I had heard about that adage come my 20th birthday. What I interpreted that expression to mean at that time and what it’s ultimately meant for me as I look back here on my 30th birthday are two very different things.
When I was 20, I thought that I was more or less the person I was going to be for the rest of my life. I expected to finish university and get a job with a decent pay for entry-level, a pension, and occasional raises. Enough to afford the middle-class lifestyle. I was going to make enough money to have a car and eventually a house. In a way that wasn’t too different to how I thought of the last two, I was also going to have a girlfriend. “Finding myself” meant getting to that life.
What I didn’t count on was for what I considered to be important to completely change. To grow up in a way that was perhaps more pronounced than the emotional growth I had accomplished between my 10th and 20th birthday.
Twenty year old me would be horrified and completely disheartened if it was known what my life would look like. No well paying job; for almost the entire decade I’d make less hourly than what 20 year old me was making during my summer job. No house; I’d live with four roommates by the close of my twenties. No car. No girl for the entire decade. A boyfriend for a good chunk – which would have horrified 20 year old me, but not as much as finding out I’d be trans.
I’m happy now. Happier than if I had gotten the house and car. I think that if I had had those things, it would have just acted as a buffer, to delay – perhaps indefinitely – any introspection and emotional growth.
Those changes didn’t happen because I wanted to. They happened out of necessity, after the rug was pulled from under me throughout my twenties.
First it was the job. I had taken a degree at university in a field I didn’t love because I thought it would secure me a career while keeping what I did love (coding) as a hobby. I did get a job out of university. But a few months later, the Great Recession hit. My degree became useless. For the six years that followed, I witnessed continuous lay-offs. I watched a single grandmother raising her grand child be told not to come in tomorrow, and being skeptical that she’d find a decent pay again. Staff were being told that they had to “volunteer” for a 20-40% pay cut. Failure to “volunteer” resulted in termination. I was asked to make software that would eliminate six jobs – under the understanding that not doing so would see my own employment terminated. These experiences reshaped how I thought about employment. Out of necessity, I had to question why I wanted things like a house and challenge my perceptions on what role work should have in my life.
During that same time I spent two years looking another job. I applied to over a hundred places. Nothing. I think only two of them ever got back to me. All my friends in the private sector were in similar situations, so I had little reason to think things would get better.
Much of the introspection that would lead to my realizations about my gender identity followed this helplessness I felt in terms of this place where I spent eight hours of my day. In the absence of all else, it forced me to focus on personal development, and making me happy through changes that I had the power to make. It didn’t introduce the idea of transition in my life but did accelerate it’s exploration and resolution.
This would lead to another big change, which is the physical aspect of self love. I can look at myself in the mirror and not see everything that’s wrong now. That only came after I was able to transition. It was also further enhanced by also finally finding a coping strategy for my anorexia that worked.
Going back to the idea of change happening due to necessity, some of the most important developments in my emotional growth can be attributed to my boyfriend of the time. My lack of emotional maturity was threatening my relationship.
I had inherited from my parents really bad conflict resolution skills. I remember my mom crying at the bottom of the stairs saying she was pushed. I remember my step-dad venting with his anger at me when I was a teen by telling me that he’d kick my ass. This way to handle anger was all I knew so I emulated that. My boyfriend challenged me on using these tactics, and ultimately I saw a therapist with him to among other things address how I handled conflict resolution. I walked away with tools that really helped me and that I use to this day.
It was also through my boyfriend that I learned that saying no when something wasn’t right for me was okay. I had come from a background where my agency was regularly disregarded and met with emotional manipulation. My capacity to say “no” was a casualty of that environment. As my boyfriend helped me see my self-worth, I was able to set and enforce boundaries. My mental health improved even more as a result. Unfortunately, not before I was molested by two older gay men. Being able to stand up for my “no” would have been useful then.
My boyfriend and I broke up and he became my best friend.
It was in my twenties that I came out, first as gay, then as trans. Being in this position forced me to question the things I had believed in in terms of what fair treatment of people looked like. As a straight white man, I thought most people making claims of discrimination were being unreasonable. I had never experienced discrimination, and projecting my own experiences on everyone, believed then that it was a made-up problem. I assumed that whatever issues they tossed up to discrimination was their own fault. “Real” discrimination was a thing of the past or happening in other countries. Doing anything to address this made-up problem of discrimination was what would be unfair. Reverse discrimination even.
Coming out first as a “faggot” and then as a “tranny” provided a harsh dose of reality.
