Florence Ashley

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Florence Ashley is an academic, activist [1] and law professor at the University of Alberta. [2] They specialize in trans law and bioethics. They have numerous academic publications, including a book on the law and policy of banning transgender conversion practices. [3] Florence served as the first openly transfeminine clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada. [2] They are a winner of the Canadian Bar Association SOGIC Hero Award. [4]

Contents

Biography

Personal life and education

Ashley came out as trans and transitioned in 2015. [5] They use singular they pronouns. [6]

Ashley attended McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where they graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law and a Juris Doctor in 2017 and with a Master of Laws in bioethics in 2019. They earned a Doctor of Juridical Science from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 2023, where they were also a Junior Fellow of Massey College. [7] [8] They joined the University of Alberta Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor in 2023. [9]

In 2019, Ashley became the first known openly transgender clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, where they worked in the chambers of Justice Sheilah Martin. [10] [5] During the same year, the Canadian Bar Association awarded Ashley the SOGIC Hero Award. [11] Their work is cited in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health‘s Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People Version 8. [12]

In 2022, Ashley published the book Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis. [13] The book is about conversion therapy for transgender people and studies how they can be legally banned, and what impact this ban would have on the countries which would decide to implement these laws. Ashley believes that conversion therapy needs to disappear and that a formal ban improves the situation without fully solving the issue. [14] They cite the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto as an example of practices that were so bad, they served as a precedent to get conversion therapy banned in the province of Ontario. [13]

In 2023, Ashley was one of 21 members appointed to the World Health Organization's guideline development group concerning the health of trans and gender diverse people, [15] but as of January 15, 2024, they were no longer listed as a proposed member of that group due to a schedule conflict. [16]

Selected Academic Publications

Books

Articles

Essays

Related Research Articles

Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to align with heterosexual and cisgender norms. Methods that have been used to this end include forms of brain surgery, surgical or hormonal castration, aversive treatments such as electric shocks, nausea-inducing drugs, hypnosis, counseling, spiritual interventions, visualization, psychoanalysis, and arousal reconditioning.

Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identity—their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth. The term replaced the previous diagnostic label of gender identity disorder (GID) in 2013 with the release of the diagnostic manual DSM-5. The condition was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transgender rights in Canada</span> Rights of transgender individuals in Canada

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legality of conversion therapy</span> Legality of sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts

Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. As of December 2023, twenty-seven countries have bans on conversion therapy, thirteen of them ban the practice by any person: Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Malta, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and Norway; Seven ban its practice by medical professionals only; Albania, Brazil, Chile, India, Israel, Vietnam and Taiwan; another seven: Argentina, Fiji, Nauru, Paraguay, Samoa, Switzerland, and Uruguay have indirect bans in that diagnoses based solely on sexual orientation or gender identity are banned without specifically banning conversion therapy, this effectively amounts to a ban on health professionals since they would not generally engage in therapy without a diagnosis. In addition, some jurisdictions within Australia, Mexico and the United States also ban conversion therapy. In China and South Africa case law has found conversion therapy to be unlawful. Bills banning conversion therapy are being considered in Ireland, Mexico, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine</span> Organization opposing transgender rights

The Society For Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) is a non-profit organization that is known for its opposition to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and for engaging in political lobbying. The group routinely cites the unproven proposal of rapid-onset gender dysphoria and has falsely claimed that conversion therapy techniques are only practiced on the basis of sexual orientation rather than gender identity. SEGM is often cited in anti-transgender legislation and court cases, sometimes providing evidence briefs themselves. It is not officially recognized as a scientific organization by the international medical community.

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References

  1. ↑ "Florence Ashley". Florence Ashley. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Florence Ashley | Directory@UAlberta". www.ualberta.ca. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  3. ↑ "Banning Transgender Conversion Practices". UBC Press. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  4. ↑ "Florence Ashley, LL.M., Receives the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Community Section Hero Award". www.cba.org. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  5. 1 2 ""À mon partenaire: avant de te rencontrer, je ne me pensais pas capable d'être trans et amoureuse"". Le Huffington Post (in French). 8 June 2019. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  6. ↑ "Banning transgender conversion practices: Florence Ashley's first book is an important legal and policy guide to eradicating them". www.nationalmagazine.ca. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
  7. ↑ "Florence Ashley | University of Toronto Faculty of Law". law.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
  8. ↑ "Dis son pronom: les mots de la non-binarité". Le Devoir (in French). 6 July 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  9. ↑ "Five distinguished legal scholars appointed to Faculty of Law". www.ualberta.ca. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  10. ↑ "Florence Ashley, JD, LLM". Center for Applied Transgender Studies. Archived from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  11. ↑ Maryse Chouinard (5 February 2019). fr:Association du Barreau canadien [in French] (ed.). "En-"gendering" change" . Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  12. ↑ Coleman, E.; Radix, A. E.; Bouman, W. P.; Brown, G. R.; de Vries, A. L. C.; Deutsch, M. B.; Ettner, R.; Fraser, L.; Goodman, M.; Green, J.; Hancock, A. B.; Johnson, T. W.; Karasic, D. H.; Knudson, G. A.; Leibowitz, S. F. (19 August 2022). "Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8". International Journal of Transgender Health. 23 (sup1): S1–S259. doi:10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644. ISSN   2689-5269. PMC   9553112 . PMID   36238954.
  13. 1 2 "A new book on conversion practices examines exactly what trans people need from lawmakers". xtramagazine.com. 6 April 2022. Retrieved 4 August 2022.
  14. ↑ "Banning transgender conversion practices: Florence Ashley's first book is an important legal and policy guide to eradicating them". www.nationalmagazine.ca. Retrieved 4 August 2022.
  15. ↑ "WHO announces the development of a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people". www.who.int. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  16. ↑ "WHO GUIDELINES ON THE HEALTH OF TRANS AND GENDER DIVERSE PEOPLE" (PDF). who.int. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
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