan are being kicked off for asking questions what later well that's not my decision to make because i don't own twitter that's why i ask for your perspective on the issue well my perspective is that they're a private business they have the right to do business as they see now would i make that same decision if i own twitter probably not but as a business they have the right to do business as they see fit for their profit okay megan could you please so i mean we recently organized an event in vancouver to talk about this issue gender identity and women's rights at the vancouver public library which is a public space and trans activists demanded that that event be shut down um so i mean the the library could not shut it down because they're legally obligated to support free speech um but the demands of transactivists are that we stopped speaking and lots of trans activists supported me getting kicked off twitter for referring to men as he and for distinguishing between males and females and for asking questions about gender identity i mean on twitter i've been subjected to countless violent threats and harassment over and over and over and over and over again and nothing's been done and i've never harassed or threatened anyone in my life i was kicked off for asking questions and i think we do have to acknowledge that what trans activists are trying to do is to silence our speech and to prevent has been talking in terms of the issue around conservatives and the right um using i don't i don't use the term gender critical feminist uh feminism is gender critical so there's no reason to use that term there's if you're if you're not critical of gender stereotypes and these sexist roles that are imposed on us then you're not a feminist that's what feminism is that's what feminism has always done um julia beck went and spoke at the heritage foundation because no one else would platform her liberals on the left will not platform feminists who want to talk critically about gender identity and she went there and she made radical feminist arguments to a right-wing audience and she talked about being a lesbian and how gender identity ideology was affecting her as a lesbian her right to be a lesbian and to um not be attracted to and not date and not partner with men and i think she's very brave to do that every time i talk to liberal media or mainstream media they manipulate what i've said they rewrite my quotes they manipulate my arguments in canada they refuse to even cover this issue you know i didn't get a call from the cbc to comment on my own event and my own views they had people on to talk about and speculate about what i might say but they wouldn't have me on to defend myself that's the reality liberal media is not even acknowledging that this debate is happening and we're fighting to have this debate and trans activists are just trying to shut it down no thank you let me just be really quick i want to make a distinction because it's on the same topic we have to distinguish what is public versus private funds uh because it's uh the vancouver women's rape center oh uh yeah vancouver really oh i'm sorry vancouver rape relief um them losing their grant that's public funds that that's a different discussion from raising funds for it and to bring that back in the u.s the violence against women's act was uh they voted on the reauthorization last weekend actually julia beck was the one on the panel who was brought in by conservatives and using her argument they tried to bring in a religious exemption uh specifically targeting religious organizations that provide this sort of care for women who make that distinguished distinction between trans women and cisgender women in in this case and it was voted down because yes they have as an organization they have the right to deny service to whoever they want to however do they get to do that with public funds is the question and in this case they decided no and that's that's that's what i agree with i i do not agree with the platforming private spaces for example heritage foundation wants to have that decision that's the private entity i don't agree with that being the platform but a public space there's a distinction that that has to that has to be made and is made legally thank you okay that's next question please i'm i'm here to support megan on the public versus private i've read a lot of stuff about how organizations like facebook twitter tumblr they're very misogynistic and even if you have if you own a private company you still have a public responsibility and it's silencing a free speech just because you don't agree with the current agenda of the day and you're accused of not being on the right side of history you still have a right to speak and i'm not on social media i think what the men mostly in at those different social social media sites are really doing us females a disfavor in favor of listening to men who want to be women talk over us and in a lot of ways i look at this as appropriation it's taking away what defines us as females biologically and saying anybody can be a female and for most of us we actually have you know we i didn't accept our biological sex we don't have a problem but it's for that one less than one percent that we're making all these changes to society and i wonder what's going to happen to young people in the future when they're faced with all this pressure from social media to be one way or the other and they just can't be like a tomboy or an effeminate male that he must transition to be accepted when i never had to grow up with that i didn't care about my playing with boys didn't matter i was still considered a girl can you guys if i had her hair i was a girl so i don't like those types of stereotypes and i probably never will oh and i was going to say i didn't ask the question about how much influence do you think social media has on what we are dealing with today let me just ask because uh i i just want to respond because you said some things in there towards me i in deter in the service of giving definitions i just want to point out one really quick thing i'm not i'm from