If anything, said Ms. Lockhart, the new regulations will provide some “breathing room” for people in transition. Between saving up for the procedure (approximately $20,000 for a male-to-female, $60,000 for a female-to-male) can take between five and 10 years, leaving transgendered people in an uncomfortable limbo where they are living as a new sex — yet using the passport and health card of their old sex. The discrepancy leaves transgendered people open to a host of legal complications, most notably a section of Canada’s air travel regulations that requires airlines not to seat a passenger if “the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents.”
Maybe this is a clue that the legal recognition of switching genders was a bad idea to begin with.
For the small minority of transgendered people who end up regretting the decision to change sex, a non-surgery requirement also leaves the process somewhat reversible. “This is a one-way trip, dear,” said Ms. Lockhart. “Once the organ is lopped off, it’s not going to be put back on.”
The case was brought by a person named in tribunal documents as XY, a male-to-female transgendered person who was not able to secure legal sex reassignment until she had provided evidence that her testicles had been removed.
While the Tribunal ruled that the requirement was “discriminatory,” Ms. Price rejected calls from XY for a monetary award — or even an apology — on the basis that Ontario’s laws were not vindictive, just outdated. There is no evidence that the Ontario government “acted in a manner that was clearly wrong, in bad faith, an abuse of its powers,” she wrote.
Now if the Ontario government gets off like that, why can't the rest of the people?
And how are people to know if human rights are being violated if a tribunal judge decides what constitutes a violation.
