Sanfino and Arsenault were arrested in Edmonton when the plane landed, Sanfino because of the disturbance and Arsenault because she refused to stop filming the RCMP officers arresting her friend.

The police addressed the women by male pronouns throughout the ordeal, and allegedly threatened to put them in the male prison. Arsenault, who has had extensive plastic surgery, said one officer even questioned her about her operations, asking her what parts she had “down there.”

The incident occurred just as Bill C-279, which would add gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds for discrimination to the Human Rights Act, stalled before the senate. Xtra reported June 24 that despite widespread support from senators, things don’t look promising for the bill, suggesting Conservative higher-ups may be blocking its progress. Opponents to the bill say transgender people are adequately covered under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

With Pride Toronto kicking off this week, LGBT activists from around the world, including Marcela Romero, are telling the senate to stand up for trans rights. The regional coordinator for the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Transgender People, Romero told Xtra: “We don’t want tolerance anymore. We want human rights.”

Luka Magnotta dated a trans woman, get over it.

By now you’ve probably heard of Luka Magnotta—the Montreal porn actor who allegedly killed, sexually assaulted and ate a 33-year-old man. I’d like to spend a minute talking about his ex-girlfriend—or talking about the talk about his ex-girlfriend.

International media outlets have picked up the story and are reporting on Nina Arsenault, who is an out trans woman, and her details about the increasingly infamous figure. Which is fine, but I can’t actually read anything that she’s saying about him because it’s a needle in a haystack of unjournalistic introductions like “Transsexual lover,” “Transsexual Former Lover,” “Transsexual Nina Arsenault” and “Transsexual Nina.” (Those are all from one article alone.)

Another article actually mentions how much money Arsenault spent on her sex change operations.

Because those are the important details in a story where her ex-boyfriend allegedly MAILED THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY A FOOT, right? Clearly, the Canadian media has been burying the lede here.

Romney adviser calls women’s issues “shiny objects.” Does that make me a magpie?

South of the border, top Romney adviser Eric Fehnstorm dismissed women’s issues in the American electoral race as “shiny objects” this weekend.

While the campaign adviser reasserted Romney’s “pro-life” stance on ABC to George Stephanopoulos, he insisted it was Obama’s campaign that was focused on those distracting social issues like women’s access to health care.

“[Romney will] govern as a pro-life president, but you’re going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people’s attention from the Obama performance on the economy,” Fehnstorm said. “This is not a social issue election.”

Romney’s spent the last year campaigning on social issues, including sending flyers to Iowa touting his “pro-life” stance and repeatedly accusing Obama of waging an assault on religion. So… is this election about social issues, or isn’t it?

To be fair, Romney’s team hasn’t been big on consistency. Fehrnstorm’s the same guy who said that Romney could just wipe the slate clean for the fall campaign and start again, after potentially alienating moderate voters during the primary: “You hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.”

Liberal blog ThinkProgress noted in March,

“It’s unclear if Fehrnstrom expects people to just forget some of the fairly radical stances Romney has taken on everything from immigration, to contraception, to climate change, or if he expects the candidate to change his positions on those issues in the coming months.”

Now, it seems like the team is gunning for the former.

Sexy bridge ads are not okay, I guess.

Meanwhile, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, feminists are talking back about Bridget, the sexiest bridge troll you’ve ever met. In autumn of 2011, local communications company M5 thought it would be clever to create a hypersexualized lady-character to chastise drivers into slowing down on the city’s bridges.

The $50 000 Listen To Bridget campaign got negative responses from the get-go, but the drama has come to a head. Avalon Sexual Assault Centre wrote an open letter to the CEO of Halifax Harbour Bridges decrying the ads, saying the campaign “sexualizes and uses women as a means for the commission’s message.”

“The ‘Listen to Bridget’ Twitter feed has resulted in responses that actively promote violence against women,” the Avalon letter says, “including Tweets that suggest that the worth of having a woman as the face of this campaign is that you can throw coins at her as you cross.”

(Ads featuring the dark-haired bridge vixen were also velcroed onto the bridge’s toll baskets, leaving people in the awkward position of throwing money at her face.)

An online petition is also circulating, demanding the end of the campaign: it tells Nova Scotia’s finance minister that “It seems that the provincial government has decided to champion the use of sex and a sexualized young female persona to ‘educate’ the public.”

Which is, you know, true. But I have to admit, I’d go slow if Bridget told me to.

Nina Arsenault. Illustration by Chris Kim.

Nina Arsenault has spent a fortune changing her appearance from male to female. The 37-year-old used to work in the sex trade, but now supports herself as a playwright, performer, and motivational speaker to queer youth. Her one-woman show, The Silicone Diaries, recently had a second highly successful run in Toronto, was later performed in Montreal (where This caught up with her) and will open in Vancouver next year.

THIS: Where did you grow up?

ARSENAULT: In Beamsville, Ontario, in the Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park. It was a really tight-knit community. My memories of it are just great. But we moved when I was about six to a house in Smithville. It was very difficult to make friends because I was so feminine. Growing up in the trailer park and going to school with those kids, they always knew how girlish I was. With everyone on top of each other, you have no choice but to accept people. But being the new kid, it was very, very difficult to make friends. I have been a bit of a lone wolf all my life.

THIS: In The Silicone Diaries you talk about seeing a female mannequin in a store at age five. What was it that affected you that day?

