B.C.'s Human Rights Tribunal has ordered LifeLabs and a subsidiary to pay $32,000 to three transgender and non-binary people for “injury to their dignity” after separate instances of discrimination.
Tribunal member Theressa Etmanski said in her decision, posted last week, that LifeLabs and its subsidiary Excelleris Technologies misgendered and outed the three patients at service centres in Vancouver and Burnaby in 2019.
Etmanski also ordered LifeLabs to pay almost $3,000 in lost wages and $11,100 for an expert report.
I am supportive of people’s right to live with dignity and respect, and I agree that asking in front of a waiting room is undesirable (I have had that same thought in other waiting rooms, too), but I feel like a medical analysis setting is one in which biology (sex) actually does take precedence over identity (gender), because that has implications what and how things are analyzed.
That said, transgender persons taking hormones will have much greater variance in ranges of everything. I think it’s sensible to have additional gender markers in addition to sex.
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People don’t stop having a gender just because they’re in a doctor’s office. Gender-affirming care starts with treating people like themselves.
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“Sex” is not always a “one or the other” situation, if you assume that all cis women have ovaries then you’re going to be wrong about every cis women with a hysterectomy. The actual medical best-practice is an anatomical inventory.
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