International Women’s Day should be for women, but instead has celebrated men in recent years, as we saw during last year’s Hersheys Canada campaign, which featured five limited edition “HER for SHE” chocolate bars, featuring the faces of five “women” to “shine a light on women and girls who inspire us every day.”
In reality, the chocolate bars celebrated four women and Fae Johnstone, a male identifying as a woman who showed up at the Senate in 2017 in a failed attempt to protest my testimony against Bill C-16, which became Canada’s gender identity legislation. I spoke about the importance of women’s sex-based rights and the obvious sexism in gender identity ideology.
In 2022, Johnstone was invited to speak about violence against women at a memorial event honouring the lives of 14 women killed in the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre. Johnstone’s consulting firm, Wisdom2Action, marked the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre by tweeting an infographic titled “Queering GBV,” which asserts that “gender based violence disproportionately impacts 2SLGBTQ+ people who are BIPOC, transfeminine, bisexual, youth, newcomers, disabled, homeless, and/or involved in sex work.”
Needless to say, Canada in particular seems to be intent of sidelining women in celebrations of women.
Last year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrated International Women’s Day by tweeting about “anti-transgender hate,” taking the opportunity to clarify that “transwomen are women.”
Premier of British Columbia (my home province), David Eby, agreed.
The good news is these kinds of statements are no longer celebrated by many regular Canadians but mocked. The bad news is that our political representatives, institutions, and media have no intent of backing off, so far.
Let’s return to reality in 2024. Let’s show Canada that women will not be erased.
Join me on March 8, 2024 for a real celebration of women.
Purchase tickets at TrinityProductions.ca.