Alexandre Baril (born 1979 in Granby, Quebec), is a Canadian writer and since 2018 an associate professor[1] at the School of Social Work, at the University of Ottawa.
[1][3] He considers his work to be intersectional, involving queer, trans, feminist and gender studies, as well as sociology of the body, health, social movements, and of critical suicidology.
During this period, Baril also held the position of invited assistant professor at Wesleyan University, teaching courses on issues related to bodily modifications and social movements.
[citation needed] In December 2017, Baril was awarded the title of Personality of the Week by Radio-Canada (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) for his involvement in the media after being hired by the University of Ottawa.
As is mentioned in several interviews and articles,[17] Baril is the first trans person to be hired by a Canadian university to teach gender and sexual diversity in French.
[18][19][10] In 2011, Baril received the Lana St-Cyr Award from the Aide aux transsexuels et transsexuelles du Québec (ATQ) in recognition of the major role he played in organizing the first trans protest in Quebec history on June 17, 2010, in Montreal.
At the time, Baril was involved in PolitiQ-queer solidaire, an activist group fighting against all forms of heterosexist and cissexist oppression and exclusion in Quebec.
[22] From a transactivist perspective, Baril has coined several more appropriate and more respectful new terms to address the forms of oppression experienced by the marginalized groups he takes an interest in.
[6] This new terminology allows for an exploration of the oppressive dynamics reproduced by/in social movements and encourages critical reflection about the flaws and limitations of intersectional analyses as they exist today.
Examples of these trans researchers, working in Canadian English-language universities, include: Jin Haritaworn, Aaron Devor, Dan Irving, Trish Salah, Bobby Noble and Viviane Namaste.
[6] His article and that of Bauer et al.—"I Don't Think This Is Theoretical; This Is Our Lives: How Erasure Impacts Health Care for Transgender People" (2009)—the first to define the concept of cisnormativity in English,[27] were published simultaneously.
"[6] Baril coined these terms in his thesis once he became aware of the absence of work on the realities of people with disabilities in intersectional feminist analyses.
"[6] Faced with the absence of respectful vocabulary in the French language, Baril chose to create new terminology to avoid using the existing terms, whose negative connotations can undermine the realities of these individuals.
In his work, he advocates for the development of an ethical approach to critically reflect on the possible consequences that media representations focused on the intimate lives of trans people can have.
[32][33] In one of his articles, he suggests we "initiate a conversation with media professionals and encourage the development of complex ethical approaches regarding the consent of marginalized groups, including trans* people, to the public distribution of intimate images.