Playing Gender-Role Games With School Boards

"We have overwhelming evidence that the community, or the stakeholders, are not supporting the survey, or the professional policy draft as it is circulated."

"So right now, the community sees us as not being up to the job, just dragging our feet. Are we doing anything to address this?

"There is no clear expectations from the policy like what we are trying to achieve. The scope of this policy is left to anybody's interpretation. The scope is completely open."

Trustee Naveed Ahmed, Halton County District School Board

 

"All students, parents or guardians, teachers, staff and community members have the right to be safe and feel safe in their school community."

"With this right comes the responsibility for everyone to be accountable for their actions and contribute to a positive school climate."

Ontario Education Act

 

"[Including] inappropriate behaviour."

"This is our legal requirement."

We need to have the confidence to create a policy to address the inappropriate behaviour."

Trustee Xin Ye Zhang, Halton County District School Board

Kayla Lemieux is a teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School.

Staid Canada, where nothing much happens aside from endless snowstorms in the winter months, caught the international media's attention not long ago with the spectacle of a shop teacher, claiming to be transvestite wearing grotesquely abnormally large prosthetic beasts under tight-fitting tops to the surprised bemusement of her students at the Halton District School Board jurisdiction's Oakville Trafalgar High School. A few of the students took photographs and videos of the shop teacher and posted them online. Unsurprisingly, they were an immediate sensation.

Since the matter of transgender Kayla Lemieux teaching shop at Oakville Trafalgar High School, just north of Toronto first erupted, parents and students have demanded accountability from the school and the board. Months have passed and none has been presented. The school administration and the school board along with members of the teaching staff all declared their support for Kayla Lemieux and 'her' bizarre presentation with gigantic breasts and a blond wig.

That resulted in community frustration, parents gathering in roadside protests, issuing petitions, public outbursts of anger and an eruption of death threats. Matters became even more threateningly serious with a series of bomb scares bringing in the police. Throughout this public backlash Board trustees and officials remained constant in their support of the teacher and there was no action to be taken. Eventually a request to draft a policy elucidating a dress code and decorum to instruct Halton schools was ordered.

 

Lemieux said her extra-large beasts are caused by a condition called “gigantomastia,” even though she’s never been officially diagnosed. New York Post

 

When, several months on, the draft policy was presented at a board meeting, it failed to address the issue squarely and no new rules of any significance nor regulations were promoted. Parents were anything but pleased. Curtis Ennis, director of education in the district expressed his own level of frustration. "I know we have the policy, the statutes and the guidelines and principles and policies in place when they arise. We have been doing that for decades". Until, apparently, they ran up against Woke Theology.

The Ontario Child, Youth & Family Services Act reads: "It is imperative that forms of identity and expression presented in a school environment be scrutinized against the child safeguarding practices enshrined in the Act." And according to the Ontario Human Rights Code: "The primacy of student safety and well\-being must always be distinguished, prioritized, and protected by those in position of power. Students must come first."

There has been a partial solution. The teacher is no longer in the classroom at the high school."While not currently on active assignment, the teacher remains employed with the HDSB. We continue to support the teacher", commented the board's communications manager, Heather Francey. It took a foreign newspaper to mount an investigation to clarify the situation. The New York Post published photographs of the teacher in men's clothing in public, sans wig, makeup or the absurd breasts.

As for the transgender teacher -- Kayla Lemieux insists those breasts were not prosthetics; instead they are real. The result of a rare genetic condition of gigantomastia along with a "hormone sensitivity to estrogen". She was not actually, she said, transgender but born intersex. Evidently that has some complex variations in conditions when a person's anatomy fails to align with typical definitions of female or male. Strangely enough, neighbours of the teacher claim he goes about dressed as male, but changes to female clothing heading for the school.

Kayla Lemieux pictured on a residential street not wearing prosthetic breasts. New York Post

Nick Kozak

No One Asked the Opinion of Women Prisoners

Correctional Service Canada has adopted new policies for transgender inmates. (Shutterstock)

"Canada's prison system has overhauled its policies around transgender inmates and will now place offenders in a men's or women's institution based on their gender identity. Under a new Correctional Service Canada (CSC) policy, transgender inmates can be placed in an institution of their preference, 'regardless of their anatomy [sex] or gender on their identification documents, unless there are overriding health or safety concerns which cannot be resolved. The policy changes, which kicked in Dec. 27, 2017, will ensure federal offenders who identify as transgender are afforded the same protections, dignity and treatment as others, according to CSC."

• Communication products will reflect gender-inclusive language.
• Steps will be taken to ensure privacy and confidentiality of information related to an offender's gender identity ensuring it will only be shared with those directly involved with the offender's care, and only when relevant.
• CSC will use an offender's preferred name and pronoun in all oral interaction and written documentation.
• Individualized protocols will be developed for offenders who seek to be accommodated on the basis of gender identity or expression, including spiritual ceremonies, showers and toilets, frisk and strip searches, urinalysis, decontamination showers and monitoring under camera surveillance.
• Offenders may purchase authorized items from CSC catalogues for either men or women if there are no safety, health or security concerns according to the security level of their institution. Preferred clothing and personal effects will be accommodated 'to the greatest extent possible'.   CBC
  

Men who identify as women have been given special privileges that are meant to be justified as upholding their human rights; they say they are women and must be respected for that conviction as transgendered women. Criminals among the transgendered are considered to be just as needful of respect for their decisions as any other individual. Prisons -- men's prisons -- are places of violence. The incarceration of criminals, many of them imprisoned because of acts of violence, play out their psychopathy in the prison setting; there are fewer restraints and ample victims.

