The Canadian Bar Association's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Conference (SOGIC) wrote a letter urging the Minister of Public Safety to amend the regulations to be inclusive of transgender and gender non-conforming people.
Where does this strange animus against transgender and gender non-conforming travellers come from? Why do legislators and policy makers freak out at the notion of trans folk travelling? Perhaps this clip from The IT Crowd (Series 3, "The Speech") explains it all:
... starting @ 1:30 on the clip:
Douglas: Oh, poppet. To think, when we met, you were so worried that you came from Iran.
April: What?
Douglas: When we met. As if I'd be worried about something like that. I don't care where you're from-- Iran, France--doesn't bother me. I'm very modern.
April: I'm not from Iran.
Douglas: Well you said something along those lines.
April: No, no--not Iran, a man. I said I used to be a man.
Ways of Seeing (1972), an engaging series by John Berger, opens with a look at how mass reproduction of paintings mediates a different relationship with a painting than a person seeing the same item in its original environment, whether on a moveable substrate such as canvas or as part of a particular building.
The series' content is fascinating, but so too is the meta of the medium, seen from a 2013 perspective.
Berger explains what we're viewing both for what's in a shot as well as
how the shot is being broadcast and the ways the medium changes the
content of what we're viewing. This meta-narrative is deliberate: Berger is making visible aspects of viewing we often fail to notice or forget is present.
The precise framing and carefully choreographed camera movement of each piece seems sedate compared to typical video today. Our gaze is directed at each step, and only late in the episode is music introduced for a particular purpose that further aides in mediating the meaning and experience of the images we view.
Colour is also intriguing. Berger as narrator stands in front of a blue screen that only serves as a backdrop that contrasts reasonably well with his clothes and skin, not as part of special effects. The final credits also point out that the item is BBC Colour, further reminding viewers of today that colour wasn't necessarily a universal given in video or film footage.
The opening title is static over footage of television production equipment: no swooping animations or other visual noise (... but for the sake of reminiscing, here's a nifty Flash re-build of several historical television logos). Paintings are depicted without additional title overlays: we need to listen to Berger's narration to know what we're viewing if we don't already recognise the painting.
Additionally, the opening includes a selection from Dziga Vertov's film, The Man With a Camera, ground-breaking in many ways that could appear quite familiar to modern audiences. Vertov's full-length film is also available here in a re-scored (1996) edition:
