A protest for Trans rights.
A protest for Trans rights. Credit: Karollyne Hubert / Unsplash Credit: Karollyne Hubert / Unsplash

The politics of the new and unfamiliar tends to skew conservative.

It can shift quickly, though, when something is no longer new and unfamiliar. And that trajectory, in the age of social media, is very short.

This is what we need to keep in mind with the sudden onrush of calls for trans youth to be outted to their parents, and for parents to be given veto power over whether their child is allowed to be trans.

It is typically worded much more nicely, of course. “Parents should be kept informed and be involved in their child’s lives.” Well, who doesn’t want that? The problem, though, arises when we’re talking about something intrinsic to who a child is, and about some parents’ unwillingness to accept it.

Most Canadians (not including obvious far-right exceptions) would not be asking themselves whether gay kids should be immediately outted to homophobic parents, or whether schools should be unwilling to support them unless or until their parents consent. We’ve known for a long time that gay kids exist, and as a society have largely accepted that their rights to be included, supported and free of harassment are more important than whether their parents get the vapours about it. Indeed, we’ve seen from experience that forcing kids to try to arbitrarily change who they are creates a cycle of shame and self-destruction -so much so that Canada recently banned conversion therapy. The question in regard to trans youth has only recently caught the public’s attention because they are new and unfamiliar to most people.

They shouldn’t be. Trans adults who knew who they were (or at least suspected) as far back as childhood are so common that it’s practically ubiquitous to the trans experience – most variations in their stories have tended to be in the influences that tried to convince them they were wrong, or that it was a character flaw, or whatever else caused them to hide or bury that part of themselves. The fact that trans people can find acceptance and live openly at younger ages has understandably led to some doing just that, and an increase in the number of youth coming out as trans really should have been expected. But with the rapid onset of “gender ideology” derangement, some transphobic adults (either afraid of their kids being trans or of their children encountering trans kids) are hoping to capitalize on an uninformed or underinformed populace.

So, “rapid onset ‘gender ideology’ derangement” was a joke, but because the thing that makes it funny is also new and unfamiliar to most readers, it may need some explanation. When the number of trans kids who felt comfortable and supported enough to come out jumped from small numbers to the hundreds, anti-trans groups couldn’t believe that it had anything to do with social acceptance, and had to instead make up a fake medical diagnosis. Hence, a pseudoscientific report was published on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (from which a lot of the “social contagion” dialogue began), based entirely on a poll of anti-trans parents who visited three specifically anti-trans websites… and I wish I was joking about that, but I’m not.

The primary tactic of anti-trans and anti-2SLGBTQIA+ activists right now is to try to keep people uninformed or underinformed. When talking about the inclusion of trans people in sports, it is framed as a debate about “men in womens’ sports,” erasing all nuance about what a trans woman, trans man or non-binary person is, and what would constitute fairness in sport… things that previously had relative consensus, but have now been detoured by oversimplification, essentialism, absolutism and passionate vitriol. When talking about education that acknowledged the existence of queer kids and stressed the importance of acceptance, the “debate” has been overtaken by shrieking about “groomers” and “pedophiles,” as if those terms have been simply redefined without explanation. And the moment anyone calls this bad faith conflation out, they’re simply branded with the same terms.

If you want to look specifically at the issue of parental rights (which, it should be noted, shifts the discussion away from the kids’ rights, even though the intent is to override them or even pretend that any rights independent of the parents’ simply don’t exist), it’s not hard to see where this debate goes. South of the border, the “parental rights” rallying cry has already ballooned into 566 pieces of legislation in 2023 alone (at this time of writing; 83 have passed, 125 have failed; Source: translegislation.com), doing everything from requiring parental consent to be trans to banning inclusion in sports (usually but not always for youth), banning gender affirming medical care (usually but not always for youth), banning the use of trans peoples’ pronouns (usually but not always for youth, and regardless of parental consent), banning access to bathrooms and gender-segregated facilities (usually but not always for youth), banning gender neutral bathrooms and facilities, banning drag shows (usually but not always in cases where minors are present, and sometimes vaguely-worded enough to bring the legality of Pride parades into question), the countless book bans in schools and libraries across the United States, and more.

“Parental rights” was the foothold. And the history of “parental rights” legislation has been turbulent and fraught by right-wing mission creep, all the way back to the very first piece of parental rights legislation, fourteen years ago, all the way off in far flung…

… Alberta? Wait. That can’t be right.