It hit home when I witnessed those I love apply the same prejudiced beliefs I once held. What I saw as treating me with respect they regarded derisively as being “politically correct.” Familiar words. I finally started to listen to others when they spoke of their dealings with racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. I came to understand that the words of minorities about their own experiences were far more relevant than whatever someone that wasn’t part of that minority had to say. I stopped projecting my own experiences. I learned empathy. It allowed me to be a better person to others. I wish I could say I was a good enough person before to come about these realisations without being made to, but that’s not so.
So as I write this a few days after my thirtieth birthday, I can say that “finding myself” in my twenties was about growing up. Out of necessity more than anything. The expression suggests some finality, but this is still a work in progress.
What I can say is that I’m happy and much better person to both myself and others. I love myself now.
My thirtieth anniversary was rather subdued – I celebrated by buying DQ burgers and going to bed at 6 pm. But it was an important achievement – because I made it. I’m still alive, and that wasn’t a given as I was going through my twenties.
I think I’ll be okay now. I think that’s what my twenties gave to me – the growth I needed to know just that.
On February 25th, I headed to Parliament to attend a Senate committee meeting on the fate of Bill C-279, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (gender identity.)
This was my third time at Parliament to observe the progress of this bill through the legislative process. I was in the House of Commons when it passed Third Reading in 2013 and in the Senate last fall for hearings.
Conservative Senator Don Plett speaking on Wednesday.
When I walked into the conference room, things weren’t looking good for the bill. It was getting dangerously close to election time. After four years of proceedings, including a 20 month delay between passing Third Reading in the House of Commons and a first look in the Senate, the election was now only a year away. Any bill that hadn’t yet become law by that time would be killed.
Meanwhile, any amendment would throw the bill back to the House of Commons. If it landed there, it was unlikely to pass in time for the election.
However, the introduction of an amendment became inevitable. During the time that Bill C-279 languished in the Senate, Bill C-13 was introduced, passed both the House of Commons and Senate and received royal assent. Bill C-13 added sex, age and disability into the hate crime provisions of the Criminal Code. Bill C-279 added gender identity. If C-279 passed without amendment, it would erase the protections C-13 had introduced. So an amendment was now necessary.
The meeting started and as it progressed the addition of two amendments was confirmed. This included the expected amendment to be compatible with C-13. The majority Conservative government had won – the bill they had opposed would all but certainly die on the floor. There was only a glimmer of hope that it could pass.
Then something else, wholly unexpected happened. The Conservatives, through the former president of the Conservative Party Senator Don Plett, introduced a third amendment that would turn Bill C-279 from legislation to prohibit discrimination into one that would support it. It added the following exception to the Human Rights Act:
15. (1) It is not a discriminatory practice if
(f.1) in the circumstances described in section 5 or 6 in respect of any service, facility, accommodation or premises that is restricted to one sex only — such as a correctional facility, crisis counselling facility, shelter for victims of abuse, washroom facility, shower facility or clothing changing room — the practice is undertaken for the purpose of protecting individuals in a vulnerable situation;
The intended effect of the amendment as judged from Don Plett’s previous comments in the Senate was to protect discrimination under law. I replaced slurs for trans women in the following quote from Senator Plett with [trans woman]:
I want you to tell me, Senator Mitchell, when you say that 0.3 per cent of society is trans, how their rights can trump the rights of my five-year-old granddaughter walking into a change room, a [trans woman] walking into a bathroom … How can this 0.3 per cent of society trump the rights of my grandchildren, my granddaughters?
Mr. Dyck, you have in your testimony used a comparison of trans people not being allowed in certain areas. You’ve used a comparison of Blacks not having been able to be allowed. Mr. Garrison used the same analogy when I asked him about my five- or six-year-old granddaughter not wanting to go into the bathroom or a change room with a [trans woman]. He inferred that it was the same as my granddaughter not wanting to go into the bathroom with an Asian or a Jew. I found that tremendously offensive. I do not believe there is any comparison, when we talk about colour or race, to somebody who is biologically male or female.
The bill had gone from prohibiting bans on trans women seeking to use the women’s washrooms or men seeking to use the men’s washroom to supporting these bans. Likewise for denying abused women access to women’s shelters, sending individuals to the wrong correctional facilities, and denial of service to any gendered service, facility, accommodation or premises. Trans women were portrayed as a threat to cisgender women and children.
