That will be $10,000
yatakalam has been reading the ruling so that we don’t have to. It’s quite remarkable.
Nelson says she gets “misgendered” when she gets coffee or goes to the grocery store. Nonsense. Commercial transactions don’t work that way. The only pronoun likely to come up is “you.” Nelson seems to be a bit of a liar on top of everything else.
These clips are sickening to read.
That’s the last money Jessie Nelson will ever make in food service.
There is some area where I sympathise with her: some of her objection was at being called honey, sweetheart, and pinky (for her pink hair). I think she would have been right to raise that issue with the manager on the grounds of sex discrimination. This case could have affirmed and strengthened sex discrimination laws, instead of issues of the imagination.
One must admit, however much it galls to do so, that Jordan Peterson was more or less correct about this sequence of events back when he sounded the alarm over adding gender identity to the protected classes of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Human Rights Council of Canada is now compelling speech, and suborning actual physical violence in pursuit of compelling that speech (or in retaliation for failing to speak a certain way, which amounts to the same thing).
This wasn’t “try and slap the phone out of someone’s hand” assault, which was highlighted by concerned white knights about the McCarren Park incident as a way to condemn the woman whose life was thereby permanently altered. It was a “you hurt me emotionally and I lashed out physically at you to make you feel my pain” assault. In this case it was from a female to a male and resulted in no lasting damage, but it is clearly the sort of retributive violence which should be roundly condemned even in cases where we feel it was morally warranted.
Otherwise, we risk sliding into a cycle of retributive violence, the kind which often ends with actual minefields and real human rights abuses. I honestly worry, a bit, for Canada’s future as a stable civil society. Already in the last year, individuals have set fires to multiple churches, mobs have gathered and torn down statues, and families have been torn apart over parents failing to affirm their children’s gender identities. And all of these things have been done by people who insisted they were victims themselves or acting on behalf of them, and with the full confidence that they are morally righteous and that their actions will lead to a fairer and more just world.
Perhaps. But I have my doubts.
Holms, it might have if it was the case that only female employees at that establishment were called “honey” and “sweetie.” That’s not the experience I had when I was young and worked in food service, and I’m not sure I can attribute that to my prodigious charm. But (checking notes) Buono’s Osteria may be different from the places I worked.
Now, one supposes, any female employees who suspect that being called “honey” and “sweetie” at the oystah bah in question is sexist will have no basis for complaint, as Her Honor has established that the manager uses those terms for non-female staff as well.
I wonder how this will affect hiring decisions at Buono’s and like establishments in the province (besides the obvious, that is – nobody ever hiring Jessie Nelson).
As a sixty eight year old man, how am I supposed to react to a woman cashier referring to me as Hon? Actually I can’t afford to get confrontational because it’s my only beer outlet for miles.
In the north east of England (and in much of Britain), terms like “honey” (and “hinny”), “pet”, “love” etc are common and are generally speaking sometimes sexed (but it’s complicated). Usually, they are meant in the spirit of friendliness and openness.
A female shopkeeper will call male or female customers hinny or pet, for example. A male shopkeeper will probably not call a male customer that.They’re more likely to use “mate”.
Even though the terms are partially sexed, they’re used for endearment and, as I said, openness, rather than being demeaning. I don’t know anyone who seriously objects to them, although I’d understand if they did.
Online is different, of course. Terms like those are often used to demean (although I’ve never seen “hinny”!) Jean Hatchet had an altercation with someone on Twitter recently when she called them “love”. Jean is from Yorkshire, where terms like “love” are used liberally as above and I believe she was using it that way.
Friendliness, openness and endearment did not ensue.
I was going to say that, but hesitated because it’s not as if I’ve spent all that much time there, so I kind of hoped you would say it. Hope granted! So I can say I experienced that even in the brief time I spent in Manchester at QED. It was nice.
Somewhat important to note that the BCHRT author of the judgement is a long way from a judge.
Ophelia,
In parts of England, words like “lover” are also used freely in an unsexed way, which unprepared people can find shocking. Men happily call other men “lover”, for example.
Yes I’ve seen that on the television machine once or twice – “my lover” in fact, in context clearly not meant literally but just as local dialect for ducky or hon or mate. I don’t remember where I saw it…or wait, maybe it was Doc Martin. The accent seems right if I remember it correctly. Southwest rather than Northern.
Naif, thanks for catching that. I’ll seek more information (once I catch up with events in Brighton).
The significance is that those rulings are subject to judicial review, and at a fairly low level of the court system. Those tribunals were never intended to take on weighty matters of interpretation, let alone extension of rights. Rather more like traffic courts for rights violations, to allow fairly quick and inexpensive processes. Obviously, that is not quite what is happening. The tribunal member who wrote the ruling has a call year of 2007, and was appointed to the HRT in 2017, just 10 years later. A judge is expected to have more experience than that before making significant precedent-setting judgements.
Thank you.
The ruling does seem just completely crazy to me, and as a precedent it’s horrifying. The state shouldn’t be forcing people to use stupid clumsy confusing inconvenient “pronouns” for egomaniacs who demand it in the workplace.
latsot, I experience that both ways. It isn’t unusual for waitresses to call me hon, or love, or dear. My husband will also get called that, and he finds it amusing partially because it often does sound somewhat condescending no matter how sincere the waitress.
When I have been called that at work, it has never been by a woman, and it has never been an endearment. Vocal inflections are different, body language is different, the entire manner screams out derogatory dismissal of my value as an employee. I have occasionally worked for men that I think were just using that in the way you described, such as one manager I worked with who was born and raised in England. But he’s about the only one,
I think it can be hard to tell from a report to the court by the injured party (or the one doing the injury) what the context was unless it is put in context with other actions. It is probably impossible on the internet, even if accompanied by emoticons.
iknklast:
Yeah, I agree with everything you say. I should have been clearer, I certainly wasn’t excusing terms like this when they’re used for belittlement, condescension or threat. I was just pointing out a quirk of British English as used here.
I think it does serve a useful purpose; it’s hard to be surly when calling someone or being called “love”.
‘My lover’, ‘my handsome’ I encounter in Cornwall and Devon, ‘my lovely’ in south Wales, ‘me duck’ in the midlands:)
So it probably was Doc Martin…I can’t think of any other Cornwall-based tv I’ve seen at all recently.
I might just start calling all of you by endearments.
Someone’s undoubtedly already caught this, but Devyn Cousineau was the same individual in charge of the Yaniv case/ruling(s) at the BCHRT.
The judgement specifically stated that she wanted to rule in favour of Yaniv, because Twans Special, but Yaniv stuffed the whole thing up so spectacularly that it was decided that this case wasn’t suitable. That decision was a direct result of the scrutiny that was drawn by Yaniv being, well, Yaniv. His behaviour was so appaling that the whole thing should have been dismissed with extreme prejudice, but instead there was just a comment about this being undesirable as a test case (due to being motivated by racial animus, plus Yaniv being himself).
This is demonstrating that we’re not talking about an individual who just wants to help the underdog; Devyn Cousineau seems to be in favour of a particular world-view, and has no problem imposing it on innocent people unlucky enough to get caught up in this Kafkaesque nightmare of a “court” system. There will only be a reasonable outcome from these courts if everyone is watching them like particularly hungry and irritable hawks.
Ohhhhh…that explains a lot.
What a shitshow.