“I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name. My name is my own my own my own”
(June Jordan, 2005, pp. 309-311).
Marcia:
As a parent when I hear the dogma around parental rights in schools as it relates to gender identity and sexual health teaching, I shudder. Maybe it’s because I’m also a physician who is familiar with the evidence of how important affirming gender identity is, how it improves mental and physical health in ways that are life-saving. Over and over I have thought, please, if it is needed to protect my child, put their rights ahead of mine. I love them. I want them to be safe and wholly them. As it happens we are in community and kinship with queer and gender diverse/ expansive folks. My kids have experienced a lot of safety and freedom to explore their fluid gender identities, and they will continue to. But I need all of us to be working together to make it safer in every setting for children and youth to have the safety to do so. We must not under-estimate how important this is to their and to our community’s wellbeing.
Delia:
We find ourselves in challenging times with multiple local/regional/inter/national events colliding. In his book Disposable youth, critical pedagogy scholar Henry A. Giroux talks about how the culture of cruelty and punishment has become normalized. In his words, “legitimate forms of organized violence against human beings increasingly considered
disposable, . . . Such practices are increasingly accompanied by forms of humiliation in which the character, dignity, and bodies of targeted individuals and groups are under attack. (p. 36)
One of the challenges we face involve the increasing attacks on 2SLGBTQQIA+ folx. These attacks are local…national…global.
In June 2023, in a gender studies class, a University of Waterloo professor and two of her students were stabbed by a recent graduate due to his hatred regarding gender identity and gender expression.
Also, in 2023 New Brunswick and Saskatchewan passed legislation targeting gender affirming care, and requiring schools to seek parental consent if a student wants to use a different pronoun or name in the classroom.
In the fall of this year Alberta’s provincial government intends to introduce legislation that will affect transgender and non-binary youth and adults. Some of these changes include requiring parental notification and consent before a school can change the name or pronouns of any child under the age of 15. In addition, parents will have the option of opting-in their children whenever a teacher plans to teach about gender identity, sexual orientation, or sexuality.
Last month Manitoba’s interim leader of the Opposition for the Progressive Conservatives voiced a desire for similar practices in the province’s schools.
These legislative moves and proposed practices are part of the widespread targeting of trans and gender diverse peoples, and sexual minorities. In February Canadian Security Intelligence Services issued a warning regarding the continued and heightened threats of violence against 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities by individuals and/or groups who adhere to violent extremism some of which is religiously motivated. They noted that the violent discourse is expressed by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Freedom Movement.
This is another example of the interconnectedness of different systems of domination: white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and settler colonial projects.
In a society organized around racial, sexual, gender, and class hierarchies folx will experience their racialized gender identity and expression and sexual orientation in different ways.
On February 8 Nex Benedict, a non-binary Indigenous youth died – one day after being assaulted in the bathroom in their high school. Shortly after the altercation, they described how the continued bullying and harassment prompted the fight. They died the following day.
Let’s be clear – attempts to regulate gender identity and expression and the opposition to teaching 2SLGBTQQIA+ content is not only exclusionary, it constitutes acts of violence. These organizational efforts to deny the existence and autonomy of 2SLGBTQQIA+ youth will certainly not make members of these communities feel safe, nor will it change their gender and sexual identities. What it will do is maintain the culture of domination and render anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ hostility and aggression permissible. They will be further isolated, and leave them even more fearful, more anxious, and more vulnerable.
These strategies and proposed legislative and policy changes make clear who matters, and those who are deserving of care and consideration. The identification of these youth as disposable will legitimize harassment, bullying, and other forms of harm.
Efforts to contain, deny, erase, marginalize, mislead, silence, and exclude are discriminatory. These actions are part of dehumanizing cultural mechanisms that protect and sustain hierarchies of value and worth.
Rather than being encouraged and taught to see each other as equals, strategies of distortion and omission are being employed to bolster fear and deny the mental, physical, and emotional experiences and needs of 2SLGBTQQIA+ youth.
We are being told that the way forward is to discipline and punish trans and gender diverse folx.
Questions about which differences do and do not matter are important because they involve power.
Health care is already challenging for 2SLGBTQQIA+ folx, who are Black, Indigenous, or racialized minorities. Imposing additional restrictions on gender affirming care heightens their vulnerability and undermines their mental and physical health and well-being which could result in life altering and potentially fatal consequences.
The professed focus on parental rights is also a coded message that seeks to suppress the organization and operation of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy.
The struggle against dehumanization is relentless. The costs are many. The impacts will be immediate and long term.
Let’s recognize that the differences between us hold space and support the autonomy of the diverse members of 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities.
The struggle to be Free to be is unceasing…. Let y/our motto be resistance…Our collective futures depend on it
Resources
Giroux, Henry, A. (2012). Disposable youth: Racialized memories and the culture of cruelty. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hayes, Kelly. (23 February, 2024). Our mourning for Nex Benedict calls us to action against transphobia and fascism. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/our-mourning-for-nex-benedict-calls-us-to-action-against-transphobia-and-fascism/.
Jordan, June. (2005). Directed by desire. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press.
Rummler, Orion. (19 March 2024). States’ anti-LGBTQ moves may have disastrous health impacts experts say. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/states-anti-lgbtq-moves-may-have-disastrous-health-impacts-experts-say/.
Staff. (13 March, 2024). MB Tories parental consent should be required for student pronoun changes. Canadian Press. https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/parental-consent-should-be-required-for-student-pronoun-changes-manitoba-tories-1.6805365.
Tunney, Catharine. (15 February, 2024). CSIS warns that ‘anti-gender movement’ poses a threat of ‘extreme violence.’ CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/csis-lgbtq-warning-violence-1.7114801