ARSENAULT: I think just the harmony and symmetry of the face spoke to me. I knew that I was a girl inside but I had this boy body. Then, for my visual gaze to rest upon a face that was a sculpture of a woman’s face, I just seized on that as a child. It affected me. The perfection of it.

THIS: When did you decide to begin plastic surgery?

ARSENAULT: About age 23, but I didn’t have my first procedure until I was 25.

THIS: What did you have done?

ARSENAULT: At first just transsexual procedures to feminize myself. It got to a point where I looked as much like a normal woman as I possibly could. However, I still had masculine features. It was really traumatic on a daily basis to see those features. So I made the decision to really push the cosmetic procedures, knowing I would no longer look natural. That I would start to look plastic and artificial.

THIS: Like a mannequin?

ARSENAULT: Yeah. But I can’t say at the beginning of the journey I was trying to look like a mannequin or a Playboy bunny. I was just trying to be a woman.

THIS: Did you literally have 60 surgeries?

ARSENAULT: There were actually more. Some were just procedures, like a lip injection.

THIS: When was the last one?

ARSENAULT: In 2006.

THIS: How much did they cost?

ARSENAULT: Upwards of $200,000.

THIS: How did you afford that?

ARSENAULT: I was working in the sex trade and made an incredible amount of money so quickly there.

THIS: Men like “shemales”?

ARSENAULT: Yeah. In terms of supply and demand, there just aren’t a lot of us, but there’s a lot of interest. The first day I put my escort ad in the paper, I had 250 calls. I don’t think that’s something that’s spoken about that openly amongst otherwise heterosexual men. I could have worked from morning until night if I had wanted to.

THIS: What was it like working in the trade?

ARSENAULT: It was physically very tough. And I only did oral, no fucking.

THIS: A lot of transgender women work in the sex business. Why is that?

ARSENAULT: It’s one of the few places you can get work and feel safe. If you’re visibly transgender you’re going to be one of the most disenfranchised and disadvantaged people in culture.

THIS: You have two graduate degrees, right?

ARSENAULT: I do. But it’s tough to get straight work. You can’t imagine the amount of transphobia out there.

THIS: How long have you been out of the trade?

ARSENAULT: About three years. I support myself now as a performer.

THIS: In the play you mention that you have had your testicles removed. But you kept your penis. Why was that, if your goal was to be as close to a woman as possible?

ARSENAULT: I never knew what would happen to me financially so [if I still had my penis] I could always return to the sex business.

THIS: What has the play done for you?

ARSENAULT: It has been an incredibly healing ritual. I think I wrote it because I had a lot of emotional angst and suffering that I needed to express, that I needed someone to bear witness to. It makes me stronger every time I perform it.

THIS: Do you feel 100 percent female now or still a bit male?

ARSENAULT: I’ve always known I was a woman but I was socialized as a male. I have some qualities people see as male—I’m an aggressive thinker—but my core is definitely female.

THIS: Do you feel beautiful enough now?

ARSENAULT: I don’t work on the outside anymore. I concentrate now on inner work.

THIS: Any more surgeries ahead?

ARSENAULT: No. Not until I start to really visibly age.

Trailer for The Silicone Diaries:

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The cover story this issue is Elizabeth Wright‘s look at Canada’s broken drug approval process. The way that pharmaceuticals in this country get approved for medical use is needlessly secretive, rushed, and inefficient, many experts say, and its dysfunction puts everyone’s health at risk. And with Big Pharma in the driver’s seat—from the doctor’s office to the federal research labs, it’s increasingly clear that a more accountable, transparent, and independent drug approval process is necessary.

Also in this issue: Brad Badelt reports on the mystery of B.C.’s 2010 salmon run, which saw record-breaking numbers of fish returning to west-coast rivers. The fish-farming industry said it proved that Pacific salmon stocks are perfectly healthy and there’s no need to worry. But was last year’s boom a sign of resurgence—or a last gasp? Plus we bring you a special eight-page photo essay by Ian Willms from the dark heart of the tar sands. In Fort Chipewyan, 300 kilometres downstream from the world’s most environmentally destructive project, residents are living—and dying—amidst a skyrocketing cancer rate and deteriorating ecosystem.

And there’s plenty more: Paul McLaughlin interviews Silicone Diaries playwright-performer Nina Arsenault; Jason Brown explains how Canada is losing the global race for geothermal energy; Ellen Russell asks why we can’t have more muscular banking reforms; Lisa Xing sends a postcard from Jeju Island, South Korea, where the last of the pacific “mermaids” live; Dylan C. Robertson explains how the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement will change our world; Kapil Khatter shows why that “organic farmed fish” you buy may be anything but; Daniel Wilson untangles the right wing’s curious fixation on aboriginal tax exemptions; and Emily Landau sneaks a peek at the next genre-bending project from KENK publisher Pop Sandbox.

PLUS: Christina Palassio on poetry in schools; Navneet Alang on Wikileaks; Jackie Wong on painter Michael Lewis; Flavie Halais on the West Coast’s greenest city; Victoria Salvas on criminalizing HIV-AIDS; Denise Deby on the fight to save Ottawa’s South March Highlands; and reviews of new books by Renee Rodin, Lorna Goodison, David Collier, and David Lester.

This issue also includes debut fiction by Christine Miscione and new poetry by Jim Smith.