 

Among them, it takes no great stretch of the imagination to conjecture, the transgendered. Male prisoners are not likely to 'respect' the new gender orientation of other men sharing prison space with them. Predators are what they are, and prison life is fraught with danger. On the surface, it must have seemed like common sense to install transgendered women in women's prisons. Presumably, the women who occupy prison space in women's prisons were not consulted with respect to their opinion. And many of them are now discovering just how complicated life has become for them.

 

Transgendered women have the right to request transfer to women's prisons. Who would not, since women tend not to be violent on the whole, like men. So if the conditions in women's prisons are viewed as 'pleasant' in comparison to men's why not request a transfer? And many do. There is no requirement for these transgendered women to undergo sex reassignment surgery, nor to take hormonal drugs to diminish their testosterone.

 

Natal males are permitted entry to Canadian women's prisons. Among them have been a serial pedophile, a serial sex offender, a contract killer, a child killer and a murderer. Not quite the kind of company any incarcerated and thus vulnerably-placed woman might choose for herself. At an annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, a group ostensibly and historically involved in advocating for and assisting in improved prison conditions for women, the "Lived Experience" committee heard testimony from a former prisoner.

The woman, identified as "Kathy" spoke of the trauma she was submitted to, episodes of sexual harassment while in prison, exposed to a male-bodied pedophile whose charge history listed hundreds of girl victims. Kathy had her own personal history of sexual abuse in her formative years, like an estimated 80 percent of female prisoners. She had complained of the stalking and abuse she suffered from, to the Correctional Services of Canada who dismissed her complaints and threatened to isolate her while naming her a bigot.

In the room to hear her story were over 60 women, mostly directors of CAEFS, staffers and regional volunteers. They heard Kathy's story and sat in silence, unmoved. She left the chamber in tears. At her departure comments arose: "I'm sorry for what happened to her, but you don't need a vagina to be a woman"; "I am concerned about the transphobia in this room", among them. Uniformly, all those present agreed on the need to fully support transwomen. As the meeting adjourned, CAEFS adopted a blanket resolution of trans inclusion.

 

Supporting the transfer of any trans-identifying males from men's prisons to women's prisons, chief among them. And though a few staffers and volunteers suggested an amendment meant to exclude trans-identifying males with a known history of sexual assault, they were ignored and a solid majority passed the resolution. One of the women who had attempted to persuade the majority to include that reasonable amendment was later the recipient of icy treatment from people she was quite familiar with on a collegial basis.

"We think back to the situation for women in the 1930s when a tunnel was built between PAW [Prison for Women] and Kingston Penitentiary so that women could be carried underground to be sexually abused by male prisoners. What has changed? The tunnel is now ideological, and all it takes is a transfer", a resistance movement of some CAEFS staff and volunteers set out in a letter to the CAEFS executive director and board members.

When the executive of CAEFS responded to the letter they reaffirmed their commitment to trans inclusion, denying any reports or knowledge of any incidents of "harassment and violence" against women in prison from male-bodied transferred prisoners. An activist  resistance under the leadership of former prisoner Heather Mason published an article in womenarehuman.com, citing a May 2019 meeting with former Deputy Commissioner for Women discussing the male-transfer issue.

She had "reported that of all transfer requests from men's prisons, 50 percent were derived from sex offenders whose crimes of sexual abuse were committed as men, accounting for 20 percent of the male prison population overall." (About two percent of women prisoners have sexual crime backgrounds.) As difficult entanglements in law, justice and human rights go, gender expression rights see protection through the auspices of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

For women, on the other hand, sex-based rights to dignity and security fall under the Charter of Rights and Freedom, guaranteeing women's protection. Guaranteeing "inclusion" for natal males guarantees that women prisoners live in fear, increased risk and abuse, paying for trans inclusion through their own diminished protections from male predators posing as transwomen. Courtesy of the woke consciousness of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

While at a town hall meeting in Kingston, Ontario, PM Justin Trudeau is asked about the treatment of transgender people in the prison system.   CBC

The Male Wolf in Female Garb

"Waxing can be critical gender-affirming care for transgender women."
"At the same time, it is a very intimate service that is sometimes performed by women who are themselves vulnerable."
"JY's complaints raise a novel issue around the rights and obligations of transgender women and service providers in these circumstances."
"[Yaniv's behaviour in pursuing case after case, even after the Tribunal cautioned against wasteful] unnecessary duplication [has not been] conducive to having the issue resolved on its merits [and] opens a valid question about her motives in filing so many complains."
Tribunal member, British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal

"I hate to put race into it, but it seems there is a lot of negativity and lots of push-back toward LGBTQ from the East Indian culture."
"I do see this discrimination as systemic. It really hits home to me..."
"This has to be fixed, not just for me, but for society in general."
"They've accused me of outrageous stuff. They're obviously not real."
Jonathan/Jennifer Yaniv

Jessica Yaniv arrives for a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing in Vancouver, on July 26.   Darryl Dyck for National Post

"[The refusal to service Yaniv was not discriminatory] because the fourteen women were not being asked to wax a gender identity, they were being asked to wax male genitalia."
John Carpay, president, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

"I think that people with a history of being accused of predatory behaviour shouldn't be the ones asking for access to services in which women are vulnerable."
"The harm that Yaniv does still reverberates. I don't know what well-deserved harassment looks like, but she's certainly paying in spades for her misbehaviour."
Morgane Oger, British Columbia Transactivist

"I guess I'll see you in court", responded Jonathan Yaniv when he repeatedly called a waxing salon franchise, now closed, thanks to his threats and 'activism' on behalf of the transgender community he claims will no longer stand for being discriminated against by refusals to give them service as the women they claim to be. "F---- bastard .. We don't do. Are you mentally sick? This is a salon. Why do you keep calling", was the response at the other end before Yaniv informed the salon he would be suing them.

