NATIONAL PULSE – Gender expression creating a chasm among Canadians
(Image: Unsplash)
By ANGUS REID INSITUTE
September 19, 2023 – Gender expression is changing in Canada, and a chasm is forming in the ways in which this issue is viewed across different groups.
A new study from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute – the second in a series of reports on Canada and the Culture Wars – finds Canadians holding competing views of gender definition, womanhood, and transgender issues.
Take the Canadian Culture Mindsets Quiz here
Overall, more than half of Canadians (56%) say that they would define a person as either male or female. For one-in-three (34%), this is insufficient. Those who feel the gender binary is too limiting are more likely to be female (40% say this) than male (26%), or do not identify as male or female themselves (73%). Those on the other side of the discussion are much more likely to be men over the age of 34, for whom two-thirds say two genders is enough.
These divisions extend to deeper conversations of transgender issues. For instance, what is a woman? One-in-three (34%) say it’s only those who were born biologically female, while others dispute that definition. One-in-three argue that anyone who wants to can identify as a woman (35%) and one-in-five (18%) say a woman is someone who has female genitals, whether they were born with them or they received gender affirmation surgery.
These issues vary greatly along the Angus Reid Institute’s Culture Mindsets spectrum. If you’d like to see where you fit, please click here to answer questions and learn where you sit on the spectrum.
When it comes to children, seven-in-ten (69%) say they would accept and accommodate their child’s wish to change their gender identity, including three-in-five parents (61%) who have children younger than 18. That said, support for beginning a child on hormone therapy drops to one-in-five among both the general population and among that same group of parents. These responses vary slightly when different ages are presented for the child – eight, 12, and 16 years old – but majority opposition is consistent.
More Key Findings:
- Seven-in-ten Canadians say that transgender people in Canada face significant discrimination in their day-to-day lives. A further two-thirds (64%) say that increasing acceptance of trans people is a sign of social progress for Canada.
- That said, Canadians tend to feel there is a media fixation with transgender issues that give this subject “too much attention”. Three-in-five (60%) say this, an increase from 41 per cent who said the same in 2016.
- Asked if a trans girl should be allowed to play sports with other girls, Canadians offer three views. Three-in-ten say yes (31%), unreservedly, three-in-ten say no (30%) in the same way. For two-in-five (39%), it depends on the sport, with contact sports like wrestling and rugby a source of consternation.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
I think people should always be free to define and redefine themselves. By all means, alter your body if you like. But to me it objectifies women to say a person is a woman simply because they have surgically created breasts and a vagina. It’s insulting to imply that we’re just walking mammaries with a hole for sex. Unless someone has known the discomfort of monthly menstruation coupled with a fear of an unwanted pregnancy that will go on for decades, they aren’t really a woman, in my view. What’s wrong with using the term “trans-female”?
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The “hole” is technically for the purpose of procreation.
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I am too busy working and focused on living well and I have no left-over time to “redefine” who I am. Do I see the world through my own lenses? Do I have that right? Do I also have a fundamental right to question and disagreeing?
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