Megan Murph Vancouver - CTV news

[cordeliavorkosigan]

Can you help me respond to this, and hopefully some of you will also be inspired to write to the author of this article (Andrew Weichel)?

bc.ctvnews.ca/meghan-murphy-threatens-legal-action-if-vancouver-library-rejects-march-event-1.4759505

I'd like to respond to the casual use of "cisgender", as I don't feel that gender (stereotypes) attached to women are right for me. And I'd like to just figure out a concise few sentences to gently pull this writer a bit more towards an open-minded view. If many people write to him in response to the article, with a respectful tone and reasonable points, I think it would be great..

Thanks for sharing.

SO many problems with that article No1 "Meghan Murphy argues against the rights of transgender women"
Way to introduce a brilliant feminist, fighting FOR women (not against anyone)
and the portrayal of the talk being potentially "hate speech" or dangerous in any way.

The only reason these talks and meetings end up being troublesome, is because you get with a bunch of TRAs banging on windows, shouting, hurling abuse at women, sending rape/death threats online, bombarding the venue with complaints, showing up with baseball bats or smoke bombs.

It's sickening how it's portrayed that somehow feminists are the dangerous ones.
I'll consider writing tomorrow.

Canada needs Meghan Murphy. She is literally riding the tsunami against women on her own, with huge opposition, and I have nothing but admiration for her. She deserves a knighthood or something. Canada is such a mess.

Canada IS a mess. Vancouver is an even bigger mess.

Lol sorry WRT "respectful tone" I'll have to calm down first I guess!

The use of cisgender is certainly worth pointing out.

At the very least, the author managed to avoid the slur "Terf" so there's that, could thank for that, but the quotes from Oger that women's spaces are like "racial segregation" have been printed with no analysis whatsoever (feminists are not like racists for goodness sake)....

Ugh.

Anyway enough for now.
What an awful article.

True, re T**F! At least that's something. I think the journalist doesn't intend any particular "slant" so I thought writing to him might be worthwhile, especially if dozens of us do it.

Apologies for the mis-spelling in the thread - Megan Murphy!! Argh. @MNHQ could you fix that?

I now live in Canada and to be honest, the daily experience here is that people use the loos for their sex (or their apparent sex, anyway) and we don't hear about all this much in daily life. I have regular experience on 2 uni campuses. One had an sign in the loo defining a trans person as "someone who needs to pee" that was all about validating blah blah. Someone had written "can my gender be 'one who doesn't pee on the seat' ?" underneath. The other campus had a sign saying these are single facilities and if you would like a gender neutral one it's [directions].

I have emailed:

[dear .. etc intro ]

First, free speech isn't about speech I agree with. I don't agree with everything Meghan Murphy says. Equally, I don't think that the act of questioning whether some spaces should be reserved for natal women and/or post-transition trans women, for some definition of transition that is not straight self-ID, is being active "against trans rights".

There are people who self-ID as women for the purpose of accessing women's spaces. There are indeed vulnerable transwomen. There are vulnerable women (trans and otherwise). The decisions we make about sport, prisons, and refuges affect many. Post-op trans women may be vulnerable in different ways than those who identify as a woman only on some days of the week but enjoy male privilege on other days. Are we using self-ID only? Are we doing this for race too -- who can identify as black or indigenous? (We don't use self ID for race, but why not? The biological basis of sex is much stronger than that for race). In other words, race and gender are very different, and gender doesn't equal sex. These topics are important and we should promote open discussion and debate. The activist quoted at length at the end of your article, making the analogy between protecting sex-based rights in some settings and racial segregation, leaves the article on a very slanted note (which I don't think was your intention - I hope not).

I also object to your use of "ciswomen". I am not a "ciswoman". Stonewall - a pro-trans rights leading charity - defines "cis" as "Someone whose gender identity is the same as the sex they were assigned at birth". And what's gender identity? They define it as "Often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender is largely culturally determined ..". I don't identify with culturally determined ideas of femininity or masculinity. I'm a woman because of my body and my experience, but I don't identify with the cultural definition of 'woman. Women aren't either "cis" or "trans" -- that's another false binary, enforcing rather than questioning gender stereotypes.

I hope that when writing about these issues you may seek to adopt a more inclusive tone that recognizes the subtleties here in the future.

That seems like a good straightforward letter. My only thought is that Stonewall may not be something that means much to a Canadian journalist.

It's interesting that there seems to be no mainstream news agency in Canada, besides maybe The National Post, which is interested in taking a different view of these issues, much less a contrarian one. CTV is the major competitor in terms of television news with the CBC, but i you watch them they rarely take a different approach of viewpoint. The main difference seems to be the wardrobe of their announcers.

Who did you send your email to? I can't decide what the best route would be.

I sent it to the journalist, Andrew Weichel through the contact button. No response yet (not really expecting one) . You're probably right re stonewall.

Thanks, I think that's what I will do too.

On her facebook page Meghan Murphy has posted her objections to the article. She is more concerned that the headline and the slant of the writing make it look like she / the meeting are taking an aggressive line, but that by and large she thinks, compared to other Canadian media reports its not a bad article! (The way it is written implies that Meghan Murphy herself used the phrase "ciswomen" )

She also post a link to a statement from the Head Librarian stating that the Library supported free space. www.spl.org/about-us/the-organization/leadership/a-message-from-the-chief-librarian

Interesting article on Canada’s lack of thought diversity, in the Guardian of all places, though doesn’t mention the elephant in the room:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/11/woke-canada-meghan-harry-best-bet