PC Party 'ignoring science' by putting gender identity up for debate, says advocate

Local two spirit artist Rihkee Strapp wasn’t exactly surprised when they heard news of the Ontario PC Party passing a resolution to put gender identity up for debate within its ranks.

The resolution - passed Saturday during the party’s three-day convention in Toronto - states that gender identity theory is a “highly controversial, unscientific ‘liberal ideology’; and, as such, that an Ontario PC Government will remove the teaching and promotion of ‘gender identity theory’ from Ontario schools and its curriculum.”

Strapp told SooToday that judging by the reactions from gender diverse people they know on social media, there’s a ‘genuine fear’ when it comes to how the party’s resolution will impact them.

“As science is progressing, they’re creating new definitions that are in line with gender identity theory,” said Strapp. “It doesn’t matter what the PC Party has to say, because it won’t stop inter-sex people from existing, and it won’t stop people with different gender identities or people who don’t even identify with anything on the gender spectrum. It won’t stop them from existing.”

“What is really scary and really dangerous is the policy implications,” they continued. “Going into a male prison when you clearly look female is going to put you in a lot of danger, and the amount of bullying that happens in schools...publicly saying that you don’t agree that it exists validates the kind of violence that people do to each other in a community.”

A steadfast believer in the use of gender neutral pronouns, Strapp says that the Ontario PC Party putting gender identity up for debate sets the gender diverse community back in an already trying environment.  

“Just living in northern Ontario, I have zero expectations of people using my pronouns, because I know it’s just not going to happen,” they said. “For me it’s really scary to assert my pronouns because I don’t know if people are going to be violent towards me when I do that.”

“It’s actually really dangerous for people who are gender diverse.”

The PC Party resolution passed over the weekend comes just months after the same party repealed the 2015 health and physical education curriculum after assuming power in the province.

Strapp calls the party “notoriously anti-science.”

“The very fact that they’re ignoring the science and pushing this forward is showing that they’re just trying to push their own political ideology and agenda, regardless of what’s good for people in Ontario,” they said.

Strapp is now calling on all cisgendered allies - people whose sense of identity is tied into their birth sex - to challenge the PC Party at the local level.

It’s safer than having gender diverse people issuing that challenge directly, they says.

“This isn’t a political debate, these people are already living and existing in this way, and just because you write a policy, it’s not going to change the fact that they exist.”

The Ontario PC Party resolution passed over the weekend is not binding government policy.  

- with files from Global News