Canada’s highest court slams use of ‘woman’

Canada’s Supreme Court last week declared that a female rape victim should be referred to as a “person with a vagina” rather than a “woman.”

The statement came in the court’s ruling on R. v. Kruk, a case from 2017 in which a woman named Maple Ridge accused Charles Kruk of raping her in her sleep. Despite Kruk’s denial, a British Columbia trial judge ruled against Kruk in 2020 because a woman would not mistake “that feeling.”

“She said she felt his penis inside her and she knew what she was feeling. In short, her tactile sense was engaged. It is extremely unlikely that a woman would be mistaken about that feeling,” the lower court wrote then.

In a decision last week, Supreme Court Justice Sheilah Martin agreed with the lower court’s statement, but criticized the trial judge for using the word “woman” and instead used the phrase “person with a vagina.”

“Where a person with a vagina testifies credibly and with certainty that they felt penile‑vaginal penetration, a trial judge must be entitled to conclude that they are unlikely to be mistaken,” Justice Martin wrote. “While the choice of the trial judge to use the words ‘a woman’ may have been unfortunate and engendered confusion, in context, it is clear the judge was reasoning that it was extremely unlikely that the complainant would be mistaken about the feeling of penile‑vaginal penetration because people generally, even if intoxicated, are not mistaken about that sensation.”

Notably, plaintiff Maple Ridge identifies as a woman and no parties to the case are confused about their genders.

The order came a week after female politicians in Ireland attempted to erase the word “woman” from the country’s Constitution.

In 2022 the female-led Joint Committee on Gender Equality of the Irish Government called for a referendum on an article in the Constitution which described women as being crucial to the home and therefore society. 

“[T]he State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall therefore endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home,” reads Article 41.2.

The Gender Equality Committee demanded the language be revised to be more “gender-neutral” and less “sexist.” An amendment was proposed to remove the term “woman” entirely from the article.

Another constitutional amendment was put forth this month to change the definition of family from one that is founded on marriage to one that includes any “durable relationship,” such as unmarried cohabitation.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected both amendments, which came as an unexpected shock to government officials and other elites.

“Clearly we got it wrong,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said at a press conference. “While the old adage is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, I think when you lose by this kind of margin, there are a lot of people who got this wrong, and I am certainly one of them.”

“It was our responsibility to convince the majority of people to vote ‘Yes,’ and we clearly failed to do so,” he added.

According to poll results, 73.93% of voters rejected the amendment on the definition of family, while 67.7% rejected the amendment on the language about women in the home, reports The New York Times.