Students speak out on transgender issues
Leave it up to the kids to speak out clearly on an issue that has adults turning somersaults trying to figure which way is up.
Years ago, as a member of a Ministry of Education secondary-school accreditation team, I was visiting a large secondary school in a conservative rural community.
School accreditations are always a nervy time for school staffs and administration, with their organization being examined by a team of “outsiders.”
At some point during the week, an inexperienced junior school administrator had seen fit to suspend a transgender student over a dispute about suitability of bathroom use. Imagine the dismay of the school staff the following morning to find the school being picketed by a significant proportion of the student population who were outraged by the treatment of their fellow student.
That was years ago and, although that situation was resolved hastily, it is only now that about 44 of 60 public school districts in B.C. have policies that address homophobia or gender identity, according to the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.
Public school districts and private schools in B.C. will have until the end of the year to update their policies to include explicit references to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, Education Minister Mike Bernier said recently.
“We want to ensure that every child is recognized, every child has a safe environment regardless of who they are and who they hope to be,” he said.
School washrooms had become, and still are in some circumstances, the front lines of legal and political battles over transgender rights in Canada and the U.S. Nonetheless, some of the students who use those washrooms say their voices are getting lost amid the noise.
But money talks and the noise it makes is far more influential than the voices of outraged kids.
North Carolina, as one example, has repealed a too-hasty law regulating washroom use for transgender people, hoping to lure back businesses and sports leagues that boycotted the southern state because they saw the year-old measure as discriminatory.
The controversial “bathroom bill” had limited people to using public restrooms based on the gender stated on their birth certificates.
It is still unclear if the new legislation would be sufficient to bring back the basketball games, concerts, financial firms and technology companies that abandoned North Carolina, costing its economy hundreds of millions of dollars in protests.
With its unerring capacity to stoke the embers of an issue into a roaring firestorm, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has revoked Barack Obama-designed federal guidelines that specified that transgender students have the right to use public-school restrooms that match their gender identity. The Trump reversal leaves the issue to “states’ rights” — possibly knowing that the confusion will continue to politicize the matter beyond belief.
Canadians, on the other hand, overwhelmingly support Liberal legislation that would make it illegal to discriminate on the grounds of gender identity, a new poll suggests.
The Angus Reid Institute recently released numbers that suggest 84 per cent of Canadians support Bill C-16, which amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.
All well and good, but even though Canada has long been considered a leader in transgender matters, the battles that dominate transgender politics still rage at some levels, and kids pay the price.
Writing for the Globe and Mail, columnist Margaret Wente points to the recent closure of the worldrenowned child and youth clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
Last month, the clinic was abruptly shut down, and the clinic’s head, Dr. Ken Zucker, was dismissed. The centre, after releasing an external review of the clinic by a pair of independent psychiatrists, issued a vague statement saying that not all the clinic’s practices were “in step with the latest thinking.”
Under Zucker’s leadership, the CAMH gender identity clinic had became the largest of its kind in Canada, treating more than 650 children.
However in the transgender community, Zucker’s dismissal was celebrated — he had long been controversial for research suggesting children should be steered away from becoming transgender adults.
Perhaps it will be the next generation, those untroubled by having transgender friends, that clarifies “the latest thinking.” They will be the ones who exemplify social progress by being increasingly willing to accept people on their own terms, for who they are.
Perhaps they will be the generation that avoids manufacturing more problems of the kind that haven’t been solved by common sense and centuries of adult confusion and fear about gender identity.