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From Trans Africans Struggling to Obtain Gender-affirming Care to Canada Protecting LGBT Rights, This Week in Int’l LGBT News – SouthFloridaGayNews.com

This week read about transgender South Africans having trouble getting gender-affirming care, and Canada declaring a human rights violation by not using the correct pronouns.

Trans South Africans Struggle To Obtain Gender-Affirming Surgeries

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, already high wait periods for gender-affirming surgery in South Africa’s public sector have grown much longer. Tiyese Jeranji looks at the barriers that transgender people in South Africa experience in getting gender-affirming care.

Gender-affirming care is mostly offered in South Africa’s major urban centers, such as Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Eastern Cape.

To receive gender-affirming care, transgender persons from rural regions or provinces must travel considerable distances to big cities.

“There are huge waiting lists and a scarcity of surgical expertise in South Africa. In the private sector, it costs hundreds of thousands of rands while in the public sector, waiting periods are often quoted as being north of two and a half decades,” says Dr. Anastacia Tomson, an author and activist focusing on queer and transgender rights, according to Daily Maverick.

Canada Deems Not Using Preferred Pronouns A Human Rights Offense

pronouns

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While resolving an employment dispute, a Canadian panel decided that not using people’s chosen pronouns is a human rights violation.

According to the Washington Examiner, Jessie Nelson, a British Columbia restaurant server who is biologically female but identifies as nonbinary, won a case before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. Nelson, who requested that colleagues use “they” and “them” pronouns, was repeatedly called “she” and “her” by former colleague Brian Gobelle, who also called Nelson nicknames like “sweetheart,” “honey,” and “pinky.”

After Nelson failed to get Gobelle to stop, the employee went to management, who, according to the court, declined to intervene right away. Nelson and Gobelle then got into a heated discussion about the issue, and Nelson was fired four days later for coming on “too strong and too fast.”