Florence Ashley

Canadian academic and activist

Florence Ashley is an academic, activist[1] and law professor at the University of Alberta.[2] They specialize in trans law and bioethics. They have numerous academic publications, including a book on the law and policy of banning transgender conversion practices.[3] Florence served as the first openly transfeminine clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada.[2] They are a winner of the Canadian Bar Association SOGIC Hero Award.[4]

Biography

Personal life and education

Ashley came out as trans and transitioned in 2015.[5] They use singular they pronouns.[6]

Ashley attended McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where they graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law and a Juris Doctor in 2017 and with a Master of Laws in bioethics in 2019. They earned a Doctor of Juridical Science from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 2023, where they were also a Junior Fellow of Massey College.[7][8] They joined the University of Alberta Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor in 2023.[9]

In 2019, Ashley became the first known openly transgender clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, where they worked in the chambers of Justice Sheilah Martin.[10][5] During the same year, the Canadian Bar Association awarded Ashley the SOGIC Hero Award.[11] Their work is cited in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health‘s Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People Version 8.[12]

In 2022, Ashley published the book Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis.[13] The book is about conversion therapy for transgender people and studies how they can be legally banned, and what impact this ban would have on the countries which would decide to implement these laws. Ashley believes that conversion therapy needs to disappear and that a formal ban improves the situation without fully solving the issue.[14] They cite the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto as an example of practices that were so bad, they served as a precedent to get conversion therapy banned in the province of Ontario.[13]

In 2023, Ashley was one of 21 members appointed to the World Health Organization's guideline development group concerning the health of trans and gender diverse people,[15] but as of January 15, 2024, they were no longer listed as a proposed member of that group due to a schedule conflict.[16]

Selected Academic Publications

Books

  • Ashley, Florence (1 April 2022). Banning transgender conversion practices : a legal and policy analysis. Law and Society. UBC Press. doi:10.59962/9780774866941. ISBN 978-0-7748-6692-7. OCLC 1276933161. OL 35589970M.
  • Ashley, Florence (13 February 2024). Gender/Fucking: the Pleasures and Politics of Living in a Gendered Body. CLASH Books. ISBN 978-1-955904-93-3. OCLC 1376495878.

Articles

  • Ashley, Florence (1 July 2023). "What Is It like to Have a Gender Identity?". Mind. 132 (528): 1053–1073. doi:10.1093/mind/fzac071. ISSN 0026-4423.
  • Ashley, Florence (7 February 2022). "Youth should decide: the principle of subsidiarity in paediatric transgender healthcare". Journal of Medical Ethics. 49 (2): 110–114. doi:10.1136/medethics-2021-107820. ISSN 0306-6800. PMID 35131805. S2CID 246636156.
  • Salway, Travis; Ashley, Florence (10 January 2022). "Ridding Canadian medicine of conversion therapy". Canadian Medical Association Journal. 194 (1): E17–E18. doi:10.1503/cmaj.211709. ISSN 0820-3946. PMC 8800469. PMID 35012950.
  • Ashley, Florence (20 December 2021). "The Constitutive In/visibility of the Trans Legal Subject: A Case Study". UCLA Women's Law Journal. 28 (1). doi:10.5070/L328155794. ISSN 1943-1708.
  • Ashley, Florence (2021). "The Misuse of Gender Dysphoria: Toward Greater Conceptual Clarity in Transgender Health". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 16 (6): 1159–1164. doi:10.1177/1745691619872987. ISSN 1745-6916. PMID 31747342. S2CID 208214158.
  • MacKinnon, K.R.; Ashley, Florence; Kia, H.; Lam, J.S.H.; Krakowsky, Y.; Ross, L.E. (2021). "Preventing transition "regret": An institutional ethnography of gender-affirming medical care assessment practices in Canada". Social Science & Medicine. 291: 114477. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114477.
  • Ashley, Florence (2022). "The clinical irrelevance of "desistance" research for transgender and gender creative youth". Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. 9 (4): 387–397. doi:10.1037/sgd0000504. ISSN 2329-0390. S2CID 239099559.

Essays

  • 'Trans' is my gender modality: a modest terminological proposal, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, 2nd ed., Laura Erickson-Schroth (ed.), Oxford University Press (2022)

References

  1. ^ "Florence Ashley". Florence Ashley. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  2. ^ a b "Florence Ashley | Directory@UAlberta". www.ualberta.ca. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  3. ^ "Banning Transgender Conversion Practices". UBC Press. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  4. ^ "Florence Ashley, LL.M., Receives the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Community Section Hero Award". www.cba.org. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
  5. ^ a b ""À mon partenaire: avant de te rencontrer, je ne me pensais pas capable d'être trans et amoureuse"". Le Huffington Post (in French). 8 June 2019. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  6. ^ "Banning transgender conversion practices: Florence Ashley's first book is an important legal and policy guide to eradicating them". www.nationalmagazine.ca. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
  7. ^ "Florence Ashley | University of Toronto Faculty of Law". law.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
  8. ^ "Dis son pronom: les mots de la non-binarité". Le Devoir (in French). 6 July 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  9. ^ "Five distinguished legal scholars appointed to Faculty of Law". www.ualberta.ca. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
  10. ^ "Florence Ashley, JD, LLM". Center for Applied Transgender Studies. Archived from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  11. ^ Maryse Chouinard (5 February 2019). fr:Association du Barreau canadien [in French] (ed.). "En-"gendering" change". Retrieved 4 November 2021.
  12. ^ Coleman, E.; Radix, A. E.; Bouman, W. P.; Brown, G. R.; de Vries, A. L. C.; Deutsch, M. B.; Ettner, R.; Fraser, L.; Goodman, M.; Green, J.; Hancock, A. B.; Johnson, T. W.; Karasic, D. H.; Knudson, G. A.; Leibowitz, S. F. (19 August 2022). "Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8". International Journal of Transgender Health. 23 (sup1): S1–S259. doi:10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644. ISSN 2689-5269. PMC 9553112. PMID 36238954.
  13. ^ a b "A new book on conversion practices examines exactly what trans people need from lawmakers". xtramagazine.com. 6 April 2022. Retrieved 4 August 2022.
  14. ^ "Banning transgender conversion practices: Florence Ashley's first book is an important legal and policy guide to eradicating them". www.nationalmagazine.ca. Retrieved 4 August 2022.
  15. ^ "WHO announces the development of a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people". www.who.int. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  16. ^ "WHO GUIDELINES ON THE HEALTH OF TRANS AND GENDER DIVERSE PEOPLE" (PDF). who.int. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
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