“No (my parents can’t know I’m trans)…for now”: Unpacking an Experimental Strategy for Gender Justice in Canadian schools

• In Event: Queer and Trans Activism, Resistance, Remedy, and Repair in Tough Times: “We’re Still Fucking Here”

Abstract

Context

Students in Canadian K-12 schools are protected from discrimination due to gender identity and gender expression. Such discrimination has been interpreted in case law and Ontario school board policy (Author 1, Author 1, Author 1) to include being misgendered: called the wrong pronouns, name(s), or other gendered terms. As a result, school employees are called to walk a fine line: prevent discrimination by using a transgender student’s chosen name and gender pronouns, while being in potential conflict with parent(s) or guardian(s) who are non-affirming.
Being outed as trans to family can expose youth to harm (Grossman et al., 2005; Grossman et al., 2021; Navarro et al., 2021), including loss of housing and financial support (Abramovich et al., 2024). Recognizing these risks, school board policies typically require that a student’s gender information be kept confidential including from parents; with scant exception, however, instructions in policy are brief and lacking guidance for staff on e.g., how to manage gender information ongoingly, how to assess risk of harm to students who have not yet come out at home, and how to walk beside students in sharing with parents if risk is assessed to be absent (Author 1). Unfortunately, ‘just keep it confidential’ policies have prompted accusations of widespread ‘secret keeping’ from parents (e.g., Blaff, 2024; Higgins, 2023; Selley, 2023), sparking a Canadian culture war in which three provincial governments enacted laws or policies that require parental consent before a student’s name or pronouns are used at school. Many transgender students will be non-consensually outed, or forgo the benefits of extrafamilial adult support (see Veale et al., 2015) because they remain closeted at school.

Data & Methods

This paper describes the authors’ and colleagues’ intervention in this culture war as clinical and research experts on supports for transgender youth and their parents. [White paper], in wide circulation across Canada, helps school staff support transgender students in preparing to share who they are with their parents, and support parents after they have learned about their child’s gender identity. [White paper’s] aim is to resource school staff and—as a public document—inject a ‘third way’ into Canadian public discourse beyond either outing or concealment. Recognizing that Indigenous, racialized and/or neurodivergent transgender students are typically less well-served than their settler, White and/or neurotypical peers, [white paper] is grounded in values of intersectionality, agency, child-centeredness and accuracy.

Results & Significance

[White paper] is an activist experiment enacting Author 1’s call for responses to anti-trans organizing that are calibrated to audiences and not only beneficiaries; beneficiaries are transgender students, but audiences are the adults in their lives who we (trans people) would like to act differently: parents scared of being kept in the dark, and teachers unsupported by policy in doing what seems obvious—helping a student engage well with their parents around something complex and vitally important. Even in times of anti-trans backlash, we argue, audience-focused activism remains critical to gender justice, and essential to the work of repair in catastrophically polarized times.

Authors

• Lee Airton, Queen's University - Kingston

• Mik Turje, Treeline Counselling