Invariably, these are immigrant women from South Asia, from Brazil, often operating out of their homes to try to make ends meet, whom this man portraying himself as a not-too-vulnerable woman seeks out to provoke the response that he knows will be forthcoming, then launches a complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Commission. He is notorious, and the victims quickly come to understand that if the Tribunal rules for him and against them they will be given a hefty fine which they cannot afford to pay and which there is no legal mechanism they can employ to free themselves.

The 32-year-old Yaniv, who lately has taken to calling himself Jennifer in preference to Jonathan, claims to be a woman, says he can become pregnant, because he menstruates, but has never undergone surgery toward a complete sex change. He still carries his male genitalia, and crudely refers to it on his Twitter account from time to time. He is busy with his entrapment game, when he isn't focused on email exchanges with teen-age girls, giving them advice on menstruation and how to insert Tampons.

Jessica Yaniv, a transgender woman in B.C., has filed over a dozen human rights complaints against businesses she alleges discriminated against her on the basis of gender identity. Courtesy Jessica Yaniv, @trustednerd

According to Yaniv since age six he realized he was a girl, was treated through his teen years for gender identity disorder, suffered depression, anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. During which time he enjoyed short relationships with girls from the age of 14. As a 21-year-old computer student at Kwantien Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C., he launched a National Sex Day on Facebook which became an attention-getting marketing project: "This was all marketing, and it played so well into my hands. I knew sex sells".

He has been seeking out notoriety in his inimitably obnoxious way ever since. In his communications with teen age girls he would talk about his "dick", occasionally musing that he would "jizz" himself." And ask intrusive personal questions of his teen audience, many of whom became quite nervous of his attentions, some of whom launched complaints against him, reporting his activities to the Canadian child-exploitation tip line Cybertip.ca.

Trans activist Jessica Yaniv is a freqent flier at the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. She wanted her male genitalia waxed. The owner said no.

Overstepping the Bounds of Tolerance

"[Vancouver Rape Relief is] non-compliant with Canadian law [guilty of] systematic, consistent misbehaviour, [as the last women's shelter in British Columbia to continue denying services to the trans community]."
"I can open any organization I want and discriminate against the people I don't like ... but when I start to bring taxpayer funding into this it makes this entire room [council chamber] responsible for my actions."
"There is a long history of discrimination and violence against transgender women. We are a vulnerable group. There’s stigma and shame .. and then to ask for help and have someone on the phone say ’sorry’ you are not women enough for us to help you....’."
Morgane Oger, transgender advocate, vice-president, British Columbia New Democratic Party

"[Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter is a victim of] discrimination against women in the name of inclusion. [Vancouver City Council is trying to] coerce us to change our position."
"We do not have the experience to offer services to people without the same life experience ... this is not our work."
"Because we are an oppressed group who fights for equality we have a right to decide who our membership is and who we serve."
"Rape Relief is strong enough and principled enough and has enough supporters in the community ... we will say no to that kind of money [financial support from Vancouver city coffers that comes with demands]."
"I think it [the demand] is undemocratic and a very dangerous bullying move on [the part of] of councillors ... It says, ‘If you want the money, change how you operate, change your political principles, change your basis of unity'."
Hilla Kerner, representative, Vancouver Rape Relief 

Hilla Kerner speaks to city council about funding for Vancouver Rape Relief.   Vancouver Star

The longest-operating rape crisis centre in Canada has a policy of giving aid and support only to females. People transitioning from male to female who contact the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter will get a sympathetic hearing and advice over the telephone but they will not be admitted to the shelter and they will not receive services from the centre which focuses strictly on women. Because they have been unmoving in their strictly female-centered policies the City of Vancouver has voted to discontinue funding the group.

The measure is a disciplinary one, the city council informing the centre and its board of directors that it is not pleased with what it views as intransigence on their part to continue refusing serving the needs of females born as males; men who have transitioned to women and who become victims of sexual violence. "Trans women are women and sex work is work ... I can't support (organizations) who exclude them" wrote Vancouver city councillor Christine Boyle, accusing the organization of "supporting transphobia".

Aye, there's the rub. You may be sympathetic to the plight of transgender women who elicit scorn from society and who are often targeted with violence and certainly are socially discriminated against. But generally speaking, society at large has become more accepting of alternate-sexed, gays, and others who don't represent the norm. Accepting in the sense that they are who they are. And so the tensions inherent in life as a gay or lesbian or trans, is relieved for the most part of the dangers in being 'outed'.

Problems arise, however, when the LGBTQ-2 community insists that they be recognized as entitled to complete inclusion; marriage between same sex couples was merely the appetizer; the push to guide children into differentiated gender streams, to push for the right to impose upon the rest of society the adamant need to change the English lexicon to address them differently, the yearly exhibitions of crude and colourful 'parades' not pleasing to everyone, has the tendency to invoke annoyance not support among many in society.

And thrusting upon general society the obligation to recognize LGBTQ-2 'rights' to the extent where their charter rights are paramount and the charter rights of others who prefer not to be engaged with them in the provision of services creates yet another burden that many in society are not prepared to shoulder. Born female, and fleeing male violence, the Rape Relief shelter dedicates itself to these vulnerable women; it is gender-specific in its mission.

That trans-activists have enlisted sympathizers to their cause of 'equal' treatment to place the security and comfort of women in general in jeopardy they choose confrontation and slander over accommodation. When transgender women feel they are entitled to impose themselves on groups whose mandate is other than to serve them, they do a disservice to the greater community and to themselves as well.

From 2020 forward, city council in Vancouver has voted to no longer fund any of the activities of the Rape Crisis centre. That funding by no means amounts to their entire operation's funding; the city provides them with $33,972 annually, which the group uses for educational outreach "free and accessible and available to everyone", including trans people. Not good enough for Vancouver council which will deny access to those funds "until such time as the organization makes changes to become aligned with City policies."