the us so i just know free speech laws as they exist in the u.s i'm not sure if it's the same thing in canada but in the us free speech laws protect you from government persecution they don't entitle to you to a right over the the uh over private companies so that's a very clear distinction to be made i mean if you're being persecuted by the government that's that's a free speech law issue facebook twitter tumblr is not technically a free speech issue because they are not part of the government i mean what's technically true and technically not true is is one thing but we all know that twitter is shaping public discourse and has an enormous impact on politics and elections so i think that in this day and age it's sort of lacking in integrity if we pretend that twitter doesn't have the power to silence and to shape what people believe and twitter allows pornography on their platform and they defend themselves and they say you know oh we can't do anything about it we can't do anything about it we're the platform and people put that stuff there there's nothing we can do about it and yet they're cracking down ideologically uh on people that they disagree with politically and in particular on women who just are stating material reality who are stating facts um and yeah i mean i do think that it's wrong and i think that we should be challenging that and um i i mean twitter twitter knows that they're a place where they've they've claimed that they're a place for free speech and free expression over and over and over again that's what they said the purpose of their platform was and now they're trying to suddenly backpack because backtrack because of a few a few activists i mean this is a minority point of view that it's possible to change sex the large majority of the population doesn't believe that's possible and just on the um uh what's um self identification um i think we should be glad we're not in britain but you can be investigated by the police if you say the wrong thing and canadian activists are fighting for that also they're afraid to you know there's you know a politician in vancouver morgan o'shea who's claiming over and over and over again that women who are trying to have these conversations are literally guilty of hate speech and hate crimes they know we need to talk about it yeah like we need to talk about whether or not we value democracy and public debate and free speech in canada this is an important and important thing that we should be defending you never know when free speech laws are going to turn around and like impact you and suddenly you can't say what you think about gender identity ideology i mean the idea that we can all control who's who's punished by these laws okay thank you very much so we got 15 minutes here um and we have how many five people yeah can i ask for three minutes for each because 15 divided by five is three so yeah i know it's gonna be tough but i don't want the people who lined up to go with all the questions so if you could make it really brief the brief answers i would deeply appreciate it thank you yeah absolutely so my question is for both uh megan and julie thank you for coming out um especially from me here i am someone who's completely foreign to this entire topic i don't know very many people who are part of the community i know a few right who are both you know feminists who disagree with the gender identity and as uh trans individuals um but i'm i'm not well acquainted with it so my question to both of you is simply this on limits it seems evident that there would be circumstances in which things would reasonably be expected to be part of the community uh an example of this is that there's a podcast who has a member on it who switches back and forth between various different identities so one moment there susanna and then the next moment they're mark and then there's susannah again and i've heard a number of trans people say well that's a legitimate thing that does happen in the community and then recently we just had in great britain just last week um uh hip-hop artist zooby break the female deadlift and um squat records i think it was because he briefly identified as female and then after he broke the records transition back to female obviously most people would acknowledge that that's a silly thing [Music] as well you and your comments julie you said you have the right to be safe but not the right to feel safe which is a very reasonable expectation i think that's a very common sense thing to say but then just here in our own event here today we had the members on one side of the audience i'm sitting on become very very agitated that they were being filmed they are completely safe they just don't feel safe while being filmed and so my question to you is legitimate questions i don't understand the limits from both of you is where do you set the limits in this conversation so that people like me who are trying to learn have an idea of where we should start and what we should be looking at thank you get asked very quickly and so because there's a yet another person and it's number six now so oh great really quick i i do think that the discussions that should be had should be around limits and not around existence because the problem is making it a zero-sum game making it a zero-sum game is always going to be seen as a negativism um in terms of zubu or i don't know who that is um he did not go through the current medical requirements as stated by the ioc to be able to compete in the women's categories so yes i disagree that he should be able to do that sorry i'm i'm just looking at megan and julie's answers okay megan please i mean so again i mean i've repeated this a couple of times already i think is that we're we're changing policies and legislation in order to ensure that people can just self-identify so there's no there's no you gotta get a doctor's note there's no you have to see a psychologist there's no you have to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria so that's why feminists have started speaking out about this in large part is because all these laws and policies are