The Mirror Has Many Faces: Recognizing Gender Identity in Canadian Anti-Discrimination Law

Owing to our failure to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of gender identity, gender and gender politics are contentious subjects in Canadian anti-discrimination law. On the one hand, Queer theorists continue to challenge the rigidity of the male/female binary, while on the other hand, Canadian law insists that identity is invariably determined by one’s biological sex. The result is a power struggle, pitting those who fit neatly into rigid male/female categories against the marginalized Other—the transgendered community. Transgendered persons have encountered many barriers in their search for equality in the law, partly owing to a lack of a proper legal foundation on which to base their discrimination claims. This paper argues that the failure of the already established grounds of discrimination to fully protect and represent transgendered persons requires Canadian anti-discrimination law to incorporate gender identity as a new ground of discrimination

Unknowable bodies, unthinkable sexualities: lesbian and transgender legal invisibility in the Toronto women's bathhouse raid

Although litigation involving sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination claims has generated considerable public attention in recent years, lesbian and transgender bodies and sexualities still remain largely invisible in Anglo-American courts. While such invisibility is generally attributed to social norms that fail to recognize lesbian and transgender experiences, the capacity to 'not see' or 'not know' queer bodies and sexualities also involves wilful acts of ignorance. Drawing from R. v Hornick (2002) a Canadian case involving the police raid of a women's bathhouse, this article explores how lesbian and transgender bodies and sexualities are actively rendered invisible via legal knowledge practices, norms and rationalities. It argues that limited knowledge and limited thinking not only regulate the borders of visibility and belonging, but play an active part in shaping identities, governing conduct and producing subjectivity

The Mirror Has Many Faces: Recognizing Gender Identity in Canadian Anti-Discrimination Law

Owing to our failure to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of gender identity, gender and gender politics are contentious subjects in Canadian anti-discrimination law. On the one hand, Queer theorists continue to challenge the rigidity of the male/female binary, while on the other hand, Canadian law insists that identity is invariably determined by one’s biological sex. The result is a power struggle, pitting those who fit neatly into rigid male/female categories against the marginalized Other—the transgendered community. Transgendered persons have encountered many barriers in their search for equality in the law, partly owing to a lack of a proper legal foundation on which to base their discrimination claims. This paper argues that the failure of the already established grounds of discrimination to fully protect and represent transgendered persons requires Canadian anti-discrimination law to incorporate gender identity as a new ground of discrimination