All the confusion over Elle Canada's list of influential Canadian women, explained

This month, the cover of Elle Canada's print edition promoted, among other stories, a piece about eight Canadian women "making changes for the better."

Published online on August 19, the first three women mentioned in the article were the trans artist Vivek Shraya, Ontario MPP Sarah Jama and trans activist Fae Johnstone. Other women mentioned include journalist Connie Walker, professor Suzanne Simard and writer-director Fawzia Mirza.

But after a wave of transphobic and political backlash — specifically aimed at Shraya, Jama and Johnstone — a number of changes were made to the online version including removing Jama from the article and removing the author's byline. Those changes are not sitting well with a lot of people.

Today on Commotion, culture critics Niko Stratis and Matt Amha, and journalist Michelle Cyca join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack the controversy.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Confusion, I would say, has been the primary reaction that I've noticed online. There's a lot of, "What do you stand by, and what do you not stand by?" I want to talk about this note that was added to the online article. So first, initially they had this disclaimer. The disclaimer said Elle Canada has received some threats, so they've edited the online article to protect everyone involved; however, if you go and get the physical magazine, you can read the full article in the magazine. That note also added that since the writer of that article didn't approve of the changes — didn't make the decision to make those changes — her name was also removed from the piece.

But then, a second disclaimer gets added, Michelle. And this disclaimer still has a part about the threat, still has the part about how the writer's name was removed, but then it contains more loaded language. It now suddenly says "the original article represents the opinions of a political personality but does not reflect the opinions of the publishers of Elle Canada." There is a lot to talk about there, Michelle — this phrase of opinions, of a political personality. What grabbed your attention about it?

Michelle: I mean, so many things. But first of all, when the changes were initially made, they just deleted Sarah Jama's profile from the story without an editor's note. Then there was a brief one. It's kind of gotten longer, but not better. In there, they have this really confusing phrase that the article had the opinions of a political personality. I mean, a political personality is not how I would refer to an MPP; like, that's a politician. So maybe they're referring to the writer of the piece, who's a journalist, a journalism professor. And so to call either of those women a political personality, to have such confusing language that it's not clear who they're referring to — it's a bad editor's note.

But assuming they're referring to the writer of the piece, to undermine her as a journalist and to suggest [her work] is politically motivated — we know that journalists face a lot of attacks and criticism online, especially if they're not white and male, you know, if they're from any kind of underrepresented background. They're often dismissed already as biased or are incapable of reporting fairly. And so intentionally or not, Elle is really playing into that by saying, well, this person who wrote the story is just a political personality. They're disavowing her as a journalist, and they've couched in this language of caring about the safety of everybody involved. But I really fail to see how that kind of undermining language makes the writer safer, or the subjects of the article safer. It really feels like they're saying, "Stop yelling at us. We had nothing to do with this story being published anyway," which is a wild thing to put out there.

Elamin: We contacted Sophie Banford, the publisher of Elle Canada, for an interview. She wasn't available for an interview, but she gave us a statement which includes: "the only change to the piece's title we made was to remove the 'eight.' The term 'women' was used in the title of the paper magazine and the title of the Facebook and X post which linked the article, but it was never there to begin with, so we did not remove it."

Niko, this matters because Vivek and Fae have seen a lot of transphobic backlash because of this article and how it played out online. Even if Elle Canada did not remove the word "women," there was this perception that because they made the changes after the backlash, they maybe agree to the backlash or sort of backtracked because of the backlash. Should they have been more clear about what they're standing by and what they're not standing by?

Niko: Absolutely. There's a real lack of clarity and just a real lack of, I'm going to say, courage. That's maybe a loaded word, but there's no courage of convictions in this…. If you're going to make any list like this, there's going to be blowback, so you have to go in prepared to stand by the decisions you've made in, and to have concessions for that and to know how you're going to weather that. To immediately start making slapdash changes, and not being clear about it and using muddy language, it just feels cowardly. I hate to say that word, but it feels like there's no courage to stand by the convictions of your ideals in this sense, in which case it's all kind of a wash.… If you're putting it not only in the paper, it's on the cover of this month's issue, you've made it important. So treat it like it's important, and treat the women that are in it and the person who wrote it, treat them all as important as they are.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.