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MichĂšle Sirois vs. transgender people

MichĂšle Sirois is a Canadian feminist, writer, and anti-transgender activist. Sirois is the founding president of Pour les droits des femmes du QuĂ©bec (PDF QuĂ©bec), a “gender critical” feminist organization focused on “sex-based” rights.

Background

Sirois became a prominent public figure during debates over secularism in Quebec in the early 2010s. In 2013, Sirois helped organize the Rassemblement pour la laïcité [Rally for Secularism] and emerged as a spokesperson advocating the separation of religion and the state.

Sirois is a critic of intersectional feminism as espoused by groups like la FĂ©dĂ©ration des femmes du QuĂ©bec. In response, Sirois co-founded Pour les droits des femmes du QuĂ©bec (PDF QuĂ©bec) in November 2013 with other activists who believe that feminist advocacy should remain focused on “sex-based” inequalities affecting women. The founding board announced at the organization’s launch included:

  • MichĂšle Sirois: founding president
  • Luce Cloutier: vice-president
  • Diane Guilbault: secretary (1955–2020)
  • Chantale Caron: treasurer
  • Lyne Jubinville
  • Leila Lesbet
  • AndrĂ©e Yanacopoulo
  • Julie Latour
  • Leila Bensalem

Sirois represented the organization before parliamentary committees, participated in conferences, and contributed to policy discussions on feminism and public affairs. Sirois is critical of surrogacy, sex work, and trans and gender diverse people.

Anti-trans activism

In a 2017 report:

But it was the president of the QuĂ©bec Women’s Rights Association, MichĂšle Sirois, who left some senators speechless, by raising the spectre of men claiming to be women to compete in sports competitions, or predators accessing private spaces.

Sirois specifically brought up the case of ex-Colonel Russell Williams, who photographed himself in stolen women’s underwear before killing two women and raping others. “Why would he not decide that he’d be better off in a women’s prison?” Sirois asked. “Bill C-16 will result in the elimination or weakening of women’s rights.”

In 2021, Sirois published a book chapter is sex and gender that claims transgender people and their allies are engaged in the “falsification of reality.”

“The issue of trans identity is currently the most sensitive of subjects; it unleashes passions and leads to the stigmatization of those who oppose it. The concepts of diversity and inclusion have become the watchwords used to justify altering vocabulary and erasing the reality of women—particularly with regard to female biology—in order, it is claimed, to be more inclusive toward non-binary and transgender individuals. In this chapter, we will address this new issue of trans identity, one of the key battlegrounds for the left-wing movement associated with “Woke” ideology.”

In 2023, Lowrey was scheduled to speak at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) annual joint conference on a panel titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology.” Planned panelists were:

Below is an excerpt from their description of the panel:

While it has become increasingly common in anthropology and public life to substitute ‘sex’ with ‘gender’, there are multiple domains of research in which biological sex remains irreplaceably relevant to anthropological analysis. Contesting the transition from sex to gender in anthropological scholarship deserves much more critical consideration than it has hitherto received in major diciplinary fora like AAA / CASCA. This diverse international panel brings together scholars from socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology who describe why in their work gender is not helpful and only sex will do. This is particularly the case when the work is concerned with equity and the deep analysis of power, and which has as an aim the achievement of genuine inclusivity. With research foci from hominin evolution to contemporary artificial intelligence, from the anthropology of education to the debates within contemporary feminism about surrogacy, panelists make the case that while not all anthropologists need to talk about sex, baby, some absolutely do.

[
] Sex identification—whether an individual was male or female – using the skeleton is one of the most fundamental components in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. Anthropologists have improved their ability to determine sex since their initial studies on skeletal remains, which depended on subjective assessment of skeletal robusticity to say whether someone was male or female. An understanding of physical diïŹ€erences in the pelvis related to childbirth, hormonal impacts on bones, and extensive comparative studies have provided anthropologists with an array of traits, such as those in the Phenice Method, to determine sex using just bones. The use of DNA to identify sex in skeletons by their 23rd chromosomes enables anthropologists to say whether infants are male or female for use in both criminal abuse cases and archaeological cases, such as in recognizing infanticide practices. Anthropologists’ ability to determine whether a skeleton is male or female is not dependent on time or culture; the same traits can be used to make a sex estimate in a forensic case in Canada, or to estimate sex in a Paleoindian dated around 11,500 years ago in Brazil. As anthropologists study more remains from more cultures and time periods, sex identiïŹcation has improved, because sex diïŹ€erences are biologically determined. In forensics, however, anthropologists should be (and are) working on ways to ensure that skeletal ïŹnds are identiïŹed by both biological sex and their gender identity, which is essential due to the current rise in transitioning individuals and their overrepresentation as crime victims.

Following outcry, the panel was canceled by AAA and CASCA, who released a joint statement titled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology.” In response, anti-trans group Heterodox Academy convened the panel on November 8, 2023.

References

Curtis, Christopher (March 29, 2023). TERF Wars: Why is Quebec Funding Anti-Trans Activism? The Rover https://therover.ca/terf-wars-why-is-quebec-funding-anti-trans-activism/

House, Claire C.A. (2023). ‘I’m real, not you’: Roles and discourses of trans exclusionary women’s and feminist movements in anti-gender and right-wing populist politics. DiGeSt: Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies https://www.digest.ugent.be/article/85755/galley/207661/view/ https://doi.org/10.21825/digest.85755

Robertson, Dylan C (May 30, 2017). Senate committee rejects motion to narrow trans bill’s scope. Xtra* https://xtramagazine.com/power/senate-committee-rejects-motion-to-narrow-trans-bills-scope-73581

Senate of Canada Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (May 17, 2017). Statement by MichĂšle Sirois on Bill C-16. https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/SEN/Committee/421/lcjc/53339-e

Anti-trans coverage

Young, Cathy (October 5, 2023). Toxic culture on the right or left is wrong. Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/culture-wars-transphobia-lgbt-gender-transgender-anthropology-i0un1yec

Selected writing by Sirois

Sirois, MichĂšle (2021). Sexe et genre : de la falsification de la rĂ©alitĂ© par des activi stes Ă  l’insouciance des bien-pensants [Sex and gender: From the falsification of reality by activists to the indifference of the well-meaning.]. In IdentitĂ©, « race », libertĂ© d’expression, pp. 353-373. https://doi.org/10.1515/9782763756264-020

Gendron, Ghislaine; Sirois, MichÚle (November 12, 2020). Protecting the Physical and Psychological Integrity of Children and Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria: Brief on Bill C-6. Pour les droits des femmes du Québec (PDF Québec) https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/432/JUST/Brief/BR11002891/br-external/PourLesDroitsDesFemmesDuQu%C3%A9bec-10347826-e.pdf

Media

Balad Quebec (March 14, 2023). Elo Veut Savoir – Balado #008 – MichĂšle Sirois. https://baladoquebec.ca/elo-veut-savoir/elo-veut-savoir-balado-008-michele-sirois

Resources

Pour les droits des femmes du Québec (PDF Québec) (site.pdfquebec.org)

Association humaniste du Québec (assohum.org)

Sisyphe (sisyphe.org)

Heterodox Academy (heterodoxacademy.org)

IMDb (imdb.com)