In a tragic case, a man in Canada was jailed for referring to his biological female child as ‘daughter’. Robert Hoogland, a father of a teenage girl, has been jailed by a Canadian court for calling his biological female child his “daughter,” and referring to her with the pronouns “she” and “her.” Hoogland was found to be in contempt of court.
At the heart of Hoogland’s miseries is a gender non-conforming 14-year-old biological female who identifies as transgender and prefers the use of male pronouns. Hoogland repeatedly called the person as his daughter, even after court proscribed him from doing it.
As a result, the Attorney General of British Columbia issued an arrest warrant for contempt, following which Hoogland surrendered himself to the court on Tuesday at 10 am. He was arrested and taken to jail.
In December 2020, Hoogland was forced by a collude to conform to his daughter’s gender “transitioning” and told him to not call his biological female child his daughter. In response, Hoogland made a Charter challenge engaging his right to freedom of speech.
Father accuses his daughter’s school for encouraging her to identify herself as a male
In his defence, Hoogland claimed that he started noticing differences in the behaviour of his daughter when she was in the sixth grade and had increasingly begun to behave more like a tomboy. The girl was spending most of her time with boys her age and was constantly landing herself in trouble. When she came in grade 7, he noticed she cut off her long hair and started wearing a toupé. He said that she developed intense crushes on two male teachers, and made a suicide attempt. Hoogland even consulted with the school faculties in the hopes of improving some of her bad habits.
According to Hoogland, his daughter started referring to herself as a male after watching the pro-transgender film “Handsome and Majestic” at school. Hoogland was aghast when his daughter accosted him and told him that she would like to enrol in the seventh-grade under a male name rather than her own. Hoogland was indignant of the school officials for backing his daughter’s demand and what to him seemed like a falsehood. He expressed his displeasure with the police, but to no avail.
To his dismay, Hoogland later discovered that it was the school that started to pressure the girl to change her gender. The school counsellor with whom he had met and raised his concerns about his daughter, had actually made the change in the yearbook and encouraged the girl to embrace a male identity. According to British Columbia’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) regulation, the child’s parents were not informed of the changes. The school went a step further by referring to her with a male name and allowing her to use the male-only bathroom. In fact, Hoogland accused the school of “socially transitioning” the biologically female child on its own initiative, with the input of a gender ideologue psychologist, Dr Wallace Wong.
Courts rejects father’s views, mandates him to affirm the child’s changed gender or face jail term
Determined to oppose her daughter’s medical transition, Hoogland submitted in court that his daughter needs an emotional affirmation and not a medical intervention to yank her out of her transgender delusions. However, the court did not consider Hoogland’s views and blamed the changes in his daughter on gender dysphoria.
Opposing her daughter’s “gender affirmative” medical procedures, Hoogland said children are not prone to thinking about the future, they live in the present and take decision based on their current feelings. “They don’t make decisions based on playing the tape forward and thinking down the road. Kids aren’t thinking at that age about having families or having children,” he said.
Hoogland says his opposition to the sex change of his daughter is unwavering and resolute, in the desperate hope to save his child from irreversible harm. However, doctors, school administrators, mother and now the Supreme Court all agree that her father lacks the authority to make such a decision and that he must reconcile to the fact and refer to his daughter using correct pronouns.
While Hoogland believes that his daughter’s best interests lie in preserving his child’s health, Justice Boden decided that the child’s best interests lay in damaging her long-term health to make her body more like that of a male. Hoogland believes that the damage caused by the sexual transition of her daughter would be irreparable and irreversible if after her puberty ends, she is dawned with the realisation of her correct sex.
Not only did Justice Boden held that the father’s consent to her daughter’s transition is irrelevant, but he also declared that the girl’s parent must affirm their child’s “gender identity”, and refer to the child as a boy because she considers herself as one. If he did not, the parents would be implicated in the criminal offence of family violence.
Digital platforms thwarted Hoogland from raising his views on the matter
On his predicament, Hoogland lamented, “Here I am, sitting there as a parent, watching a perfectly healthy child be destroyed, and there’s nothing I can do but sit on the sideline according to Justice Boden at the time. I can only affirm, or get thrown in jail.”
Hoogland brought his side of the story by talking to several Canadian commentators. However, the broadcasts were suppressed by digital platforms and he was threatened with contempt of court of proceedings.