In fact, the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter's operating funds amount to $1-million annually, an amount mostly provided to them by the Province of British Columbia. Since its founding in 1974 the centre restricts its core services; peer counselling sessions, shelters or transition homes to women born female. And it has faced criticism for its refusal to admit trans women for those services. A criticism that the centre is resigned to, but refuses to succumb to.

A post-operative transgender woman denied progamming at Vancouver Rape Relief launched a discrimination lawsuit in 1995 against the centre. "She was rejected from the training program because she did not share the same life experiences as women born and raised as girls and into womenhood", stated the centre. And the B.C. Court of Appeals found that argument reasonable, ruling in favour of the centre. When an appeal was made to the Supreme Court of Canada, it was denied.

An East Vancouver candy shop, the Licorice Parlour, had placed a poster advertising a fundraiser for the Rape Relief centre in May, and it became the focus of trans activists resulting in online harassment and slanderous reviews calling them out for being "oppressive" and "transphobic". Women who are feminists tend to support women's needs. Should government really feel that transgender women require similar support for their dissimilar backgrounds adjusting to a new reality a standalone centre specifically geared to their needs becomes an option.

In the meantime, little wonder there is push-back from that segment of society that is fed up with the LGBTQ-2 community believing its rights supersede all others', and in the pursuit of gaining never-ending concessions go on to demand more and in the process don't mind stepping on other groups' rights to achieve their ends using means both fair and foul.

Members of Vancouver Rape Relief and Women¹s Shelter pictured at a 2014 rally to call attention to domestic homicides.Vancouver Province

Looking After HimHerself

"You [Khaled Farhan] are assessed as a low to low-end of moderate risk for both general and violence recidivism [as a violent predator and murderer]."
Parole board

Karina Janveau. n.a.

The new politically correct way of referring to males claiming their wish to be regarded as females is to refer to them as 'she'. And so, Khaled Farhan, a violently abusive male who murdered a vulnerable young woman and then left her corpse to fester until neighbours reported a repugnant odour and he was forced into action, completed his despicable act of violence and murder by mutilation and dismemberment. The mutilation refers to his having stabbed his victim repeatedly even after her death. The dismemberment was his method of ridding himself of incriminating evidence of his crime.

In 2000, the now-46-year-old was found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Karina Janveau, then 24 years old. She was a young woman with a troubled background; the child of divorced parents, a young woman with very special needs whose mother committed suicide at Christmas. Karina Janveau suffered with a partially paralyzed leg and arm, and she had developed a drug habit. Those who knew her described her as generous, a loving individual.

A vulnerable young woman, ready to love anyone who needed it, she obviously chose the wrong man. Their relationship was fraught with physical violence. She was often beaten by her love-partner. The fact that she was physically impaired and unable to defend herself obviously made little difference to the man who abused her in life and debased her life with no conscience. And after he took her life he continued his abuse on her lifeless corpse.

Now this man has won parole, and anticipates his future as quiet and uneventful. His parole conditions mandate that he live at a halfway house, abstain from alcohol and drugs and routinely report relationships that may develop. Khaled Farhan who legally changed his name to Zahra Farhan informed the parole board 'she' has "no intention of being in a relationship"; her intention is to 'focus on herself'. As though as a male he never did just that.

Since being granted parole, he has been living at a halfway house since January with a six-month day parole to aid in reintegration into society. It's entirely debatable how 'integrated' he was in society to begin with; most people in civilized society don't murder others in a paroxysm of drug-induced rage; though society does have its psychopaths not all of whom would stoop to committing such bestial acts as he did.

During his trial, while describing placing the corpse of Karina Janveau -- with whom he had lived for a year as a 'devoted couple' -- in the bathtub of their apartment as he set about dismembering her he demonstrated not a whit of remorse. Now, years later, there have been other changes for this man aside from claiming to be a woman; he is sight-impaired and plans to have a Seeing Eye dog aid him. His plans also include helping the blind and transgender community.

What a transformation! From a ragingly psychotic murder and butchering of a corpse, this conscienceless man has become a 'woman', with aspirations to becoming a humanitarian aid worker. And the welfare of a dog trained to be a working dog is in this man-cum-woman's hands. How the parole board found that this sinkhole of vicious depravity represents a low risk to society is troubling, indeed.

Once he had completed his gruesome task of dismembering the woman he was supposed to have cared for, he disposed of half here remains in a dumpster close to their apartment and the other half in a duffel bag left a few hundred metres distant in a field by railway tracks in Gatineau, Quebec. He appeared on local television as a concerned husband pleading for information and help in finding his common-law spouse.

He had informed police that the young woman had gone on a camping trip with a dangerous drug dealer. It didn't take long for police to arrest him in the wake of a building superintendent making the grisly discovery of discarded body parts in a dumpster. Sgt. Guylaine Larose was one of the first Gatineau police officers on the scene. She was transfixed at the sight of the decomposed, bloody body parts.

In those body parts she recognized the remains of her younger sister. Afterward, the distraught police officer was unable to work but she did show up faithfully each day of the six-week trial that found her sister's killer guilty and sent him to prison. That was her only comfort, hearing the guilty verdict. But, she said, in an interview, her sister's murder returned to haunt her day and night, and she later killed herself at home with the use of her service revolver.

The murderer was placed in a men's prison where he spent time in solitary confinement; prison files revealing he had sent sexually inappropriate letters to guards. Then he expressed fear that he would become a casualty of other prisoners once he expressed his status as a trans woman. Prison authorities placed him in a woman's prison thereafter. And he is described constantly as 'she'; an entirely other person, a weak and vulnerable woman anxious to do good for others.