changing so that it's all based on self-identity so theoretically you could just you know be like uh switching back and forth i'm not saying that's what people are doing all the time but that's what we're defending in terms of these these laws and policies and and that's troubling you know like i said there's no we don't have a cohesive definition for what uh transgender means or what a transgender person is or even what gender identity means and and we're creating really really quickly these policies and legislations around these ideas and denying a public debate and refusing to let people ask questions i i literally know people who've been fired from their job just for talking about this and asking critical questions um of course there's like i said i mean i got violent threats over that uh library event they were really disgusting sexualized misogynistic threats so it could scare you to speak out about this and then real consequences thank you next question jesus uh so my question is for julie i was just wondering uh how would you sort of reconcile the uh ideas of feminism and being pro trans at the same time because i think traditionally feminism has been about challenging or even abolishing social norms as in you're not shoehorned into a label based on your sex whereas i feel being uh transgender is sort of uh sort of perpetuates social norms where your thoughts and behaviors um determine what like society labels you as which i feel is sort of an opposing viewpoint so i was just wondering if you think you could be transgendered at the same time well yeah you kind of have to and i mean going back to that um trans people in their activism have been pushing to eliminate those societal those societal ideas again going back to the dsm-4 versus dsm-5 change the reason why the dsm-4 was so problematic is that it conflated gender non-conforming people with gender dysphoria and these are two entirely completely different things and it was only trans people who spent decades uh fighting to get that change so that now gender dysphoria is recognized as apart from gender non-conforming you can be gender non-conforming and not fall under that gender identity disorder definition nowadays thanks to trans people and that to me is feminism thank you next question please um so our discussion kind of ended with this couple to define what transcendence and my question is um what i've read is that in the community transgender given those two terms that exist gender euphoria isn't uh of any sort of medical diagnosis gender euphoria is just in my opinion because i use the term a lot is just ways in that our gender is a firm that makes us feel like oh my god we feel normal for once and i will say usually uh like i'll give you an example i did a race uh dressed as a princess a couple uh uh for the disney princess half marathon a couple weeks ago and one thing that i really liked is that when they they put all the princes in these really big heels so when i got my picture i was shorter than them that to me is gender euphoria because it feels it feels validating so it's not a medical diagnosis it's just a way for trans people to describe how good it feels to be affirming your gender thank you next question yes hi um so i'm a journalism professor here at madrid so i speaking like ascii as a as a faculty member and also on my capacity i'm sorry i can't hear you can everyone hear me now okay fantastic i'm used to being a boomer so you know uh so i i speak in the capacity as a faculty member here and also as a journalism professor um and and in that capacity i'm always in favor of more public discussions about controversial issues but that being said i had a question for both of you about this event and the way it's been structured so this event is defined as a part of the rational space network and implicit in that description i think is is two things one is that reason is the highest value that we should be aspiring to uh especially at this institution and the second thing that it implies is that one side in this discussion might be irrational um so with that in mind it seems that we are ignoring another major part of democratic discussion and enlightenment philosophers would agree with this which is empathy and megan i've heard you in this discussion be pretty unempathetic right i mean you've referred to transgenderism as being based on nothing and lies i mean that those are your words not mine so it it strikes me that if we are going to have positive conversations about controversial issues and as i said i think that's an important thing that in addition to having a rational discussion we should also have an empathetic discussion yeah so i would like both uh you to comment on that idea and whether or not we've achieved that today thank you thank you i mean i would argue that it's not very empathetic to take money away from a woman's rape crisis shelter and transition house that exists um i also don't think that we need to lie in order to be empathetic i mean i'm not going to say something that's untrue i don't know that it's important in order to be able to respect people that we lie about material reality and what's possible i also find that trans activism is incredibly unempathetic to women i mean we're being vilified and smeared and fired and threatened and there have actually been physical attacks from trans activists on feminists who just want to have this conversation who are trying to talk it's not empathetic i mean we're seeing like these like turks die kill terfs um we're being accused of being fascists and nazis because we're making basic feminist arguments and again trying to talk i mean the notion that feminists are not being empathetic because they're trying to protect women's rights and they're trying to talk about these ideas that again are pretty incoherent but are being incorporated into legislation that impacts our rights um i think is is kind of ridiculous to be honest i mean being empathetic to women we're talking about allowing males into to enter into any space they want any woman's space and we're saying well who cares about these women's feelings