How do you go about transforming an immensely consensual cause, such as the desire for progress towards women’s equality, into a rat race? It suffices to insist on inserting a new concept, apparently innocuous, and to demand that everyone adhere to it, under penalty of being suspected of not being true feminists, a few days before International Women’s Rights Day, the 8 March.
The word of the month is “intersectionality”, since the solidarity deputy Ruba Ghazal tried, without success, to have its existence recognized by the National Assembly. The caquistes, who refused to consent to the motion, are they resistant to words of more than four syllables? At first glance, we do not see where the problem is, because it is a question of recognizing that, often, a misfortune does not come alone. You can be triply marginalized as a woman, black and disabled (except to get a Canada Research Chair, because if you have these characteristics and hold the required degrees, universities will fight to hire you). Consider also the job prospects of a unilingual gay francophone displaying his Greenpeace button in the oil industry in Alberta or the hostile environment in which a white, conservative, pro- life and pro-guns. It would be the seventh circle of intersectional hell, if the concept did not apply only to minorities protected by the Charter, which by definition excludes white men.
Another example, taken this one not at all at random: a woman, of Arab origin, veiled, employee of the Quebec State in a position of authority. Here we are approaching a beautiful concrete case where we discover that intersectionality is not just a descriptive term, a tool one might say, but an explosive legal argument.
It is part of the arsenal of opponents of the Quebec law on secularism. The Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ) uses it in its brief to the Court of Appeal, in particular in this excerpt: “The intersectional approach must therefore guide the analysis that the Court undertakes on the scope of Article 28 “, we read. It is the section of the Canadian Charter of Rights that promotes an identical interpretation of rights for men and women. This is famous, because the notwithstanding clause used by the secularism act to circumvent the Charter does not apply to this interpretative provision. The Court could, according to the litigants, use it to invalidate the ban on religious symbols. The FFQ continues: “Otherwise, there would be a risk of implementing protection that is not inclusive and therefore incomplete, in that it would authorize a legislator to adopt a law the real effect of which is to compromise the rights and freedoms of minority groups of one sex. »
Since the minority group of one sex is doubly or triply hit, it should enjoy additional protection. By this logic, one could conclude that white Catholic women could not wear ostentatious religious symbols in school, but Muslim women of Arab origin could. For white converts to Islam, we are in a gray zone. But one can think that fervent Catholic black Quebecers could wear a clearly visible cross.
Under the guise of promoting progressive concepts, we are therefore in the presence of a concerted strategy to introduce this concept into Quebec law — a motion of the National Assembly being an act of Parliament, not as strong as a law, but enough evidence to be cited in court. The Court of Appeal is interested in this argument out of a thousand, because one of the pro-Bill 21 litigants, Christiane Pelchat, informs me that the Court specifically questioned the litigants on this subject. In short, it is feminist intersectionality in the service of the right of religions to display symbols of women’s submission within the state.
But maybe that’s just a misunderstanding. Did Ruba Ghazal know that her motion would have this legal impact? I asked the question to Québec solidaire and I am still waiting for an answer. If she knew, she was careful not to inform the other parliamentarians. The FFQ was obviously aware of this and, on its website, announces that “we have tabled, with the Collectif 8 mars and Québec solidaire, a motion”. It’s innovative. I was a member of the National Assembly for six years and this is the first time that I have seen an external group boast of having tabled a motion.
It is clear that my friends from the Parti Québécois fell into the trap, supporting the motion out of progressive reflex without having the slightest idea of its legal impact. (In my opinion, they are not suspicious enough of the Politburo of QS.) This is not the first time that they let their guard down, they had also done so in solidarity motions denouncing “Islamophobia”, a loaded word that combines both anti-Muslim sentiment (condemnable) and any criticism of the Muslim religion. This sulphurous amalgam is not only supported by the Iranian despots, but by Justin Trudeau’s new adviser on Islamophobia and by Valérie Plante’s adviser on anti-racism.
In both cases — Islamophobia and intersectionality — the Coalition avenir Québec applied the brakes. Is it by instinctive refusal of all this diverse newspeak or because she is aware of the legal pitfalls they contain? My sources at the CAQ contradict each other on this subject.
For QS and the neo-feminists of the FFQ, a red line has been crossed. “The fact that the CAQ did not support the motion, said Marie-Andrée Gauthier, spokesperson for the Collectif 8 mars, will be a driving force for feminist resistance. It is, she adds, “willful blindness”. What if, on the contrary, it was a refusal to allow oneself to be blinded? A healthy skepticism in the face of velvet concepts concealing torpedoes favorable to religions camping precisely at the intersection of obscurantism, homophobia and misogyny?