In 2009, the Ed Stelmach government introduced Bill 44, the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Amendment Act. The bill did a number of housekeeping functions, including adding “sexual orientation” to the province’s human rights legislation. But one section proposed that before any “controversial” topic be discussed in schools, parents should be given ample notice so that they can evacuate their children.

Needless to say, the provision was overbroad. Although it was clearly intended to exempt children of queerphobic parents from learning anything about 2SLGBTQIA+ people (even within anti-bullying discussion) or about people of other faiths, it couldn’t be written to be explicitly discriminatory, so was left open enough that even contested literature like Harry Potter or the works of Shakespeare could be called into question, as could lessons about the Renaissance, the history of the Islamic world or Canada’s colonial treatment of Indigenous peoples. Seemingly anything could require a permission slip. Teachers were terrified of implementing the policy, feeling as though at any moment, some student might randomly raise a question that would cost them their jobs. And if a teacher was trans… well, the bill wasn’t very clear on how to handle that.

The provision was completely unworkable from a legal standpoint, let alone a practical one.

So naturally, Alberta passed it.

It wasn’t implemented right away. In fact, at first, no one was really sure how they could possibly put it into practice. There was some guidance released that protected teachers in the cases of students initiating discussions, limited the use or delayed implementing parts of the provision, but the guidance was mostly treated as being interim. By 2011, issues remained, but the bill was now being cited by parents who wanted to opt their children out of religion class in their child’s Catholic schools, noting that there was no public-operated school district in their area. It had even reignited the discussion of why there are religious-directed public schools at all. The following year, the government – by then under the Premiership of Alison Redford – quietly repealed the embarrassing and unworkable passages.

There are already signs that this year’s wave of transphobia and homophobia in the US is not popular, although it is not easy yet to conclusively call it a trend. But Alberta’s Bill 44 provides a better long-range predictor of both sentiment and how the “parental rights” discussion mushrooms until it becomes far too encompassing. It isn’t an exact parallel (it happened at a time when it was still just becoming common knowledge what “gender identity” was), but it provides a vivid example of just how unpopular legislation of this sort becomes, once people start to realize just how ridiculous it is, and the plight of those who are targeted by it.

The politics of the new and unfamiliar tends to skew conservative. It can shift quickly, though, when something is no longer new and unfamiliar. Which is why it is so important to hear from those who are targeted by and affected by these policies.

In May, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced that his province would be making changes to education policy which would require parents to give their permission before a child’s chosen name and pronouns would be respected. If a child was reluctant to talk to their parents, the onus was on the child to get counselling. Even if parents did give permission, disapproving teachers would not be required to respect a student’s chosen name and pronouns. And protections for school sports were removed, making exclusion possible, if not likely. Higgs said that the policy change was in response to concerned parents, but we only know for sure that he heard from one: televangelist and anti-2SLGBTQIA+ campaigner Faytene Grasseschi.

The sudden shift in policy sparked a caucus revolt and almost triggered a leadership review (though the effort failed). Worried that the Higgs effort to bring “parental rights” legislation to the mainstream might be halted, groups like Action4Canada and Grasseschi’s 4MyCanada redoubled their efforts with other conservative leaders, and last month Saskatchewan introduced legislation that saw Higgs’ bet and raised it with a partial sex education ban. Since then, Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson vowed to make it an election issue, Ontario’s Education Minister floated similar changes, and Federal leader Pierre Poilievre has also declared that parents’ rights should trump the government’s rights (as if that’s whose rights would be trampled).

Conspicuously absent from that list is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Perhaps the recently United Conservative Party is not eager to relive one of the battles that fed the Wildrose-PC schism. But then again, you never know: Alberta does tend to like to do things the hard way. Groups like Take Back Alberta and Parents for Choice in Education aren’t waiting on the Premier, and are already planning to take over school boards.

Meanwhile, in the coming days, you’re going to be hearing this question a lot: “Shouldn’t parents be kept informed and be involved in their child’s lives?” Ideally, absolutely. Also ideally, trans and gay kids should have safe and accepting families to come out to. And until some unforeseeable way arises to guarantee them the latter, we have a responsibility to respect the kids and grant them confidentiality, if they wish it.

As child and youth advocate Kelly Lamrock said during a review of the policy changes in New Brunswick, “The parents do not have the right to a state apparatus to force their child to live by their values.”

Mercedes Allen

Mercedes Allen

Mercedes Allen is a writer, graphic designer and former activist living in Southern Alberta.