How to be, that is the question…
This article first appeared in the Minden Times in February 2024.
Alberta is the third province to pile on the wagon of ‘protecting’ parental rights by limiting those of children. In this case, they’re protecting children from exploring their gender orientation. And while I think that aspect of maturation has become over-articulated, incredibly complicated and commences way too far down the age range, I can’t think of a more foundational and personal aspect of who we are, or one more vulnerable to mismanagement.
We live in a patriarchal world: gender is hugely ‘marked’ – that’s a sociological term for how characteristics are ‘read’ by society, and the key to commerce. We sell clothes and cars and addresses and job titles and shoes and hair styles with the purpose of positioning oneself in society: that’s marked, that’s profit. That’s also misery and exclusion and systemic disadvantage.
So the gender spectrum has become the current duelling field for, on one hand, personal independence – ‘Don’t tell me who or what I am!!!’ – and on the other, patriarchal domination – ‘As long as you live under my roof, I’ll tell you who and what you are!!!’. (Okay, those are the tips of the spectrum, but you get my point.)
Government intrudes into this personal and domestic drama at its peril -- or, as loading-on governments bet, its advantage -- and in so doing tramples the most vulnerable. Naheed Nenshi, responding to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s announcement, nailed it. He said the evening it was announced, on Power and Politics, that the requirement that schools advise parents of a child’s wish to change pronouns put children at risk, because in what Smith called the ‘small minority’ (clearly not true since 2SLGBTQ+ youth are hugely over-represented in the homeless population) of situations in which parents react badly to this news, the child welfare system would protect them. Nenshi said (I couldn’t find verbatim), ‘Sure, maybe, after they’ve been beat up or kicked out or killed themselves or self harmed.’
I worked in this system for most of my professional career, and know he’s bang on: the child welfare system has to find proof that harm has been done, the investigation puts everyone at increased risk, and the system has a deplorable record of parenting children well, especially 2SLGBTQ+ kids. Furthermore, if the child is 16 when the system is alerted – the age, by the way, at which the Alberta law will allow use of pronouns of choice without parental permission – the child cannot be made a ward which would give them the rights of children to be protected, but instead offered a meagre menu of services. They languish in the legal no-man’s land between childhood and adulthood.
Aarrggh! What would good look like? CBC GEM offers three seasons of Sort Of, which comes very close. It portrays the journey of Sabi Mehboob, a ‘gender-fluid Millennial’, a first generation Canadian-born Pakistani who finds their messy, heart-breaking, soul-enriching way to being themselves. The cast involves the traditional Pakistani father who returns from abroad to discover that the son who used to sport a glossy beard and be a plumber is now bare-faced and wears weird dresses, his wife who is isolated in both cultures, and a daughter who is doing everything right but can’t get any recognition. It also involves a ‘downtown hipster family’ – therapist Caucasian father, entrepreneurial Asian mother who has a bike accident and is grievously injured, pre-adolescent children for whom Sabi is the nanny. It involves Sabi’s devoted, clever, outrageously lesbian friend 7ven; his appreciative employer at an LGBTQ bar, who may or may not be a transman; and later in the series, the boss’s straight (maybe) son. They are all bent, they are all loveable, the dialogue is delightful, the plot never ceases to surprise while being uncomfortably believable. Clearly there is not one pathway to the way it oughta be, and you might as well learn to enjoy the journey because the destination is hazy.
There are many memoirs out there about the trans journey. Elliot Page’s Pageboy: a memoir was a best-seller, perhaps because we remember her as the pregnant teen in Juno; I found it so sharply sad I couldn’t finish reading it. Cooper Lee Bombardier’s Pass With Care, on the other hand, I found exceedingly instructive, because it is a collection of his writing at various steps in his transition and captured his angst, but also tracked his resilience and creativity in recreating himself. (He was my gifted teacher for awhile and after he’d outed himself by citing his book, I tried, with great difficulty, seeing beneath his full beard and flannel shirt a one-time female. Eventually I smacked myself up-side the head and paid attention to what was important, which was what he could teach.)
We are all complicated creatures in various stages of life-long transformation. We owe it to ourselves and to others to be kind and supportive to the process. Legislation is a maul, a much-too-big hammer, for work of this delicacy. Butt out, governments!