Khaled Farhan holds a picture of his then-missing girlfriend Karina Janveau shortly before he was arrested and charged with killing her. Aaron Sands/Postmedia

Born a Man, Always a Man, Masquerade Aside

"I see my win in this broader political moment where trans rights have made great strides and people are waking up."
"We are not going to go backwards."
“My semi-final rides were difficult and I certainly didn’t ‘dominate'. [Competitor] Linsey Hamilton rode hard, and I think that it’s a little insulting to suggest that I ‘dominated’ her when I had to give it my all to beat her."
"People seem to think that there’s no issue of ‘unfair advantage’ when I lose, but it only seems to be an issue when I win. I don’t think that’s fair or reasonable."
"There’s nothing too exceptional about my [power to weight]. There are many world-class track sprinters with higher values."
Rachel McKinnon, assistant professor of philosophy, College of Charleston, Victoria, British Columbia

McKinnon racing 2018 masters track world championships. Photo courtesy Dr. Rachel McKinnon

"It is not about making everybody biologically equal, and I think that is a common misconception when we start talking about transgender athletes."
"People want transgender [females] to be physiologically identical to [born] females, and if they’re not, it’s unfair. That is not possible."
"Can you turn a man’s body into a woman’s body? The short answer is 'no'. I think we need to move past that idea completely."
Dr. Eric Vilain, professor of human genetics, UCLA

Dr. Rachel McKinnon won the masters world title in the sprint this past weekend in Los Angeles. Courtesy Dr. Rachel McKinnon

The rule that made Dr. McKinnon, a transgender 'woman' eligible to compete in the UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championship for the women's 35-44 age bracket last week in Los Angeles was that athletes' testosterone levels are required to be within a given range and since Dr. McKinnon uses drug therapy to achieve that range, she qualified. At one time the compete requirements were considerably stiffer; to compete in their legally recognized gender, transgender women had to have had extensive physical transitioning; surgery and hormone therapy.

2015 saw a loosening of the rules, removing the requirement for surgery, leaving in the testing of testosterone levels. Dr. McKinnon defends her female role as a competitor that she had substantive advantage over other female runners by citing research suggesting testosterone levels are not correlated with elite athletic performance; one study in particular showing one-sixth of elite male athletes had testosterone levels below the average for females. However, male physiognomy is just that; male and therein lies the obvious advantage.

Jen Wagner-Assali made a public complaint, feeling her bronze medal win illustrated a competitive edge on the part of the winner: "It's definitely NOT fair", she tweeted, replying to a British woman who asserted that the "world is gripped by a febrile madness" that a transgender woman appeared as first-place winner on the podium for a world-class female track competition. Her objections lead her detractors defending transgender rights, to characterize her as a "far-right provocateur", typical of those who bow to the demands of LGBTQ-2 activism, smearing those who find fault with those demands.

Peer and public pressure ensured that Ms. Wagner-Assali would apologize, realizing she had "unintentionally fanned the flames on a controversial situation, and that I regret I made the comments out of a feeling of frustration, but they weren't productive or positive". Somewhat abashed, no doubt that the second-place silver medalist Carolien van Herrikhuyzen characterized the race as "honest", deploring Wagner-Assali's 'problem'.

A proposed change to federal anti-discrimination legislation in the U.S. would define a person's gender as an unchangeable, binary, biological reality defined at birth by the simple expedient of recognizing genitalia conferred by nature as gender identification. The response to the Trump administration's intention with respect to that legislation is to state the obvious: it would translate as no legal recognition of transgender or intersex choices as legitimate.

Whereas in contrast Britain has also proposed changes to its Gender Recognition Act in eliminating an objective test, leaving the legal determination of gender solely in the hands and mind of the individual claiming to be other than what they are from birth forward; no medical or other evidence required. The logical conclusion to which is that under universal medicare, prisoners or military personnel would have their sex-alternative therapy and surgery paid for out of public funds, as a medical condition requiring rectification.

In the United States IOC policy has been adopted by the national cycling authority, requiring elite level sport competition to test only for testosterone levels. Dr. McKinnon has a comeback for those dissatisfied with the reality that men declaring themselves women are enabled to compete in elite sport competitions with actual women. Biologically, males and females are completely differentiated physically; greater physical strength an acknowledged male reality.

She laments the parallel she identifies between her struggle for acceptance as a transgender woman to the long historical struggle of black athletes who were excluded from some sport arenas reflecting a general consensus that Blacks are endowed with superior physical prowess, making it unfair with their advantage to compete against others. That prejudicial view, despite having some element of truth within, reflected the racial tensions between the white majority and black minority, severely disadvantaging Blacks.

Justice for Blacks was painfully long in coming. According to Dr. McKinnon the same human rights trajectory is now evidenced in the battle the transgender community faces to achieve their human rights entitlements.

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Almost a week after her win, McKinnon tweeted out Saturday the multiple reasons why she now competes in the same category as cis women

Adolescent Delusion of "Belonging", or Recognized Pathology?

Study Abstract:
"In on-line forums, parents have been reporting that their children are experiencing what is described here as 'rapid-onset gender dysphoria', appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion. The onset of gender dysphoria seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe."
"Parents also report that their children exhibited an increase in social media/internet use prior to disclosure of a transgender identity. The purpose of this study was to document and explore these observations and describe the resulting presentation of gender dysphoria, which is inconsistent with existing research literature."
A Study of Parental Reports, Lisa Littman, researcher, department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Brown University School of Public Health

Elliott Kunerth, 17, a transgender male high school student in Mankato, hugs his girlfriend, Kelsi Pettit, 17, after the Minnesota State High School League board voted to pass the Model Gender Identity Participation in MSHSL Activities Policy in Brooklyn Park, Minn., on Dec. 4, 2014.Leila Navidi / Star Tribune via AP file

Suddenly the rare becomes commonplace. Some boys and girls have always mused to themselves what it might be like to be a boy if one were a girl, or a girl if one were a boy. It is the syndrome of the 'grass' being 'greener' elsewhere. Many people have a disinclination to accept what and who they are, and many people feel cheated by life's circumstances, wondering what they have missed or are missing, and why cannot they have experiences and recognition relating to being someone else. There is also the attraction to many of being rebellious and 'different', of eliciting notice to their person; good or bad, that acknowledgement that they are singularly different is compelling.

