Episode 9: Misgendering Fatigue in White Supremacy Culture

As was mentioned in Episodes 1, 3 and 6, President Tim Rahilly’s termination letter had maintained that Widdowson was fired because she had “contributed significantly to a harassing and toxic workplace environment” (#7) and that “a number of your former colleagues have indicated that they have departed the University as a result of or influenced by you and your actions” (#8).

One of Widdowson’s “contributions” to a workplace environment that was found, by an MRU hired external investigator, to be “harassing and toxic” concerned one Tweet by Widdowson satirizing the concept of “misgendering fatigue” and the LGBTQ+ initialism.

The events that led to the Tweet began on October 13, 2020, when all committee members of the Mount Royal Faculty Association were sent an email inviting them to an “Organizational Review Session” on “white supremacy culture” in the union.

The wording for this invitation appeared to have been copied from Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones’ concept of “white supremacy culture”, which first appeared in Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups (ChangeWork, 2001).

This announcement led Jonathan Kay to post a three Tweet thread about the email. In the thread, Kay mentioned that the faculty member giving the session was a “they/them” who also facilitated pronouns workshops. Kay provided a link to a Prezi presentation on the internet.

As a result of Kay’s tweets, “Dr. Tony” criticized him for “insist[ing] on the gender identity of one of our [MRU] colleagues”.

This led Frances Widdowson’s character “Frances McGrath (NOT Frances Widdowson)” to tweet a response to “Dr. Tony” with an attachment from the pronoun workshop linked to by Kay. This attachment was a cartoon discussing the condition of “misgendering fatigue”. In the Tweet, Widdowson’s satirical character also referred to the LGBTQ+ initialism as “TGBQ2SLMNOP”.

This led Jonathan Kay to reply to Widdowson’s character and “Dr. Tony” with the question “is that cartoon a satire ?”. Widdowson then satirized the cartoon again by having Frances McGrath refer to Kay as a “cisplainer” who could “never understand the unending burden that the gender binary creates” and accusing him of being engaged in “murderous backpack bricking”.

Widdowson’s one Tweet satirizing “misgendering fatigue” and the LGBTQ+ initialism was found to be discriminatory and in violation of MRU’s Code of Conduct and harassment and human rights policies. It was also determined that the one Tweet constituted discrimination under the Alberta Human Rights Act and harassment under Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. Even though Widdowson asserted that she was satirizing the exaggeration found in the concept of “misgendering fatigue” and the confusing nature of the letters in the LGBTQ+ initialism, the investigator stated that she had “mocked the Complainant’s identity” (the redacted report, received through Freedom of Information and Privacy legislation, can be accessed here).