World is Falling Apart Thread (Locked forever)

[foxhound1022]

Just to pull focus away from the election a bit; has anyone seen anything about the events going on at the University of Toronto?

[marurun]

Just to pull focus away from the election a bit; has anyone seen anything about the events going on at the University of Toronto?

I haven't heard anything about anything. What's the lowdown?

[foxhound1022]

From what I understand, Canada either has, or is going to pass a bill which requires people to refer to others who do not identify as a particular gender by some list of pronouns that I have never seen before.

If you do not, you face actual legal consequences if I understand this correctly. Apparently there is a large debate at the University of Toronto over this.

[ElkinFencer10]

From what I understand, Canada either has, or is going to pass a bill which requires people to refer to others who do not identify as a particular gender by some list of pronouns that I have never seen before.

If you do not, you face actual legal consequences if I understand this correctly. Apparently there is a large debate at the University of Toronto over this.

There's got to be some other detail. Is the pronoun by any chance ze or xe? Those are the two most prevalent third gender pronouns in the genderqueer community. Most people typically use they or them, but those two are becoming adopted more and more often.

[foxhound1022]

The list I saw was composed of what seemed like 30 different pronouns.

[marurun]

I just read about this. This appears to be a misrepresentation of the bill. Here is an analysis of the bill:

http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-n ... un-misuse/

The tl:dr is that the bill makes discrimination against gender identity and/or gender expression illegal, adds people with varying gender identity and/or gender expression to protections from those advocating for genocide or public hatred, and expands hate crimes to protect people with varying gender identity and/or gender expression. Refusal to use a person's preferred gender pronoun, including gender-neutral pronouns, would have to rise to the level of hate speech to be prosecutable, and thus would likely have to occur concurrently with other kinds of speech advocating stuff like violence or dehumanization.

This U. Toronto professor sounds like a prickly bastard, but is largely making a tempest in a teapot.

[prfsnl_gmr]

It always weirds me out a little bit that developed countries - like Canada, the UK, Germany, etc. - do not have the freedom of speech protections that we enjoy so much here in the US.

[foxhound1022]

I feel like this is kind of a slippery slope of not handled correctly. I just thought it was an interesting topic, and was curious of others opinions on this.

[marurun]

This law updates existing discrimination and hate speech laws to include non-traditional gendered individuals, that's it. The law doesn't really do anything else. I guess I'm not sure where the slippery slope is. It doesn't add new laws, it merely amends existing ones. It's like arguing that adding skin color or traditionally construed gender or religion to discrimination and hate speech law is a slippery slope.

[ElkinFencer10]

I think this law is fantastic. I have very mixed feelings about hate speech laws, so I'm not going to touch on that aspect, but I'm all for adding gender identity to non-discrimination laws.