By DONALD DeMARCO
The Ontario Human Rights Commission defines gender identity as “each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is their sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.”
The commission defines gender expression as “how a person publicly presents their [sic] gender,” which can include behavior and outward appearance such as dress, hair, make-up, body language, and voice, as well as a person’s name and the pronouns they use. The list of pronouns is extensive, including options such as “ze,” “zie,” “hir,” “xe,” “xem,” “zyr,” “e,” “ey,” “em,” and so on.
How many genders exist along the “gender spectrum”? Individuals living in New York City can choose from a minimum of 31 different gender identities, many of which allow them to fluctuate between some version or combination of male or female identities. Some have estimated that there are at least 63 different genders. Under rules implemented by New York City’s Commission on Human Rights, businesses that fail to respect and accommodate an individual’s chosen gender identity assume the risk incurring fines of up to $250,000.
What is rapidly becoming more clear is that holding to a male/female dichotomy can be deemed discriminatory and subject to punishment. The Trudeau government’s Bill C-16 is intended to outlaw harassment and discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression. The bill would become part of the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. But is it not more likely, if implemented, to cause more division and more injustice, especially in the workplace?
The most contentious implications of Bill C-16 is the use of pronouns. “He” and “she” no longer apply to people who do not see themselves as fitting into a binary system that types them as one gender or another.
Rocko Gieselman, for example, who identifies himself as “gender fluid” and was born “female bodied”: Gieselman explained to The New York Times: “Every time someone used ‘she’ or ‘her’ to refer to me, it made this little tick in my head. Kind of nails-on-a-chalkboard is another way you can describe it. It just felt wrong. It was like, ‘Who are you talking to?’”
Can society continue to ignore the distress that traditional pronouns are forcing on the Rocko Gieselmans of the world?
Dr. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto, for one, is critical of the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s terms and definitions. He compares the changes Bill C-16 would bring about with the policing of expression as exemplified in “totalitarian and authoritarian political states.” Being ultra-respectful of some people’s preferences can be extremely disrespectful of those whose crime consists of nothing more than speaking what we might now call “traditional English.” The force of the bill seems to be saying, “be politically correct, or else.”
Professor Peterson, who taught at Harvard before coming to the University of Toronto, fears that his present school is on the way of becoming a “politically correct institution.” Despite the alleged presence of “academic freedom,” Peterson has reason to fear for his job.
A colleague at the U of T in the physics department faults Peterson for failing to live up to his responsibilities as a faculty member. “All that is necessary to invalidate a faulty claim is one counterexample,” he said: “Here, I am that counterexample. I openly defy Peterson by existing: I am nonbinary and transgender.” He went on to state that he refuses “to stand by and just let him [Jordan] hurt vulnerable genderqueer members of the university community….Academic freedom was never intended to be used as a general-purpose shield against professorial accountability.”
How harmful can it be to a person, one may ask, to be addressed by a politically incorrect pronoun? The injury seems to be novel. Were people in past ages oblivious to how they were harmed by inappropriate pronouns? Does the Bible insult transgendered people, for example, by stating that “God made them male and female?”
There is real harm, however, visited upon those who refuse to accept what they regard to be a wholly unnecessary and arbitrary ideology. In addition, the very advocates of those who promote this form of political correctness stand to be harmed. The extreme subjectivization of gender has led to some people to feel that they are really animals of one kind or another or even fictional characters. A movement is afoot to address animals by more honorific pronouns since “it” is considered demeaning.
At one time, if someone declared himself to be Napoleon, his mental health was immediately brought into question. With the new view of personal identity, naming oneself shifts from the objective and socially verifiable to anything goes. “Call me Ishmael,” under the new politically correct regime, is supposed to elicit affirmation and applause rather than puzzlement. And expressions of puzzlement are subject to punishment.
Bill C-16 and other attempts to revolutionize how people speak to each other is essentially regressive because it places under a thick fog the age-old question, “Who am I?” We are not anything we want to be. Nor should we require others to cooperate with what is essentially a fantasy. Governmental fiats do not move toward ending discrimination simply by requiring people to employ Newspeak. This is not only totalitarian, but neglects the more realistic ways in which people can respect each other.
Christianity still has a better solution, through love and recognizing the dignity of one’s neighbor, rather than by any hare-brained concoction that emanates from governmental bureaucracies.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His recent works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; How to Flourish in a Fallen World, and In Praise of Life are available through Amazon.com. His most recent book, his 29th, is Footprints on the Sands of Time: Personal Reflections on Life and Death.)
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