The vote for the contentious amendment passed, with unanimous support from Conservative senators, to the incredulity of the bill’s supporters. Members of Gender Mosaic, who had lobbied for this bill walked out. I followed.
Whatever glimmer of hope I had for this bill faded at that time. The Conservatives had opposed the bill from the get-go and the supporters would now have to oppose its newest form too:
“We still want to support the bill, because it’s important for the trans community, but if it’s going to have the amendment in it that restricts our use of washrooms and public facilities… no,” said Amanda Ryan from the advocacy group Gender Mosaic.
“It’s a bad bill with that amendment in it. We want to fight as hard as we can to have that removed,” she told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics on Thursday.
The implications of the new amendments were quickly picked up by the biggest media outlets, to my surprise. The Toronto Star reported “Trans rights bill amendment would bar trans people from public washrooms,” while Maclean’s opined “How discrimination got in the way of the federal transgender rights bill.” Even the right-wing Toronto Sun ran the story “Senate guts transgender rights bill” that took a supportive angle. Though as expected, the readership for all these publications overwhelmingly expressed vitriolic views towards trans people invoking tropes of “mental disorder”, “threat”, “special rights”, etc.
“Trans rights bill amendment would bar trans people from public washrooms” reads Toronto Star article.
“How discrimination got in the way of the federal transgender rights bill:
How transphobia got the last word in the battle over Bill C-279” reads Maclean’s article.
“Senate guts transgender rights bill” reads Toronto Sun article.
“Transgender rights bill gutted by “transphobic” Senate amendment” reads a CBC News article.
How things had changed. Just a year ago those headlines might have read “Trans rights bill amended” or something equally devoid of critical analysis. But how had an anti-discrimination bill come to support the very discrimination it had been designed to oppose?
History
Bill Siksay
Predecessors to C-279 had been introduced as private member’s bills in 2005, 2006, and 2009 by NDP MP Bill Siksay.
The first two attempts did not get off the ground, but the third had passed Third Reading only to die in the Senate when the 2011 election was called. It was reintroduced by NDP MP Randall Garrison in 2011 following Bill Siksay’s retirement.
The Original Bill
The bill as it was introduced in 2011 would amend the Human Rights Act to include gender identity and gender expression. Section 2 of the Canadian Human Rights Act would be replaced with the following:
Purpose
2. The purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted.
The bill would also amend the Criminal Code to include gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds for discrimination. Subsection 3(1) of the Act would be replaced with the following:
Prohibited grounds of discrimination
3. (1) For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for which a pardon has been granted.
That was it – four words repeated in two sections.
Journey Through the House of Commons
It was after its introduction in the House of Commons that the first instances of of the kind of language that Senator Plett used would surface.
Conservative members would openly dub the bill “The Bathroom Bill” in reference to their strategy to drive support: focus on trans women and go into scare tactics about their day-to-day activities such as using washrooms. In this case, by portraying them as sexual deviants who were a threat to presumably cisgender women and children. One Conservative MP, Rob Anders, had started a petition which was available on his website in 2012:
Petition by Conservative MP Rob Anders on his website in 2012.
Other Conservative MPs would use a slightly different approach where it was alleged that trans women were indistinguishable from sexual predators. As MP Dean Allison stated in the House of Commons:
I find this potentially legitimized access for [trans girl] in girls’ bathrooms to be very disconcerting. As sexual predators are statistically almost always men, imagine the trauma that a young girl would face, going into a washroom or a change room at a public pool and finding a [trans girl] there. It is unconscionable for any legislator, purposefully or just neglectfully, to place her in such a compromising position.
The first question to the member opposite is this: does he actually believe that there is no one who will try to abuse the situation that would be created by his deliberately vague legislative agenda?
The fear mongering around washrooms was rooted in prejudice but was also a distraction from talking about the real reasons behind this bill’s introduction. There was denied access to education, work, medical care and government recognition of identity. Safety in public venues was a big issue. The environment in Canada was so hostile that 77% of trans Ontarians had “seriously considered suicide” and 43% had attempted suicide. As for washrooms, 57% of trans Ontarians avoided public washrooms “because of a fear of being harassed, being read as trans, or being outed.” Provinces in Canada and the federal government were still requiring trans people to undergo forced sterilizations, a practice condemned by the World Health Organization. Unemployment for trans people in Ontario was at 20%, double what it was for cisgender people. Conservatives did not wish to discuss any of that, or address any of that, it was about appealing to the bigots.
