By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-26 15:52:26 | Updated at 2024-09-30 21:41:18
4 days ago
The City of Toronto is weighing up whether to remove the terms 'male' and 'female' from its online booking system.
The request was made by the city's Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (2SLGBTQ) Advisory Committee during discussions about how best to update the gender categories used in the online form.
In a Tuesday meeting, committee members said 'incredibly harmful' terms such as male and female are 'no longer used', because they refer to 'biological and reproductive' descriptors and should instead be replaced with the gender categories 'man' and 'woman'.
His comments echo those made by the Toronto community, according to Kathleen Harquail, manager of Business Transformation and Change Management, who is overseeing the update.
The City of Toronto is weighing up whether to remove the terms 'male' and 'female' from its online booking system
She added that the use of 'man' and 'woman' aligns with the city's 'recommended' language'.
Harquail also said her team had previously received requests from the 2SLGBTQ committee to remove 'male' and 'female' and replace them with 'cis male' and 'cis female'.
However, she explained that the categories 'male' and 'female' are currently hard coded into the system and so cannot be amended.
But Jaber insisted that they should still be deleted.
'Any type of "female" and "male" even though they are hardwired into the system when we speak about male and female we are speaking about biological and reproductive adjectives and adverbs and descriptions of folks.
'This type of language is no longer used, we speak about gender now.
'We speak "man", "woman" so for me at least, female and male definitely needs to be removed no matter how hard-wired they are.'
His comments were echoed by fellow committee member Kay Mehrizi.
Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (2SLGBTQ) Advisory Committee member Jad Jaber suggested the terms 'man' and 'woman' should be used instead
Fellow committee member Kay Mehrizi agreed, stating that 'male' and 'female' places too much emphasis on biology
'As hard-wired male and female may be, they are incredibly harmful, so working to remove those and replacing them with the more updated language of man and woman would be great,' she said.
The consultation is being held over changes to the gender categories on Toronto's recreation program registration and facility booking system with the update due to go live in December.
Users of the system will have the chance to optionally state their gender for data collection purposes.
Other recommendations the committee gave were to remove the 'outdated' category of 'transsexual', as well as 'female to male' and 'male to female' in favor of 'trans person' to avoid biological essentialism.
'The language of "trans" or "trans individual" is inclusive of those categories,' Mehrizi said. 'So just completely staying away from male/female.'
Kathleen Harquail, manager of Business Transformation and Change Management, said she was open to hearing from the committee
The changes are being proposed to a optional gender categories on a booking system for Toronto's recreational facility
A suggestion to include a free form text box for users to input their own gender identity was also floated.
However, the idea of removing 'male' and 'female' from the booking system has sparked outrage online.
'I am a female, not a cis-female. If you cannot respect that, I cannot respect you,' one person wrote on Instagram.
'This place is a joke,' another agreed.
'How this ends up on someone’s priority list is just bizarre.. do whatever the f**k you wanna do and be whatever the f**k you wanna be.. just don’t expect others to believe in something simply because you do,' one person fumed.
However, others were less concerned with the proposed changes.
'Cis means you are the gender you are born with it doesn’t mean anything else it’s not that deep,' one person said.
DailyMail.com has contacted the City of Toronto for comment.
