There was a petition to offer refugee status to LGBT Americans put before the House of Commons recently, I just got an email update about it because I signed it, and apparently they accept some refugees on this basis, but it doesn't look like many. I say open the borders and bring me your gays, America. We'll be nicer to them than you are.
What's wild about "two-spirit" is that it's not a really definite concept (that is, it is a neologism from 1990 that does not have a universal understanding among tribal traditions) but what it does accomplish is replacing the perjorative European anthropological term
slur
berdache, from Arabic burdaj "slave" meaning basically a young male submissive gay partner
“Not all countries have the same values and legal system that we have in Canada. As a result, it is important for you to be informed about the legal framework and social customs governing sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics in your destination country,” that page notes.
Wow, way to understate that. I suppose they have to downplay it though because if they were honest about the state of the US then they'd have to acknowledge that large swaths of the US can no longer be considered even remotely safe for members of the LGBT community. As such, they would have to consider the possibility that of members of the LGBT community might seek asylum in Canada and if so, that they could no longer turn them away on the basis that the US is a safe harbor (iirc many countries ban US citizens from seeking asylum because the US is supposed to be a "safe country").
Edit: Canada likes to claim that LGBT people from the US and UK can achieve refugee status, however the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement says otherwise. Note that while there are exceptions to the agreement, none of them involve people who are members of the LGBT and/or BIPOC communities. In fact, it sounds like, based on the canada.ca link, that Canada recently expanded it to make it harder for people to claim refugee status if they're coming from the US, which is kinda the opposite of what they should be doing.
Strangely Canada is the only country I travelled to from Europe where I was verbally asked in their airport border control: if I was Mormon, as not, what my religion was, and if I was gay. Not the tolerant country I always heard about.
Yes, he was the police admission controller in the airport. The one who decides if you can access it not the country. I was 21yo.
I dislike people don't believing me but that supports the fact that those questions were as inappropriated as I always thought.
I think there's not very much discrediting. Mostly just confusion over what the 2 means. I agree that the 2 is warranted when discussing queer Canadians.
Two Spirit is a non binary identity with a specific cultural context within the history of indigenous peoples. In Canada, due to the increased focus on dealing with the reconciliation of Indigenous peoples the current Acronym is 2SLGBTQIA as it sort of symbolicly puts precedent on amplifying indigenous voices in the movement.
Most places in the world recognize two genders and their respective social roles: men and women. Some places recognize a third gender and its respective social and/or ceremonial role. This is the case for (some) North American Indigenous people, and two-spirit is a catch-all term to refer to a third gender role that they recognize.
It's hard to map onto the more standard two gender system that most of us are familiar with. When you think of men as the breadwinners and women as the child bearers, some cultures think of an additional distinct third gender with a designated social/ceremonial role.
But as you might have thought while reading that, men being the breadwinners and women being the child bearers is already a fairly outdated view of gender and social roles. Turns out social constructs are messier than they seem when you start to really analyze them and attempt to strictly define them.
TLDR: two-spirit is a catch-all term for a type of queer identity recognized by some North American Indigenous cultures.
AFAIK, it's basically people with different spirits inside them, falls in the gender queer domain, like being trans/NB (not a sexual orientation). So someone could have a male spirit and female spirit, or a female spirit and a nb spirit.
It primarily seems to be a First Nations/Native American identity, and appears to have a decently long history throughout time.
Two spirit in a Canadian Indigenous context refers to people who identify as having two spirits inside of them. They have the spirits of both a man and a woman, so outside Indigenous culture I think the most related term would be non-binary.
So nice to see public safety taken seriously. I don't fit into the letters but also know full well that if a state is that intolerant then I won't fare well either so I avoid said state. With the atmosphere some states are building , anyone can be caught up in their net of Others to be othered.
Hell they can just make shit up as they are doing already, logic and reasoning are not a part of this whole scheme.