Canadian Man Switches Genders With Letter to Get Cheaper Car Insurance

P. Gardner Goldsmith | July 30, 2018
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The headline tells quite an absurd tale. But, oh, there is so much more…

As the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently reported, a 23 year-old Alberta man known only as “David” was buying insurance for a new Chevrolet Cruze, when he discovered that his annual rate would be $4,500 (Canadian). Inquiring as to whether his bill would be lower if he were a woman, he was told the price would drop like the cache of the Star Wars franchise, to $3,400 -- a savings of $1,100.

This was because the insurance company has stats showing men are higher risks on the road – those “sexist” realists.

David’s response?

I was pretty angry about that. And I didn't feel like getting screwed over any more… So I asked them to change my gender on my auto policy, and she's like, we can't do that.

David needed to have his gender changed on his birth certificate, so he followed the Canadian rules at the time, which required him to get a doctor’s note.

It was pretty simple. I just basically asked for it and told them that I identify as a woman, or I'd like to identify as a woman, and he wrote me the letter I wanted.

Viola! The Canadian government swiftly changed his birth certificate to note that he was born a “female”, and he got his car insurance discount! And since the time he made the attempt, it’s become even easier to change the birth certificate, because the government doesn’t even require a doctor’s note. A citizen can simply ask for the certificate to be changed.

I'm a man, 100 per cent. Legally, I'm a woman… I did it for cheaper car insurance.

Predictably, this didn’t sit well with members of the self-appointed gender-identity police. Stephanie McLean, a “New Democratic Party” (NDP) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Calgary-Varsity Tweeted her hyperbolic and erroneous claim that David committed “perjury” and a “crime” in taking advantage of this loophole. Of course, he didn’t, and as a lawyer, she should know better than to claim he did. But the feeling of insult is still strong among Canadian folks who promote the Trans cause. Marie Little, a former Chairperson for the Trans Alliance Society, told the CBC:

I think it cheapens the whole process. It sort of casts doubt on everybody else's motives for making those changes… I think it gives ammunition to people who want to take rights away from trans people.

This is where we get to deeper, long-lasting lessons.

The last sentence in Ms. Little’s statement, the bit about taking “rights” away, is key, because this is Canada, the nation that, in 2016, implemented the law called C 16.

With C 16, the Canadian government crossed the line from allowing individuals in society to determine how trans people would be accepted, and moved into mandating human behavior. C 16 commanded any employee of a state office or business regulated by the Canadian government (which is pretty much all business) to have to use the gender pronoun a patron demanded. C 16 is the law that University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson said he would defy, and not only defy, but go to jail for breaching, and conduct a hunger strike against. Dr. Peterson stated numerous times that he has no problem deciding on a case-by-case, non-compulsory, basis how to address people, but he is utterly opposed to the state mandating language.

While Ms. Little may claim “rights” for trans people, one does not have a “right” to force others to call them by a certain title or pronoun. One does not have a “right” to force others to engage in the behavior that one prefers. One does not have a “right” to enslave another person’s speech or command him to act a certain way.

The car insurance gender swap case should be viewed in its political “command and control” context. As a result, we can see that it is not necessarily about a man abusing an insurance company policy, and it is not necessarily about whether women or men are safer drivers (for the record, men drive more miles, drive faster, and get into more serious accidents, while women drive shorter distances and get into fender-benders more often than serious crashes, but those stats are changing, especially since women use cell phones more than men while driving).

The point is that the Canadian government now commands businesses to address people by the gender they prefer, and, even when born male and actually driving as men, the Canadian government will allow men to change their birth certificates to reflect that they are female when they are not. The outcome is that the insurance company must recognize it as reality, even when it is not. That’s the fault of politicians like Ms. McLean, not David.

For the vast majority of people, sex is usually determined during conception. It carries with it certain statistically remarkable traits that run the gamut from physiology to psychology, and the differences in sex are usually reflected in male and female behavior, including driving. Gender identification is different, more complex, based on numerous psychological factors, and can vary over time. Society is better equipped to handle this voluntarily, on a case-by-case basis, rather than through political diktat.

In fact, statistically, David poses a higher accident risk, but the Canadian government just allowed him to be seen as a lower risk – contrary to reality – because of its sex and gender laws.

Wanna complain? Complain about the law and mentality behind it, not solely about the person using the government to his advantage.

(Cover Photo: Altered. Original photo by Pictures Of Money)

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