The New Tipping Point: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Anti-Trans Rhetoric in Canada, 2000-2023

Abstract

Since 2019, there has been a sharp increase of anti-trans rhetoric in Canadian politics and news. These discourses have culminated in provincial laws that limit trans children's and youths' rights, heightened skepticism toward gender affirmative care, and led to an increase in trans-hostile discourses circulating widely. Moreover, there are few academic inquiries into this phenomenon focusing on Canada at the time of this dissertation's publication. This dissertation tracked the contents and scope of anti-trans arguments in Canada to address this gap. A feminist critical discourse analysis and a mixed methods approach were applied. 500 cases collected from the period between January 1st, 2000, to December 31st, 2023, were selected from various Canadian sources. These cases were quantitatively coded using QDA Miner and qualitatively analyzed to track trends by overall data, time period, and type of actor. Some salient findings from this dissertation were: anti-trans actors in Canada have colonized liberal/progressive language, re-framing anti-trans speech as a political movement. Respectability politics portrayed trans people as 'extremists' who are destabilizing Canadian society. Legislative and rights-based arguments proliferated; most notably, the tension between parental rights and children's/student's rights were highlighted. During the period studied, anti-trans actors pivoted toward a child-centric focus, such as portraying children as being 'too young' to be 'exposed' to transness. Anti-trans actors portrayed transness as dangerous to cisgender men and women (i.e., by threatening gender roles) and to children (through 'trans predator' discourses that hypersexualized transness). Medical discourses portrayed gender affirmative care as unnecessary, often relying on claims that children were being 'rushed' into transitioning medically. Lastly, a common theme was the reification of the sex/gender binary. Anti-trans actors relied upon scientific, medical, political, sociocultural, and/or religious discussions to support their claims of a stable sex/gender binary. This dissertation has generated a wealth of data that captures anti-trans discourses in Canada. By understanding 'what' anti-trans actors are saying, one can develop theoretical and practical tool kits to slow, halt, and/or reverse the normalization of anti-trans discourse in Canadian politics and media.