Young people imagine themselves to be misunderstood, overlooked, taken for granted, not taken seriously. Suddenly, they are being taken seriously. The medical community has been pressured by a very vocal group who challenge the common sense and mostly appropriate custom of gender recognition and identification at birth (natal identification), assigning proper acknowledgement in gender through natural selection. What appears to be at issue is the dysphoria claimed between physical characteristics and mental attitudes.

Infants gravitate toward behaviours and attitudes that are not gender-specific. And occasionally boys will be fascinated with attributes of girlish functions and vice-versa. Mostly these impulses are transitory. There is nothing in the development of the human being that must insist certain behaviours are off limits to the opposite gender. There are many boys and men who reflect behavioral emotions and interests most commonly seen in women and the opposite is also true. And while there are instances when the mind and the body simply are not a match, it's doubtful their numbers reflect what is now seen in society.

Where parents of infants feel they can read their child turning to the opposite sex and viscerally react by guiding them away, there are also parents in the present more 'tolerant' social scene who set out to demonstrate just how supportive they are of their children's 'real' persona that they encourage the deviance from one sex to another, making of it a perfectly normal transition which in this social climate, brooks no criticism. Yet there is a kind of social hysteria at work here resulting from the loudly assertive and angry accusations from the LGBTQ-2 community succeeding in persuading those parents they're on the right track.

Society has turned from its rejection of seemingly abnormal gender identification that once harassed homosexuals, in threatening and violent attitudes, to its current attitude of acceptance, long in coming. But that acceptance didn't suffice to persuade the once-persecuted that they were now viewed as part of society; many among them demanded all the formal trappings of  'normal' society, as in marriage, denoting which among the same-sex couples be viewed as 'husband' and which as 'wife', a fairly risible situation, but one which the general public was prepared to accommodate.

When Children Say They’re Trans   The Atlantic Hormones? Surgery? The choices are fraught—and there are no easy answers.

The present-day rash of young children and teens declaring themselves to be a mind placed in the wrong body has turned the normalcy of the social covenant inside-out and upside down. Some parents may be complacent, reassured that society now accepts it all as 'normal-abnormal', while many more parents are anguished and confused, unhappy with their children's insistence that they are not the boy or girl their parents thought they were, but since the medical profession has given a clean bill of health to the reassignment process, feel they have nowhere to turn.

"When we tried to give our son's trans doctor a medical history of our son, she refused to accept it. She said the half-hour diagnosis in her office was sufficient ..." recalled one parent whose story was repeated in the newly published study. "I overheard my son boasting on the phone to his older brother that 'the doc swallowed everything I said hook, line and sinker. Easiest thing I ever did'", reported another on the credulity of her child's therapist.

The study's author, taking a critical look at Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), took the time to review popular Internet sites such as Reddit, SubReddit and Tumblr to pick up additional problematical comments, where contempt for parents is rife and encouraged by the examples of others, and the festering emotions of victimhood are shared in a mutual resentment of parental authority. Linked with criticism of heterosexuals and "cisgenders" the common cause of rebellion takes its form in declarations of life-changing claims of transgenderism.

Before 2012, points out Ms. Littman, there was little research on adolescent onset of gender dysphoria. Two clinics existed prior to 2012, one in Canada, the other in The Netherlands, in possession of data providing empirical information on adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria. Both of the institutions studying the issue concluded that individuals in adolescent-onset were "more likely to have significant psychopathology".

The study included 256 parents of ROGD adolescents and young adults who completed detailed surveys. Most of the young adults were female, averaging 15 years of age and of that group 41 percent claimed to have expressed non-heterosexual urges prior to onset, while 62 percent had been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder. According to the study, none of the young adults "would have met diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood". Tellingly was the finding that parent-child relations tended to deteriorate once the girls "came out".

The study leans heavily on ROGD as a form of "social contagion". Common among these teens was the time spent on websites, particularly Tumblr and Reddit where advice on best lying practices are available when confronting clinicians: "Get a story ready in your head ... keep the lie to a minimum" and "look up the DSM for the diagnostic criteria for transgender and make sure your story fits it". 

Study Conclusion:
"Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) describes a phenomenon where the development of gender dysphoria is observed to begin suddenly during or after puberty in an adolescent or young adult who would not have met criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood."
"ROGD appears to represent an entity that is distinct from the gender dysphoria observed in individuals who have previously been described as transgender."
"The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate AYAs from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning."
"More research is needed to better understand this phenomenon, its implications and scope."

Agenda: Who Is Harassing Whom?

"That really got to me. I shouldn't have to do this amount of work to get a leg wax or a Brazilian wax. I shouldn't have to scour to find a salon willing to do ... what is customarily available to the public." 
"It hurts ... if everywhere I go, I get shut down for who I am."
Transgender 'woman' -- "JY"

"Please stop harassing my gf [girlfriend] or we will take further action [police]. She explained to you what she does and does not do."
"Do not call her work again and don't bother messaging me back. Get a life when someone says no move on."
"You did harass her over and over she didn't respond and you call her work get a f-----g life."
"I'll be posting about you on my own account I have all the proof of harassment."
Jeremy Paradis, Surrey, British Columbia

"The complainant wants to punish our client and compel her to pay a fine."
"We do not agree that this is appropriate, so it must go to a hearing."
Jay Cameron, lawyer, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, Calgary

"[The only staff member who does male waxing was on sick leave], however, we also welcome and support all of our staff members and respect their religious beliefs and feelings of safety and dignity in regards to the right to perform waxing services on males or male genitals."
Jason Carruthers, president, Mad Wax, Windsor, Ontario

Jason Carruthers, president of Mad Wax, a Windsor, Ont., spa which faces a human rights complaint similar to the one filed against Mint Tanning Lounge in Surrey, B.C.   Dan Janisse/Postmedia/File

Denied service at Mad Wax body hair removal business in Windsor, Ontario, a transgender woman is seeking $50,00 to compensate for 'her' hurt feelings. Mad Wax's president explained that on the day in question the only employee on duty happened to be a Muslim woman for whom touching men outside her family is forbidden, and she refused the male woman's request for a waxing. At the time in question the sole staff member who did do male waxing happened to be on sick leave. This explanation evidently failed to suffice and the case will appear for mediation in October.

