Support MLI’s Work to Protect Women and Girls from Extreme Gender Ideology
Coach Linda Blade launches Fundraiser
There have been many moments in our history where brave Canadians have been called upon to stand up for the rights of women and girls.
The interests of women and girls are being forced to take a backseat to politically-inspired gender identity policies that place the demands of trans activists ahead of everything else. The integrity of women’s sport, the safety of female prisoners, and the future happiness of young girls suffering from gender dysphoria are just some of the ways women’s priorities are endangered by federal laws and policies that say that gender identity matters more than biological sex.
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Moreover Canadians who care about these issues are being intimidated into silence in our climate of ideological conformity – but not MLI.
Linda Blade, Ph.D., Sport Performance Coach and author of MLI’s Breaking the silence: Female athletes speak about safe and fair sport in Canada, is leading a fundraising campaign to support MLI’s thought leadership defending the interests of women and girls against the onslaught of gender ideology. For every $5 raised by the public, Coach Blade and a private donor will each donate $1 to this cause (to a maximum of $5K each), to turn $25K in donations into $35K!
Donate $10, $50 or $100 today to help
counter ideologically-driven gender policy
A growing body of evidence from around the world has revealed the damage caused to women and girls by an uncritical embrace of the demands of gender activists and the denial of the reality of biological sex. Canadian politicians will not speak openly about this issue. MLI, by contrast, exists to ensure there is a fearless voice putting reason and evidence at the heart of policy debates that matter. The interests and rights of women and girls is one policy area that desperately needs such a voice. Will you help make sure MLI’s voice is heard on this issue?
“The Macdonald-Laurier Institute is just about the only institution in Canada speaking with expertise and moral courage about the impacts of Canada’s current gender identity policy. As a responsible nation, we cannot address the needs of one vulnerable population at the expense of other vulnerable populations.
We must find a third way that protects the interests of everyone. Through independent, non-partisan research and fearless thought leadership, MLI is paving the way for better public policy.”
– Linda Blade
Donating though CanadaHelps is recommended. However, PayPal donations are also accepted.
Here is just some of the world-leading thought leadership MLI has provided in this area:
Data from the MLI report, Fair Game: Biology, Fairness, and Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sport by Jon Pike, Emma Hilton and Leslie A. Howe, was cited by Dr. Phil on his program. The data quantifies the extensive biological advantages of male athletes, compared to female athletes, including an average of:
- 162% greater punch power
- 90% greater total upper body strength
- 89% greater bicep strength
- 83% greater tendon resistance
- 45% greater lean body mass
- 40% more upper-body muscle mass
- 33% more lower-body muscle mass
Thanks to MLI’s report, empirical data about the biological differences between male and female athletes was shared with Dr. Phil’s audience of millions.
In this MLI commentary, April Kitzul, former Parole Officer and Correctional Program Officer, discusses the impact of Bill C-16, which allows the transfer of trans-identified male prisoners into women’s prisons. Kitzul reveals that:
- Female and male prisoners have differing rehabilitation and prison security needs. Mixed-sex prisons compromise the success of sex-based rehabilitation practices.
- There are many incentives for male prisoners, who are not themselves trans-identified, to self-id as female. These include being incarcerated in a less restrictive prison environment, access to sexual partners, and access to a victim pool of women and children.
- Current policy allows trans-identified males with histories of sexual violence and/or pedophilia to be placed in prisons with women and children.
- Due to past physical and sexual trauma, some female prisoners are unable to rehabilitate in close and inescapable quarters with male-bodied prisoners.
In this MLI paper, Jo Phoenix examines the impact of federal policy CD100, which incarcerates prisoners by their identified gender instead of biological sex. The paper reveals:
- The policy places women at risk, undermines their rights, and disproportionately disadvantages minority women.
- Female prisoners are an exceptionally vulnerable population with very high rates of both violent victimization and sexual assaults in their histories.
- Female prisoners can be retraumatized by the presence of male-bodied individuals in intimate spaces, such as dwelling spaces they can not escape and therapeutic spaces where past sexual violence is often discussed. This can lead to self-harm and other unhelpful coping behaviours that minimize female-prisoners chances of rehabilitation.
- CD100 effectively demands that an already marginalized demographic bear the burden of risk, retraumatization, and loss of dignity to validate the identity of another group.
- CD100 was driven by politics, not by evidence nor legal necessity.
In this MLI commentary, Jon Pike critiques the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) policy paper Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sport: A Scientific Review, arguing that:
- The CCES, initially founded to ensure fair spot through anti-doping measures, is now promoting a conception of sport that makes athletics unfair for women.
