Update 2: Tabatha Southey, writing for the Globe and Mail, has put together a really insightful editorial on this issue.
In the last line of the articles she states
Let’s allow a transgender woman, for example, regardless of which private medical procedures she has undergone, to mark her passport “F,” and go on.
She is exactly right, given the present system that we work under. However I have to point out that ultimately I think the real solution is that gender markers should be removed from identification entirely. Otherwise, I think that problems like this will always arise, somehow or other.
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Update: So it seems there are some scattered reports showing up of trans people facing hassle based on these regulations. I want to emphasize that the regulations should definitely go. I think it would be helpful though if we had all those stories together about people being hassled before taking everything public.
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Yesterday a story suddenly broke in Toronto’s trans community: pre-op and non-op trans people would be immediately banned from flying! Indeed there is a quite troubling passage of Canada’s Identity Screening Regulations that reads
5.2 (1) An air carrier shall not transport a passenger if
…
(c) the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents;
When this came to light, social media went ablaze with stories that trans people would be immediately banned from flying. However, it turns out that this problematic section of the regulations was apparently added July 29th, 2011. Personally, I am a non-op trans woman and I have boarded multiple international flights from Canada since that time with no problem.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these regulations should not be challenged; in fact, we must challenge them. However, before making dramatic over-statements about the issue or drafting petitions over it, let’s take a moment and think about what’s really going on here.
For one thing, let’s think about what demographic most often gets banned from planes in North America. Here’s a hint: it’s not usually trans people. *
I called the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) [1 888 294 2202] to ask about the regulations. The person with whom I spoke stated that CATSA checks an individual’s boarding pass and that the boarding pass does not have a gender marker on it, which is certainly true.
My suspicion about this type of regulation is that probably it’s the kind of thing that rarely gets enforced when a privileged white trans person like myself visits the airport. That of course does not mean that we should not fight it; on the contrary, if gender non-conforming individuals from vulnerable racialized communities are targeted under this law, then we should push back with everything we’ve got. The thing is, we don’t know much about how this law is being enforced at present. Maybe it’s not being enforced at all, I have no idea. And before we respond to it, maybe we should figure out what it actually is first and who it actually impacts.
Just a thought.
*okay, unless they’re Muslim too, fair enough.
leftytgirl 
18 comments
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January 30, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Christin Milloy
You bring up an interesting point. However, let’s not downplay this just because, by your own statements, limited anecdotal evidence suggests that it might be possible for a pretty white girl to bypass this problem.
Regardless of who may be slipping through the cracks due to matters of convenience or due to individual cases of ignorance on the part of the airport gateminders, the regs are the regs. And the regs ban trans people explicitly by their definition. We cannot allow regs which judge people based on how they “appear” to be gendered; it is unacceptable.
January 30, 2012 at 5:28 pm
leftytgirl
Agreed, all I’m saying is let’s slow down and figure out what’s really going on before reacting to it, that alone is my basic point.
January 30, 2012 at 5:52 pm
chrismilloy.ca » Transgender People are Completely Banned From Boarding Airplanes in Canada
[…] no confirmed cases of a trans person actually being refused boarding. However, as I commented on leftygirl’s blog this afternoon: Regardless of who may be slipping through the cracks due to matters of convenience […]
January 30, 2012 at 6:05 pm
thinking
Regardless of how this rule has been used to date, the fact that this rule could be used to discriminate against a trans person at *any* point means it must be challenged. For instance, what if there’s a particularly unhappy airline employee who decides, for one reason or another, that they don’t ‘like’ a trans passenger? Perhaps that passenger has made a complaint about some aspect of service. The fact that that person can then be refused access to the plain simply because they’re trans makes them very vulnerable to any sort of bullying/harassment/discrimination some employee wishes to dish out on them. Regardless of how the rule plays out, its existence is enough to threaten people’s safe travel free of being discriminated against.
January 30, 2012 at 6:14 pm
leftytgirl
But it might be used to discriminate against non-trans people as well, so why would we want to leave them out of the discussion if we can possibly bring other people along as allies on this?
January 30, 2012 at 6:17 pm
leftytgirl
In other words, what I’m trying to say is that only talking about trans people in this discussion may serve to obscure the fact that others are affected by these types of regulations as well.