When another unnamed transgender woman in British Columbia followed up on an advertisement on Facebook for waxing services, she asked the location of the Mint Tanning Lounge. Aesthetician Shelah Poyer responded  with the location. "Awesome! Do you do Brazilians"? wrote the woman back. "Not for men, sorry", was the response from Ms. Poyer. "I'm actually female. I transitioned a while ago", replied the transgender woman, asking for an appointment, only to find there was no response forthcoming.

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal was brought into the picture when the transgender woman identified by the tribunal only as "JY" charged she was the victim of gender identity discrimination. An apology and a cheque for $2,500 would make her feel better over the unfortunate denial of services. The transgender woman, a digital entrepreneur, has filed fifteen complaints against salons located from Vancouver to Abbotsford in British Columbia. She is obviously on a righteous campaign, incensed that of 18 salons she had contacted three only agreed to give her service.

The aesthetician at Mint Tanning Lounge, Shelah Poyer, is being represented by lawyers at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, based in Calgary, where lawyer John Carpay explained that his client simply didn't have the supplies or the requisite training to enable her to perform a "Manzilian" wax job. "As such, she is unqualified and unable to provide the service", he stated. "Not wishing to enter into controversy, Ms. Poyer declined to speak further with the complainant".

Ms. Poyer's boyfriend, Jeremy Paradis, is also named in the complaint for purportedly sending harassing and threatening messages to the sensibility-wounded transgender woman. Mr. Paradis questions the complainant's use of a male name in his/her communications; in essence contradicting his claim to have transitioned to a female.

A transgender woman in Canada has filed complaints against 15 salons that she has claimed denied her services. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Whose Rights Violated?

"It's affecting everyone in the house. This can completely ruin your recovery, let alone your safety, let alone your life. Those two nights were hell for me."
"We were all choked by our own anxiety, our crippling PTSD symptoms. You could cut the tension in the house."
"All of us were completely upset and flabbergasted, pretty much, and instantly all full of fear. They won't even allow a man on the property without permission by the staff and all the residents. And we had no pre-warning of any of this. There was never any discussions. It was never mentioned. We were all just blindsided."
"Everyone in the house has had at some point male-enforced trauma. This is not about discrimination, this is about the safety of male-enforced trauma victims."
"[Shelter staff said] 'We're all about inclusion and it's unfortunate that you feel this way ... Deal with it or leave'."
Kristi Hanna, 37, former paramedic, recovering addict

Kristi Hanna, who filed a human rights complaint after being told she was the one discriminating against a pre-operative transexual women who was in a shelter for female substance abusers: “We were all just blindsided… This is not about discrimination, this is about the safety of male-enforced trauma victims.” Tyler Anderson/National Post

Ms. Hanna did leave, at least temporarily, fearful of spending another night in close intimate proximity to a man claiming himself to be a woman, and seeking haven and support in the very same facility that Ms. Hanna was occupying, along with other abused women trying to adjust to the miserable reality of their situation, to eventually resume a normal lifestyle, as much as possible. The 'house' she referred to was the Jean Tweed Centre's Palmerston House.

The former paramedic struggles from the traumatic after effects of sexual abuse and additional problems relating to her alcohol and cocaine addictions. She had always been, she said, an "active ally in the LGBTQ community". Suddenly finding herself in a compromised safety issue personally when confronted with the reality of being in effect, forced to share sleeping accommodation in a two-bed bedroom with an individual who looked nothing like a woman.

Simply by stating he was a woman and decided to transition from a man to a woman and needing a place to stay, he was accepted by the Toronto shelter for women as a 'she'. Staff at the facility were uncompromising when Kristi Hanna objected to having to share a bedroom with a 'pre-operational' male. She had herself been living there , a re-purposed Victorian house, for a seven-month period.

After spending two anxious and sleepless nights in the company of the man-who-would-be-a-woman sleeping several feet away from her, she vacated the house, staying over with friends, sleeping on their couches as a "transient" in preference to another night of fear over being raped. She had lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, stating that the shelter "admitted a male bodied transgender into the safety of my home, bedroom and safe spaces", causing her stress, anxiety, rape flashbacks, symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, and sleep deprivation.

"[The agency is] fully aware of the requirements under the Ontario Human Rights Code and are well known for our work in providing trauma informed care across our programs."
"With respect to accommodating trans women, we do not discriminate; nor do we impose modifications with respect to accommodation."
"We do, however, do our best to meet the needs of all parties affected in a way that complies with the requirements of shelter standards and trauma-informed practice."
Lucy Hume, outgoing executive director, Jean Tweed Centre

In mid-July, the women sheltering at the facility were introduced to the man who arrived as a transgender woman, an individual whose behaviour stood out for notice, someone who failed a sobriety test when in fact residents before being admitted must be clean for a month beforehand. The trans went to detox, then was admitted and assigned to Ms. Hanna's bedroom, a double room, beds five feet apart.

