Proposed policy for transgender youth worries families

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Scary is the word Amelia Newbert uses when describing how families have been affected by Alberta's policies on transgender youth.

Premier Daniel Smith last week announced a series of policy changes in the fall, including ending access to puberty blockers for children 15 and under, requiring parents to get permission when a student wants to change their name or pronoun, and when teachers plan to teach. sexual orientation sexual or gender identity.

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Soon after, the managing director of advocacy group Skipping Stones said the organization had received a flood of calls from distraught families.

The organization serves approximately 108 clients each month, including families of gender nonconforming youth, by connecting them to resources such as community groups, mentors with similar experiences, and sometimes providing income and housing for those who have lost their social networks. Last week, Newbert said the group received twice as many calls as usual.

“We certainly saw that people were looking for a place where they could sit down and share their anger, frustration, disappointment and sadness,” Newbert said. Many of them are former clients, as politics has caused renewed stress. Skipping Stones has now doubled its capacity to accommodate a growing number of clients.

Understanding has evolved over time

According to Corrine Mason, who teaches women's and gender studies at Mount Royal University, the idea of ​​dissonance between a person's assigned sex at birth and their gender identity is not new. Discussion of this difference was considered taboo until recently. Because it was hidden from their social groups, earlier generations lacked the vocabulary to articulate their experiences.

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In the 1980s and '90s, movements around same-sex relationships created a culture of inclusivity. One of the movement's biggest milestones was the 1998 case of Vriend v. Alberta, which classified sexual orientation as a personal characteristic like race, class, and gender.

Further changes in legislation have led to a greater understanding of similar practices in institutional settings, including health care, schools and workplaces, said Andre Grace, former Canada Research Chair in Sexuality and Gender Minority Studies at the University of Alberta. The shift encouraged people to express other complex experiences, such as gender nonconformity.

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But the shame and humiliation associated with these experiences persisted, resulting in high rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation among such young people. However, changes in the official language surrounding transsexualism have tried to ease the stigma and have led to a new understanding of the issue, Grace said.

For example, the 2013 publication of the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 replaced the diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” with the diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” and focused on the distress caused by the separation between a person's experience and assigned gender instead of looking at their condition. as a disorder.

This change has helped create a system of care in Canada that includes three stages — cessation of puberty, sex-affirming hormones and sex-affirming surgery — as outlined in a Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) position paper. Grace said the steps are well thought out and that access to such help requires a team of specialists and includes a psychologist's diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

“It's devastating”: Many clients fear the consequences of the proposed policy

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Alberta's policy is an attempt to reverse that process, a culmination of decades of work to understand and help those who experience gender nonconformity, Grace said. One of them is the prohibition of anti-puberty drugs for adolescents under the age of 15.

According to the Canadian Pediatric Society, these medications are side-effect-free and irreversible, giving youngsters some time to explore their gender identity before developing unchanging characteristics of their assigned sex. Doctors say 15 is too late and may increase the risk of suicide and self-harm, Dr. Sam Wong, CPS medical director, said in an earlier interview.

Newbert, managing director of Skipping Stones, said many clients who have been on the waiting list for gender-affirming care for more than a year now fear the consequences of the proposed policy. She says many families feel that the space they once felt safe in is “taken away from them” within a week. “It's devastating,” he said.

“The implementation of these policies is life-threatening,” he said, referring to the high rate of suicidal thoughts among transgender youth.

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Newbert pointed out another potential problem with the policy, which requires parental consent when a student wants to change their name or pronouns in the classroom. She says changing a name is a way for a child to explore their gender identity before coming out to their parents, which in some cases can have high stakes due to gender bias.

“Maybe young people need more time or extra space before visiting their parents,” Newbert said.

And when it comes to banning surgery on young people under the age of 17, such cases are rare, Newbert added. In Alberta, no youth under the age of 18 had a bottom surgery, and 23 youths under the age of 18 did not have a top surgery.

“It's a dog whistle,” he said. But politics, he added, creates an environment of hostility and fear.

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