Canada’s former Deputy Prime Minister is under fire by users on social media after repeatedly denying that biological males who identify as “women” have “male anatomy.”
Sheila Copps first entered politics in 1981 after being elected to serve as the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Hamilton Centre. In 1984, she was elected Member of Parliament for the riding of Hamilton East and was re-elected in five successive elections.
Copps was the first woman to ever hold the position of Deputy Prime Minister and served for ten years in the federal cabinet, both as Minister of the Environment and Minister of Canadian Heritage.
Though her political career ended in 2004 after a messy nomination loss in which she accused another Liberal Party member of electoral impropriety, Copps continued to be a prominent figure in Canadian politics. In 2014, she revealed she had been the victim of two sexual assaults in her life, once while a young politician, in an effort to call attention to the lack of resources on Parliament Hill for survivors.
While Copps has been well-regarded as as staunch advocate for women’s rights, her latest comments have sparked backlash from Canadian women after she defended trans-identified males being able to access female-only spaces.
Controversy first erupted on February 22 after Copps slammed Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre after he announced he would seek to enforce sex-segregated spaces if elected Prime Minister.
“He has taken a ‘tough’ stance on transgendered women who want to use women’s washrooms. How courageous,” Copps sarcastically wrote on X.
Her replies were quickly filled with women supporting Poilievre’s sentiment, and questioning Copps’ understanding of the issue.
“Sheila. Sheila. The parents of Canada do NOT want their daughters/granddaughters experiencing the anatomy and more, of biological males in the women’s wash/change rooms. Changing in and out of their bathing suits. Read the room here,” political commentator Patrice O’Hamilton wrote.
Copps quoted the user, bizarrely claiming “transgendered women do not have male anatomy.”
In subsequent responses, Copps has doubled-down, seemingly asserting that in all cases where a male identifies as a “woman,” genital surgery is included, and that genital surgery results in the change of biological sex.
Canadian women’s rights advocate Meghan Murphy replied to Copps: “You should know that men can identify as women without any surgeries or hormone treatments at all. I am baffled at how you can have been in your position with the government for so many years and not know this. Bill C-16 was a Liberal Party bill. Have you not been paying attention at all?”
Others noted that an exceedingly small percentage of trans-identified males have surgeries to construct the superficial appearance of a vulva.
According to a 2019 academic paper published by researchers from New York University, only 5-13% of males who identify as “women” have had “bottom surgery,” with the number being a scant 1% for males who identify as “non-binary.”
Vaginoplasties involve the removal of the scrotum and testicles, and the re-configuration of the penile tissues, sometimes with supplemental tissue from the colon, to create a shallow “canal.” The canal then has to be dilated for the remainder of the individual’s life, as the body will try to close it. The underlying male anatomy is not transformed into female anatomy.
While Copps appears to be under the impression that only postoperative trans-identified males have been permitted to enter women’s spaces, Canadian legislation provides broad protections on the basis of self-declared “gender identity” and does not require an individual to have undergone any medical transitioning to be treated as the gender with which they claim.
Copps’ former political party, the Liberal Party of Canada, was instrumental in pushing through legislation which amended the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected characteristics. The amendments granted men access to single-sex female spaces like washrooms, changerooms, prisons, and rape shelters on the basis of their identity.
While the Canadian government claimed the bill had been assessed for its impact on women prior to approval, it has refused to release any details of the assessment’s findings. In 2020, a copy of the assessment was given to journalist Anna Slatz via an Access To Information Request but was 96% redacted.
Since Bill C-16 was enacted in 2017, a number of disturbing incidents have been reported involving males being protected in their access to women’s spaces.
As previously reported by Reduxx, a man who raped a baby was transferred to a women’s prison after identifying as a “woman.”
Tara Desousa, also known as Adam Laboucan, sexually assaulted a three-month-old baby boy in Quesnel, British Columbia in 1997. The infant was so brutally injured by the attack that he had to be flown to Vancouver, 410 miles away, to undergo reconstructive surgery. After declaring a transgender status, Desousa was transferred to the Fraser Valley Institution for Women, where he is one of multiple trans-identified males with a history of sexual violence at the facility.
In addition to males being transferred into women’s prisons, Canadian women have reported incidents involving “obvious males” in women’s changing rooms across the country.
In February of 2023, parents in the oceanside community of Nanaimo, British Columbia sounded the alarm about a man who claimed to identify as “female” behaving in what they say was a predatory manner while using the women’s facilities at the local Aquatic Centre.
One mother who complained to the Aquatic Centre’s staff was threatened with arrest, with both the male and staff asserting the man had a “right” to use the facilities.
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