January 30, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Brian
You mention CATSA. In the case of this regulation, they are not involved. This regulation affect how airlines, at the gate, decide to allow (or not allow) people to board.
The decision to allow or disallow boarding in section 5 is up to the airlines to interpret. Generally, the airlines legal departments will be very conservative around this on paper, given the fines to the individual agent can be up to $5,000, and to the airline $25,000 per incident.
In reality, implementation will vary widely, and be random and arbitrary, as it is up to the ability/mood/personality of the gate agent to implement. As someone who flies over 100K miles a year, I have found implementation of any rule at the gate varies widely.
Every time at the gate will be a lottery until this is fixed.
January 30, 2012 at 10:25 pm
leftytgirl
Thanks for your input Brian, but my (implied) question remains… has any trans person actually been kicked off a flight?
I have a flight to Boston at the end of the month. Trust me, if this is a real risk to me being able to board that flight then I want to do something. Of course, I would rather that something be based on facts about the situation and, ideally, placed in a larger context under which the ‘security state’ is recognized as problematic as it targets multiple vulnerable communities.
January 30, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Brian
I think that this is the crux of the matter, it is not known. The regulation is clear, and the correspondence in this note http://jennifermccreath.blogspot.com/2012/01/jan-29-2012-air-canada-confirms-they.html is not terribly encouraging. All I can add is that this is up to the airline (and individual front line employees) to enforce as they deem to fit.
January 31, 2012 at 5:24 am
Trisha larick
It’s a sad day for me. I am hetero b/c I was born this way,not b/c I chose. I am inclusive (proudly I might add) in my life, love and views of hunmanity.
Today, I have a feeling that I have NEVER felt in my life. Its shame to be lumped in with Harper’s canadaians.
LIVE, LOVE and LOVE YOURSELF MY TRANSGENDER FRIENDS
January 31, 2012 at 6:57 am
Margaret Robinson
One of our community advisory committee members came to Toronto by car four out meetings because she said she wasn’t allowed to fly while presenting as female. I assume this is the rule she had in mind. She’s not a woman of colour.
January 31, 2012 at 12:21 pm
leftytgirl
Well, that would be the first example I’ve heard of someone trans actually being targeted under this law. Is there any way you could confirm that it was a result of this provision?
January 31, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Margaret Robinson
She told me it was because she couldn’t board a plane while dressed in her female identity. She identifies as bi-gendered, which probably isn’t going to be a passport category any time soon.
February 1, 2012 at 3:03 am
leftytgirl
That sucks. Well like I said, definitely this has to be challenged. Ultimately I think the long term goal should be to do away with gender markers on documentation entirely. It’s not really good for anything but inviting useless gender policing.
January 31, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Tea
Reading the regulation does make me think that traveling with a letter from a medical person, a counselor or a doctor would be a good idea.
!!!
(2) Despite paragraph (1)(a), an air carrier may transport a passenger who presents a piece of photo identification but does not resemble the photograph if
*
(a) the passenger’s appearance changed for medical reasons after the photograph was taken and the passenger presents the air carrier with a document signed by a health care professional and attesting to that fact; or
*
(b) the passengers’s face is bandaged for medical reasons and the passenger presents the air carrier with a document signed by a health care professional and attesting to that fact.
*******
This is a bit troubling, but the politics of fear has made it possible for almost anyone from flying for “reason” if the authorities wish to pull a passenger off a flight. We would probably prefer that #(2) above said an air carrier must transport … but realistically, the reasons for these regulations probably are never going to make a law that forces them to board a passenger who might at times be a potential threat/ terrorist.
February 1, 2012 at 10:08 am
Bob
Yeah that’s very smart and those rules are great.
Transgender AREN’T normal people.
They need help, and are at risk of going crazy in a plane.
that’s not discrimination.. it’s for our security… i repeat.. transgender AREN’T normal.. they are psychologically unstable and at risk..
February 2, 2012 at 2:08 am
leftytgirl
lol… ur funny!
February 12, 2012 at 6:58 am
If No Trans Person has Been Stopped at the Gate, Then Why is This Such a Big Deal? Here’s Why | Christin Milloy
[…] trans people stopped by this reg, some have suggested this is no big deal. Blogger Savannah Garmon wrote a post in which she specifically calls my original article a “dramatic over-statement about the […]