A transgender, 25 year old woman named Avery Edison travelling from London, England was detained at Pearson Airport by Canada Border Service Agency. According to her, the reason for her detention was due to an immigration issue involving her overstaying a previous student visa. Despite being identified as a female on her passport, Avery had male genitalia. Avery tweeted that she would be assessed by a nurse before being placed in a male or female cell. However, the fact that she had male genitalia resulted in her being sent to Maplehurst, Correctional Centre in Milton, Ontario which is a prison for males where Avery stayed for one night.
In the article, it is stated that Avery had concerns regarding potential sex attacks towards her in the male facility. Furthermore, Avery is known to have a girlfriend from Toronto, named Romy Sugden who used twitter to post updates about Avery’s situation. According to Romy’s tweets Avery was eventually moved to a female facility and after attending a hearing she was able to go back to London. Avery’s situation represents a gender misrepresentation pertaining to sexuality. Therefore, this paper will discuss the ways in which transgender people’s sex and gender are constructed by society. Gender is a socially constructed term related to an individual’s features such as behaviour, culture and psychological state which express femininity and masculinity.
For instance, sociologists would argue that characteristics of the male gender in a given society include independence, and dominance whereas females express more passive behavior. Gender identity, on the other hand is an individual’s sense of their gender or in other words, their sense as to whether they are feminine or masculine. Therefore, tran. .n border services…”. Moreover, “The Ontario Human Rights Commission’s webpage on gender identity and expression states that ‘people who are discriminated against or harassed because of gender identity are legally protected.
This includes transsexual, transgender and intersex persons, cross-dressers, and other people whose gender identity or expression is, or is seen to be, different from their birth-identified sex’”On sex-segregated institutions like correctional facilities and hospitals, the OHRC says the standing practice allows “post-operative male to female transsexuals to stay in women’s correctional facilities” but in other situations it’s a case-by-case basis. “However, unless full sex reassignment surgery has been undertaken, the individual will be placed in a facility according to his or her birth-assigned gender in a segregated area,” the website continues.