- The CCES paper puts forward inconsistent views about the fairness of trans women in women’s sports, concluding that more evidence is needed to determine fairness. If more evidence is needed, Pike argues, women’s sports should remain female-only until evidence for fairness exists.
- Studies demonstrate that residual male advantage in sport is maintained, even after testosterone suppression and cross-sex hormones.
- In obscuring this empirical evidence, the CCES is sponsoring and publishing pseudo-science to the Canadian public and misrepresenting academic peer-reviewed research.
Doctors have gone silent on gender dysphoria, says Shawn Whatley in a National Post op-ed, arguing that:
- In the standard practice of medicine, no diagnosis is beyond scrutiny. A patient’s self diagnosis is standardly evaluated against their medical history and tests.
- Gender-affirming care inverts this standard of care, rendering the patient’s self-diagnoses the final word.
- Gender dysphoria has a well-documented association with mental illness. With other mental illnesses, counselling helps patients learn to limit symptoms and develop coping skills.
- Counselling for gender dysphoria is geared in the opposite direction, offering guidance instead on changing oneself to conform to their self-diagnosed identity.
- Federal laws designed to ban “conversion therapy” have had the result of quashing questioning in dysphoric patients.
- When stop asking inquisitive questions and stop considering multiple factors, they stop being doctors – and that never turns out well for patients.
Doctors and parents need to rethink ‘gender-affirming care’ for children, argues David Zitner in the National Post:
- While the number of young people now receiving gender-affirming care leading to transition are skyrocketing, many doctors are questioning subjecting young people to harmful, complicated, and often irreversible medical and surgical interventions in the name of gender identity.
- Sex reassignment is not a benign medical procedure. Hormones and puberty blockers influence growth and development, and trans people are subject to a documented increase in the risk of various illnesses.
- Too many of these aggressive interventions are not based on sound scientific studies – or of consideration for which children are most likely to be helped or harmed.
In this MLI commentary, David Zitner examines the American Academy of Pediatric Guidelines, arguing that:
- The American Academy of Pediatrics’ suggestion that aggressive medical and surgical interventions might be appropriate for many children who express reservations about their biological sex was made without supportive evidence.
- Other medical experts, including Dr. Bowers, a gynecologist who is herself transgender, and transgender psychologist Erica Anderson, are sounding the alarm on risks.
- They note the increasing incidence of rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) where youngsters express an interest in changing from their birth sex, an interest that diminishes, or even disappears, as they get older.
- Sex reassignment is a consequential procedure that puts patients at an increased risk for many future illnesses.
- Aggressive interventions for minors are not based on scientific studies demonstrating overall long-term benefit, nor studies showing which children are most likely to achieve benefit or harm, nor informed by evidence on how many young people suffering from ROGD later change their minds.
In A Level Playing Field: Sex, gender and fairness in women’s sports, an expert panel, including Linda Blade, President of Athletics Alberta, discuss how to include everyone in sports without compromising fairness for women’s athletes.
Topics covered include:
- Policies in Canada and around the world vary, from allowing anyone who simply self-identifies as a woman to compete in women’s sport, to requiring some degree of medical intervention such as reduced levels of male hormones, to requiring athletes to compete only in the category of their sex at birth.
- Science and ethics must be at the heart of the debate over how to define and manage women’s sport. However, current guidelines have too often been informed by politics and activism rather than by evidence.
View the panel discussion involving top athletes, sports officials, scientists and ethicists to consider the available evidence and policy options, and to promote a broader debate about the issue.
Polling commissioned by MLI shows that a substantial majority of Canadians support separate male and female categories in sports and have concerns about the fairness of allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.
Though the science is clear that males benefit from biological advantages, many of which remain present in transwomen athletes, little was known about what most Canadians actually think until this poll was conducted.
MLI’s polling results are consistent with US and UK research. A US Gallop poll revealed that 62 percent of Americans believe that, in competitive sport, transgender athletes should only be allowed to “play on sports teams that match their birth gender.” A YouGov poll revealed that 55 percent of Britons opposed “transgender women” participating in “women’s sporting events.”
In the MLI paper, Fair Game: Biology, fairness and transgender athletes in women’s sport, authors Jon Pike, Emma Hilton, and Leslie A. Howe examine the International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines on the participation of transgender athletes in women’s competitions. Findings include:
- Gender identity (a subjective concept) is a poor basis for sports categories.
- It is biological sex (an objective fact) which drives the inherent differences in athletic advantage.
- Athletes who were born male but identify as women have significant competitive advantages in women’s sports.
- While inclusion is an important objective, safety and fairness should be higher priorities when it comes to sport.
The authors recommend a new way to conceive of sports categories: an “open” category in which anyone can participate who wishes to, and a “female” category reserved for those born biologically female.
