This article draws on our qualitative study of trans unemployment to introduce considerations of the relationship between trans unemployment and the demands for workers across economic sectors to perform affective labour as integral to industrial service relations. Affective dimensions of labour are often unspoken and unconscious, rendering it challenging for anti-discrimination laws to accommodate. We demonstrate the ways that recent cases grounded on unconscious bias open spaces for further consideration of the ways that trans employment discrimination rooted in demands for affective labour can be dealt with by anti-discrimination law.

This paper explores results from a survey of fifty-four trans students in two major universities in Ontario that sought to evaluate participants’ access to on-campus facilities. Although both universities have made efforts to accommodate trans students in their use of washrooms, locker rooms, and student housing, the numerous barriers that participants encountered signals stark gaps in access. The results invite a critical reflection of three accommodation models that may be undertaken to address these barriers. By addressing each model’s benefits and limitations, wherein the journey towards trans inclusion may generate a new set of exclusions, this paper complicates the notion of increasing access. This paper concludes by offering recommendations across these three models but concedes that challenges may persist until better facilities are reimagined and redesigned going forward.