{"id":12825,"date":"2016-11-16T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12825"},"modified":"2016-11-23T09:56:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T17:56:28","slug":"open-space-bill-c-16-not-taking-away-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/11\/16\/open-space-bill-c-16-not-taking-away-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/em>: Bill C-16 not taking away rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m tired of the opinion that Bill C-16 is about taking away a person\u2019s rights when it\u2019s about recognizing them. I\u2019m tired of the fact that it is a certain type of person with this opinion, and I\u2019m tired of the fragile male ego, the one that objects when others succeed in fighting for their own rights\u2014the one that gets in the way of change.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this idea out there that if a group of people who are on the receiving end of hate crimes have laws passed in their favour, then someone else\u2019s rights have suddenly been violated. But rights aren\u2019t about taking away; they\u2019re about creating equality.<\/p>\n

\"nexus-issue-27-6-cover\"<\/a>
This story originally appeared in our November 16, 2016 issue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Equality is said to be at the core of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms<\/i>; equality ensures that everyone is treated with the same respect, dignity and consideration, and is treated without discrimination. There are those who think that this endangers their freedom of speech, or that they will be attacked if they make a mistake.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s easy to forget that there are some things that men just don\u2019t have: fair access to their children, for example, or the ability to be involved in their children\u2019s lives without gender discrimination. The courts must keep in mind the fact that abusive men\u2014who are generally so charismatic that they get their children anyway\u2014are out there. It\u2019s an imperfect system; good dads lose their kids while abusive or neglectful mothers gain custody. But it also protects women who are trying to flee abusive situations.<\/p>\n

Men are losing; they aren\u2019t always the breadwinners anymore. They don\u2019t always do the handiwork around the house and they aren\u2019t always the ones fixing the car. Chivalry is on its way out because women are independent, strong, and capable. The \u201cworld of man\u201d is being shattered. Women are forcing change and men are backing them up because they want change, too. The definition of feminism has changed (again) to include fighting for men\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

No one likes to feel like they can\u2019t make a mistake, but this isn\u2019t about that. It\u2019s about legally backing a person or a group of people\u2014specifically, a group of people who would benefit from having a change to the charter that includes their gender identity or expression.<\/p>\n

Nowhere in Bill C-16 does it say that freedom of speech is being violated. It states that evidence must be given that shows the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate based on gender identity or expression.<\/p>\n

As someone who identifies as non-binary, this is important. My gender-identity rights are violated all the time. It\u2019s more likely that a person will refer to me as a female than call me by my gender-neutral pronouns. I\u2019ve been told that I will always be viewed as female because that\u2019s the body I was born in, that I must compromise on my pronouns, and that I need to be more feminine. So I know that humans have issues treating each other with dignity and respect.<\/p>\n

The government must put rules in place so that discrimination is harder to get away with. It\u2019s extremely unfortunate that there are those who can\u2019t see less discrimination as a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m tired of the opinion that Bill C-16 is about taking away a person\u2019s rights when it\u2019s about recognizing them. I\u2019m tired of the fact that it is a certain type of person with this opinion, and I\u2019m tired of the fragile male ego, the one that objects when others succeed in fighting for their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue","category-views","category-november-16-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12825"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12838,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12825\/revisions\/12838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}