Today, The Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today marks the 13th anniversary of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day that has been set apart to remember the lives of the family, friends, lovers, and strangers we have lost throughout the year as a result of anti-trans* violence. As individuals personally invested in the recognition, protection, accommodation, embrace, and appreciation of transsexual,* transgender,* genderqueer,* two-spirited, and other/non-gendered individuals, it pains us to have to observe this day every year. Therefore, as part of your observance of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, we encourage you to write to your Member of Parliament requesting that they support Bill C-279, the federal ‘gender identity’ bill.
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As you may or may not know, Bill C-279 is the federal bill that seeks to include ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ as protected grounds both in the discrimination provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and in the hate crimes provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada. The bill will provide the frameworks needed to ensure that violence against trans people is accurately recorded and redressed by violence prevention programs nation-wide (including law enforcement). It will also establish the legal foundation needed to get people thinking about the  violence being done to trans people in Canada and around the world, both personally and systemically.

You can find the name and contact information of your Member of Parliament here.

If you don’t know who your Member of Parliament is, you can find your riding here and then find your riding in the contact link above.

Your assistance is deeply appreciated.

In celebratory, pensive, and sorrowful solidarity,

The Queer Ontario Steering Committee

Being a Trans-woman in Quebec is far from easy

             

Special to Rebel Youth from Clarté newspaper

If there is still a condition that can bring discrimination and abject humiliation in Quebec and Canada today, it's being a transgendered woman. Across Quebec, hundreds if not thousands of transgendered / transsexual (trans) people continue to suffer very bad treatment, violence and attacks, and almost complete rejection from society, in an atmosphere of indifference. Can we consider it normal that, even today, trans rights remains largely unrecognized by law?

The Senate has just nipped in the bud Bill C-389, which would have given the trans community a minimum of dignity and rights. This reveals the open contempt felt by the public authorities towards this community which is greatly in need of defense of its rights. Clearly, the Harper Conservative government has no political will to help trans people and, even worse, actually attempts to actively harm the community.