August 30, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – As many have been pointing out for several years now, our state of cultural confusion over gender and identity has practical, real-world consequences that we have now been collectively discovering at a rapid pace.
There are, for example, the many cases of biological men identifying as “women” requesting services at exclusively female spas and demanding that female staff members attend to their male genitals—although some are now claiming that there is such as thing as “girl penises.”
There are cases of people being understandably disconcerted at biological males presenting as “female” accessing female bathrooms.
There are instances of men identifying as “women” traumatizing the female residents of women’s shelters—and there have even been cases of sexual assault in women’s prisons after biological men claiming to be “women” asserted their right to serve their sentences there.
And now there has been a very predictable case of mistaken identity. “Lenore” Herrem showed up to board a WestJet flight from Calgary to Saskatoon earlier this month presenting as a “female,” but using ID—a Quebec health card—that identified Herrem as a male. The agent at the gate was understandably confused and concerned, noting that the passenger did not appear to match the ID that had been offered as proof of identity. According to Herrem, the agent got upset and said, “They don’t match,” with her colleague interjecting that it was fine and telling Herrem to go on ahead. At that point, Herrem discreetly told the agent that they didn’t match because “I’m transgender,” and boarded the plane.
The agent was obviously still concerned by the discrepancy.
This should not be surprising, considering the fact that one of the primary responsibilities a flight agent has is to ensure that the person boarding the plane matches the identification presented by that person. After all, that is why identification is required in the first place—to identify the person. The two gate agents followed Herrem onto the flight and asked to see the ID again. “She outed me in front of the whole airplane,” Herrem told the CBC. “I felt unsafe, vulnerable, belittled.” Herrem described the situation as “traumatizing.”
WestJet promptly apologized to Herrem, who says that being “outed” as transgender was “traumatizing,” but still took the story to the media, apparently being okay with the entire public being aware of what was apparently traumatizing for a few fellow passengers to discover. The airline gave Herrem a flight credit and promised an internal investigation—but did apologetically point out that “their policy is in line with Transport Canada’s regulations, which requires travellers to carry government-issued photo ID, as Herrem did.” Of course, the issue was that Herrem’s gender marker marked Herrem as male, while Herrem was presenting as “female.” The CBC ignored this obvious fact.
But of course, not even the apology and the flight credit turned out to be good enough for Canada’s woke federal government.
A few days after the CBC reported the initial story, there were new developments: Justin Trudeau’s Transportation Minister Marc Garneau has apparently “instructed his staff to contact WestJet after a passenger said one of the airline’s gate agents outed her as a transgender woman to other passengers on her flight.” His spokesperson Delphine Denis stated that, “When the incident was first reported, the Minister instructed his office to get in contact with WestJet so that measures are taken to prevent this type of incident from reoccurring.”
Delphine went even further, noting gravely that, “Canadians are proud of our country’s diversity and inclusion. Minister [Marc] Garneau strongly believes that passengers must feel safe to be themselves when travelling and is very upset about this incident.”
Delphine did not specify whether the Trudeau’s Minister of Transportation believes that Canadians presenting identification to board a flight actually have to match that identification, or whether transgender people are simply to be exempted from this requirement due to their new social status at the peak of the oppression pyramid.
WestJet promised that staff training would be implemented to ensure that such incidents never happened again.
To be blunt, this entire scenario is ridiculous. What would this new staff training include, exactly?
Are flight agents going to be told that if someone identifies themselves as transgender, they no longer have to match the identification they present at the gate before boarding? Are flight staff going to be warned that if they ask a person identifying as transgender to produce their ID a second time, that they will be guilty of “traumatizing” or “endangering” that person, despite the obvious fact that such passengers are in absolutely no danger whatsoever? Will there be two sets of requirements in place for boarding flights—one for transgender people, and another for the masses of common people? Will the flight agent who was simply trying to do her job get disciplined for attempting to ensure that the passenger she was speaking with matched the ID she’d been presented with?
These questions, of course, will not be answered.
What matters to the Trudeau government is that a transgender person who decided to try and board a flight claiming to be one gender while the identification that passenger presented stated the opposite claimed to be “traumatized” and “unsafe” when a flight agent asked to see the ID a second time.
