What it means is that if I announce that my gender pronoun is e.g. "thon" (or any other listed here) instead of the usual "he" / "she", you are bound by law to use the word "thon" when referring to me (or talking about me).
The alternative is this: you end up paying a hefty fine and risk losing your job (as rejecting this obligation now amounts to hate speech).
Sounds like a joke?
Well, it's not.
A new bill (called C-16) passed today by the Canadian parliament, enables just this.
And it seems that there is only one person standing up against this authoritarian absurdity - Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.
If you want to find out more about this fascinating fight, here are the videos:
- recent TV debate which offers a good introduction into the subject
- today's live debate taking place at U of T (actually it's hard to call it a debate - to me it looks more like an attempt to discredit dr Peterson by his own university)