Protecting transgender people from Bill C-16

By Martin Tampier —— Bio and Archives May 10, 2017

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The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau House of Commons Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 May 10, 2017 Re. Protecting transgender people from Bill C-16 Dear Prime Minster, The Liberal Party election platform made science-based policies a central element of its approach to governance. It now seems that some of the bills your government is pushing are in blatant contradiction to scientific knowledge.

Bill C-16 assumes there should be a dichotomy between someone’s sex and gender. This is a novel concept based on claims made by the transgender community, based on philosophical assumptions about our identity and makeup as humans. Among others, this concept proposes that some inner self can be of a different gender than our physical bodies, such that our outer appearance should be changed to fall in line with an inner gender experience.¹ Can you provide Canadians with scientific evidence for the subjective claims that are at the basis of this proposed bill? There is no science that confirms that any inner person exists that would be different from our objective, biological existence. On the other hand, scientific research confirms that suicide rates tend to increase whenever transgender people are affirmed in their gender experience. Furthermore, in Canada, we generally agree that someone who rejects their biological reality (e.g. self-mutilation, anorexia) exhibits unhealthy behavior that we try to compassionately discourage in the interest of the person concerned. Why is your government proposing a radically different approach with respect to people rejecting their biological sex through this bill? Mr. Prime Minister, please provide a sound scientific basis for this bill or else, apply a science-based approach to all bills and reject C-16 as dangerous to, and without any merit for improving the situation of transgender people. Respectfully, Martin Tampier, P.Eng. CC: Jody Wilson-Raybould, Minister of Justice; Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development; Grant Mitchell, senator; Don Plett, senator; Yonah Martin, senator; 
Peter Harder, senator, Rona Ambrose, MP; Karen Vecchio, MP; Rob Nicholson, MP

1. What is transgenderism?
   The Entire ‘LGBT’ Narrative Just Crumbled;
   Cecilia Dhejne, Paul Lichtenstein, et al., “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden,” Sexual Medicine Volume 4, Issue 1, March 2016, Pages e60–e68; R. de Graaf, Theo Sandfort, M. ten Have: Suicidality and sexual orientation: differences between men and women in a general population-based sample from the Netherlands. Arch Sex Behav. 2006 Jun;35(3):253-62