The trans, described as late 20s with facial hair, chest hair, wearing combat boots thumping about the house failed to impress the women sheltering there. At a communal dinner described by Ms. Hanna, the trans spoke of his wife in a past marriage, as well as a pregnant fiancee. During conversations the trans spoke of unidentified women as "hot", expressing a preference for Latina women -- in mannerisms that struck the women present as inappropriately "piggish".

After informing the facility staff that the trans's presence made her feel vulnerable and fearful, others present joined her in signing a petition to staff. She was offered an alternative; she could move to a room leading to a fire escape without a door. The room she had been occupying for the past seven months would continue to be used by the trans. That's when she moved out to begin circulating on friends' couches.

She approached the Human Rights Legal Support Centre to access information on her own rights through a telephone call. The adviser on the line on the other hand took offense at her attitude and ended the conversation but not before informing her that it was she violating human rights law through her attitude, so much so that the trans could file a complaint against her, placing the shelter in a conflict of interest.

"What you've told me is potentially discriminatory and potentially a violation of the law, and that individual may file against you in the future, and our role is to keep those conflicts of interest in mind", the adviser chided her in no uncertain terms. On the other hand, according to Renu Mandhane, Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, women's shelters as a general rule have the right to restrict their accommodation to women.

"A trans person should have access to the shelter that matches their lived gender identity. However, this does not necessarily require that a cis and trans woman share the same bedroom."
"An appropriate balancing of the rights of both women may require that one of the women be provided with non-shared accommodation."
Renu Mandhane, Chief Commissioner, Ontario Human Rights Commission

And that's just what happened. The woman that is Krisi Hanna was hoisted out of her bedroom in favour of granting occupancy to a man who clearly acted as a man leaving no doubt that he was and is a man, despite his stated inclination to consider himself a woman, thus triggering an instant cultural kow-towing to the icon of transgenderism.

The shelter staff, in essence, contravened the Ontario Human Rights Code by denying Krisi Hanna's rights in favour of conferring rights on someone whose gender-appropriation status falls into the vaunted new sanctity of transgenderism. No equality of consideration between a woman and a trans; the trans obviously has preferential treatment in a society falling over itself to oblige and accommodate.

Yet the Code is quite clear, that everyone has a right to equal treatment of services and accommodation without discrimination inclusive of gender identity and express with the proviso that all those occupying accommodation have a right to freedom from harassment by other occupants sharing equal grounds in the Code. A total travesty of entitlement and justice heaped upon a woman in need, and it wasn't the trans.

Palmerston House, Jean Tweed Centre

Delectably, Gorgeously Female

"They would see boys going in, and we would put on our eye shadow, our wigs and skirts and dresses, and walk out and say, 'Hiiii'."
"I said OMG, really? Seriously? There are people who are like me? And then the idea came in my head, and I held on to it like a rope that would save me."
"I think winning the crown [as Miss Trans Star International] in Barcelona will give some hope, like planting a seed of hope [for other transgender people]."
"Imagine because of who you are, you have to leave your family, home and country -- I am speaking of Arab countries."
"I'm Arab, I'm Christian, I'm Israeli. All that is tied together. And I'm going to win."
"My father should be proud of me. My father is the father of Miss Trans Israel."
Talleen Abu Hanna, Miss Trans Israel, Tel Aviv

Talin Abu Hanah walks on stage during the first-ever Miss Trans Israel beauty pageant in Tel Aviv, Israel May 27, 2016. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Growing up in Nazareth, a majority Arab city in Israel, a young boy decided against karate and wanted to take ballet lessons instead. Into his teen years he experimented with his mother's cosmetics and tried on his sister's dresses. He had other friends who were as curious as he was about the opposite gender and wanting to express themselves and their personalities in that gender, forbidden and alluring.

When Ms. Abu Hanna was fifteen she went to a party and came across a woman who informed her that she was born male, still she couldn't believe what she heard and saw. But her friends knew far more than she did and explained all about gender reassignment surgery, an astonishing revelation to the young boy who yearned to be a girl. She had simply considered herself as an effeminate boy, and was resigned to life surreptitiously dressing and dreaming of being a woman but bearing the outward characteristics of  a man.

It was, after all, what her family expected of her, saw in her, felt she should be, and if they knew how deeply engrained her female-ness was under the facade of male-ness they would be unforgiving, and she knew this too. She eventually transitioned to female, shedding the veneer of a male and embracing the female within her, struggling to escape the confines of a male persona, a male life and its expectations of her.

A year later she was crowned as Israel's first transgender beauty queen when she won the Miss Trans Israel pageant and wore the Swarovski crown, becoming a celebrated figure, able to present herself as she truly is, unafraid and forward-looking, a role model for other young boys in the Arab world puzzled and concerned over who and what they truly are. And she is preparing to present herself in Spain on September 17 as a contestant for the global transgender pageant

Israeli Christian wins first “Miss Trans Israel” pageant -- CBS News

She will, she says, represent Israel, out of "respect, because it is a democracy that has given me peace". Her 24-year-old Muslim university student boyfriend's name, Mohammed, has been tattooed on her wrist, though she is herself a member of the Catholic community, a Palestinian minority subset of the State of Israel whose Arab demographic represents a fifth of its eight million citizens.

It is painful for her that her family no longer wishes to have any familial relations with one of their own who became openly gay and then completed the transformation as a transgender person. She had been outed by a boy scout in her troop, years ago. After that, in fear of violence directed at her from a furious relative in the interests of 'family honour' being tarnished at her unforgivable sin, she left her home. Her mother had given her $100 to enable her to travel and she ended up in Tel Aviv.

She had gone to Thailand in 2015 to begin the transition to female. She now lives with the attitude of acceptance, using women's bathrooms with most people surrounding her in Tel Aviv recognizing her as a woman. The Israeli government provides her with a stipend in support of people transitioning. She hopes eventually to be recognized as someone who can give advice, to be given respect when she counsels Arab parents to love and accept their children for themselves, however they happen to be.