Notoriously progressive city is asked to remove the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ from official website [Video]

The City of Toronto is weighing up whether to remove the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ from its online booking system.

The request was made by the city’s Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (2SLGBTQ) Advisory Committee during discussions about how best to update the gender categories used in the online form.

In a Tuesday meeting, committee members said ‘incredibly harmful’ terms such as male and female are ‘no longer used’, because they refer to ‘biological and reproductive’ descriptors and should instead be replaced with the gender categories ‘man’ and ‘woman’.

His comments echo those made by the Toronto community, according to Kathleen Harquail, manager of Business Transformation and Change Management, who is overseeing the update.

She added that the use of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ aligns with the city’s ‘recommended’ language’. 

Harquail also said her team had previously …