Keep Prisons Single Sex!

A Successful Protest in Downtown Toronto

At the end of October, I flew from Calgary to Toronto for a protest to keep prisons single sex.

The goal of these protests, which are also held in countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, is to draw attention to the self-ID laws and policies which allow men to request transfer into women’s prisons—even if they have committed violent and sexual offences. Our protest was organized by Heather Mason, a fantastic Canadian advocate for women in prison.

I won’t lie: I was a little nervous. Three years prior to the date of our protest, on October 29, 2019, Canadian writer Meghan Murphey gave a talk at the Toronto Public Library that ended with an angry mob forcing their way into the building. Many of the women that had attended the talk were also present at the prison protest and recalled how scary the experience had been.

This is, of course, far and away not the only example of women’s gatherings being overrun by angry protestors. In fact, Kellie-Jay Keen’s recent USA tour has also been met with extreme threats of violence and even physical altercations.

Thankfully, we faced no such issues on the day of our protest. It certainly helped that we didn’t announce the exact time and location in advance. This allowed us to meet and set up at the Downtown Toronto Parole Office on busy Yonge Street with no fanfare.

The location was fantastic, providing us with nonstop foot and vehicle traffic, ensuring that hundreds if not thousands of pairs of eyes saw our signs.

Naturally, most people who walked by wanted to be left alone, but many were at least amenable to taking our flyer. By the time we were done two hours later, we had handed out all 500 that we brought with us.

Many people even stopped to have conversations, several after walking a few steps, opening the flyer, and then turning back around again to ask what the hell they were reading.

What is obvious to me after doing this protest and a smaller, similar one in Calgary back in March of this year is that the vast majority of people have no idea what is going on. When they find out, most are horrified.

Of course, not everyone was pleasant—some had to share that they thought we were transphobic, despite none of our signs and other materials mentioning trans people at all.

The most memorable detractor was Tabatha Southey, a former columnist for The Globe and Mail. She stormed past us with her middle fingers in the air, turning on her heel to yell at us that we were transphobic and violent, and that “trans women are women.”

Unsurprisingly, none of the mainstream media takes an interest in these protests. However, Dave Menzies of Rebel News was there, and he released an excellent segment that not only covered our protest but the issue itself.

Altogether, there were more than 20 of us at the protest, mostly women of all ages. We came from all walks of life and all political opinions, with the absurdity of gender ideology generally and the insanity of self-ID policies in prison specifically bringing us together.

It might seem like a relatively small number but, for Canada, where these issues don’t receive any attention from mainstream media or our elected politicians, it seemed huge.

We also can’t forget that those who showed up in person are just the tip of the iceberg. There were so many more people supporting us, watching us, cheering us on, wishing they could have made it, or having important conversations among their own friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances.

There’s no doubt that reversing the course of gender ideology is going to be a long and uphill battle, but it has to start somewhere, and it starts with making our voices heard and connecting with one another as we did on that successful day.