these men feel a certain way they want to be in their spaces like how is that empathetic to women what about women's feelings what about girls feelings what about girls who don't want a grown man with his dick out in their change room do you mind if i ask you a question megan just in the sense of uh what you were talking about the grant for the vancouver women's shelter um you say that you're against activism to decide where funds go um you published on feminist current uh letter in support of graham linehan who advocated and tried to get public grants in the uk taken away from the uh from mermaids uh a charity that benefits trans youth do you agree in the same way that he that he should have done that or in the same way that you don't believe trans activists should fight to get grants taken away from non-inclusive organizations do you also disagree with graham's approach in that sense i mean against activism do all the activism you want i think it's wrong i think that it's wrong to try to take funds away from a woman's shelter but do they i'm not gonna stop people from protesting i'm not gonna stop people from like trying to advocate politicians to make certain decisions around where money goes i support that trans activists seem to be the ones that don't support our activism um but yeah i mean do what you want i think that it's disgusting i think that it's misogynistic to try to shut down a rape crisis center in a transition house for women because they won't let men in and when you're not even trying to build shelters for trans people i mean why don't they put that energy into trying to build services for trans people why is this activism all about tearing down instead of building up i don't think it's wrong i don't think it's that i don't think people should be fighting to remove something but when you're talking about public grants that's something very specific to to discuss no one is stopping people from putting up their private funds which i disagree with and the other thing i wanted to say is i've been very vocal about how i disagree with any violent threat towards megan or any other gender critical activist i think we should never fall to that we can have a discussion without going to violent threats okay thank you uh we got three more questions and we are up with the time but i suggest how much can you go over the time again five minutes okay so we're gonna have five minutes extra so three people let's divide that's not divisible so this is next question please thank you uh my question is um so i was just reading a bit about chrissie lee paul hollis um and i saw a couple other cases about um being sexually assaulted in the women's bathroom i was wondering about um i don't know if anything about trans women have been assaulted by men in their bathrooms but if there's still a risk that you could be assaulted by women in women's bathrooms why does it matter which one you go into uh the main reason is because uh again as i said previously sex and misogyny is based on conception is based on societal perception and conception the problem with let's say a trans woman using a male facility versus a female one is that by a trans woman who's perceived as female going into a male facility she's immediately outing herself and making herself susceptible to violence by going into a female facility she has that perception it's safer regardless yes there's going to be incidents but the perception is is where the misogyny and the violence comes from if you can minimize that have there been cases of trans women assaulted by males yes sexually assaulted as well not just physically assaulted thank you next question hi thank you my questions for megan um the default frame of this debate problematizes trans activism um he's spoken a great deal about definitions um and you've defined it as uh those advocating for i believe it was gender identity ideology um but we've used the term in a variety of ways today referring to what i would assume as largely unfavorable opinions from trans people so in terms of definitions how does the term trans activists differ meaningfully from trans person um yeah i mean i think i explained that earlier but i'll clarify again is that i think that when i say trans activists what i'm referring to is people who are advocating for gender identity ideology and gender identity legislation so legislation that allows males to self-identify as females and vice versa and gender identity ideology meaning the idea that it's possible to be born in the wrong body that it's possible to change sex that some there's some innate sense of gender that literally changes your biological sex next question this is going great this is good so my question is for megan um i'm just genuinely curious how would you ever be willing or have you sat down with trans men and women particularly trans men and women of color or do their stories just don't matter to you i'm willing to talk to anybody i love talking to people and i'm happy to talk to whoever i've talked to transsexual people for sure i mean all people who identify as transgender don't share the same opinions this is not a monolith you know there's some people who probably agree with gender identity ideology obviously there's others who disagree with it and yeah totally i'm happy to to talk to anyone thank you i guess we have the time i would like to thank everyone for a very great event i strongly appreciate it oh so thanks again and uh and thanks as before everyone well um first of all we are going to the hub for drinks if people would like some alcohol therapy um thank you very much [Applause] [Music] what's the famous mount royal university mugs let me give all our presenters t-shirts

Channel: Meghan Murphy

Views: 83,860

Keywords: calgary, mount royal university, feminism, gender identity, women's rights, debates, free speech, twitter, censorship, trans activism, transgenderism, gender identity legislation, gender, sex, the rational space network, meghan murphy, julie rei goldstein, biology

Id: -yawM1CRWxE

Length: 121min 57sec (7317 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2019