No, Canada hasn’t updated the LGBTQ+ acronym to MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+
Canadian MP Leah Gazan has been mocked for saying there is a “genocide” of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ people in Canada (Juno News)
According to the Daily Mail and other right-wing sources, a – in their words – “hyperwoke” Canadian lawmaker has been “mocked” for using the phrase MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ in a speech; which in turn has led to misinformation about Canada’s LGBTQ+ stance spreading like wildfire.
Various social media sites began “reporting” that Canada has now officially updated the LGBTQ+ acronym to MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+, which isn’t the case.
The person who used the acronym was Leah Gazan, 53, a Canadian member of parliament, and she did so while discussing $7billion in budget cuts to two federal Indigenous departments.
She used MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ as a catch-all term to refer to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual.
“When the Budget was released, I was shocked to find out that Prime Minister Carney is cutting $7billion between Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations,” she told parliament. ‘They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. This is abhorrent. This is callous.’
‘This is callous because the very liberal government that has stripped organizations of life-sustaining funding has now committed $13billion on military spending,’ she added.
Among those who reacted was billionaire misanthropist Elon Musk, who wrote, “Canada is cooked,” and, in another post said: “I guess there are still some letters left in the alphabet.”
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) is a widely-used term in the US and Canada, and describes the ongoing epidemic of violence against indigenous women in those countries.
According to surveys and reports, the homicide rate for indigenous women in Canada was almost six times higher than that for other women from 2001 to 2015. In Canada, MMIWG has been described as a national crisis, and activists claim that “thousands of cases” of missing and murdered indigenous women over the last 50 years were not properly investigated due to police bias. In the US, Native American women are reportedly more than twice as likely to experience violence as any other demographic.
Two-Spirit, which Gazan was also mocked for incorporating into the acronym, is an umbrella term used by some North American Indigenous people to describe those who fulfill a traditional third-gender or other gender-variant role in their communities, and is seperate and distinct from other trans and non-binary identities.
The acronym Gazan used was, simply, inclusive of all marginalised people. Unfortunately, according to the right-wing press, it seems that showing empathy to severely discriminated-against communities who are overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of violence is, apparently, “hyperwoke” and worthy of ridicule.
