On May 29, the “Comité de sages” released its report on gender identity.
In December 2023, the Quebec government announced that it had mandated three cisgender people to sit on a committee called the The Comité de sages. The government mandated the Comité de sages to study and report on gender identity, in order to assist the government in making informed decisions on gender identity-related issues.
The Committee released its report at the end of May. It is 300 pages long. Some of its recommendations are ones that LEAF agrees with, while others are not. LEAF’s initial position on the report, and any subsequent legislation that may arise from it, is twofold:
- There is no excuse for the Committee having been comprised entirely of cisgender people. The absence of trans, intersex, or non-binary expertise on the committee is fatal to the integrity of its findings and recommendations. The Committee insists that its close collaboration with the Conseil québécois LGBT compensated for the absence of representation. The Executive Director of the Conseil disagrees. As she told La Presse, « Est-ce qu’on peut imaginer un comité sur l’avortement sans femme ? Aucune autre communauté n’aurait été traitée comme ça. » (“Can you imagine a committee on abortion without women? No other community would have been treated like this.”)
- Trans liberation is not a threat to women’s equality – it’s a vital part of it. The Committee bases its findings and recommendations, in part, on what it construes as “women’s concerns”. Among the issues that the Committee heard from women was the concern that the language shift from “women” to “gender” (e.g., gender equality as opposed to women’s equality), and the emphasis on gender rather than sex in public policy (including health policy) leads to the erasure of biological realities and conditions specific to women.
LEAF, as an organization that is proud to centre women in our advocacy, denounces any use of feminism, and any invocation of fighting for women’s equality rights, as a means to separate ourselves from the struggles of trans and non-binary people. The very real, continued erasure and dismissal of cisgender women’s experiences in government policies and in social discourse more generally is a result of misogyny and patriarchy. It is not the result of trans and non-binary people seeking to be meaningfully included in health care, in bathrooms, in civil society, or in language.
LEAF urges solidarity in fighting the patriarchy – we will not tear down our trans siblings, brothers, and sisters to get what we want. Gender justice cannot be achieved without trans liberation.