The Conservatives would also key in on protections on the basis of gender expression, the lack of definition for gender identity, and opposition to expanding existing laws. Conservative MP Robert Goguen wondered out loud:
If this ground were to be added to the Canadian Human Rights Act, what sorts of new complaints of discrimination will be brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission and Tribunal? How will employers know what kinds of workplace behaviour and expression would be prohibited? The answers to these questions are not clear to me and they are questions that we should carefully consider.
In an effort to get Conservative support, gender expression was taken out and a definition for gender identity was introduced. Those two were big blows for the usefulness of the bill. Removing gender expression eliminated protections for a whole swath of people who ran afoul of gender norms or did not identify with a binary gender identity. They would not necessarily be covered under a gender identity clause.
Meanwhile a definition for gender identity was being required where none had existed for other categories such as race and disability. This would have the intended effect of further constricting the applicability of the law. The bill had been eviscerated but gender identity remained, and given the violence faced by trans people throughout Canada, I thought it could be better than no law at all.
With modifications the bill passed but just barely with 149 votes in favour and 137 against. Unsurprisingly, the opposition came entirely and only from the Conservatives: 136 of those 137 votes against were from the Conservative Party, with the remaining opponent being a former (and soon to be reinstated) Conservative party member. The other parties were all unanimous in their support. The tiny fraction of Conservatives who voted in favour of the bill (12%) was just enough to make the bill pass.
By this point it was only two years after the 2011 election. There was plenty of time left to pass through the Senate and become law. I was optimistic.
The Senate
The bill would languish for a year and a half in the Senate with no action. Finally, there were hearings in October 2014. I documented my experiences on this blog.
Conservatives would again focus on making the case for persecuting trans women. During one of the hearings, Senator Plett read a letter out loud:
For this last one, I will read a letter — and I have received many — before I ask my question:
Dear Mr. Plett,
As a father and a care-giver for children, as well as my 84-year-old mother with dementia, I thank you for fighting to keep washrooms a place where we do not fear the awkwardness of sharing with the opposite gender.
It goes on to say:
My wife grimaces at the thought of trying to help our handicapped daughter or our mother in anything but a female-only washroom.
May God grant you wisdom.
It is signed ”Carl.”
Now he is not suggesting that his wife is afraid of people. There’s an awkwardness. I’m not suggesting my granddaughter is afraid of these people. There’s an awkwardness.
Do you not believe, Mr. Dyck, that these people also have the right to their own privacy at all costs? Apparently 0.3 per cent of the people in our country are trans. Are we not infringing and trumping somebody else’s rights by giving trans people the right to go into these areas?
It was a continuation of this distraction to avoid talking about the discrimination that people faced because of their gender identity. The Conservatives were in the territory now of alleging that not discriminating against this group of people would itself constitute an infringement of rights.
It was with this history then that this amendment was introduced. As Senator Plett stated in his speech accompanying the amendment:
This amendment will protect those operating sex-specific facilities in federal jurisdiction for example, bathrooms, military base change rooms and shower rooms, and women’s shelters on first nations reserves if they decide not to allow for example a [trans woman] self-identifying as female into a sex-specific facility for the purpose of protecting vulnerable women.
By putting in an exception in which a person discriminated against on the basis of their gender identity would explicitly be denied a legal recourse because the discrimination was gender related made the bill not just useless but actively harmful. Living in a country absent of an anti-discrimination law would be better than living in one where the law explicitly permitted and supported discrimination.
The Future
The bill will now be debated in the Senate and sent back to the House of Commons. If the bill passes as-is, discrimination will be legalized.
Realistically, the passage of the bill in its original form would not have had an immediate impact on the day-to-day activities of those who live with the effects of discrimination. Most obstacles, such as health care and education, exist at the provincial level. For Ontarians, Toby’s Law passed in 2012, brought the changes originally proposed by Bill C-279 including gender expression into provincial legislation. With the passage of something like C-279 on the federal level, I’d imagine you would have seen cases to address the current passport requirements from mandating compulsory sterilization and two genders to something like Australia’s system, which only requires a letter from a doctor and offers a genderless option. It might also have helped bring in new policies for the correctional system as well as make government-funded services accessible, etc. Those would have been legal cases years down the road.
The hate crime provisions, meanwhile, would not have contributed to a better environment. It would have done nothing towards addressing the discriminatory policies embedded in institutions. Arguably the bulk of the discrimination faced by people. Nor would it have prevented the perpetrators of assault from engaging in these attacks as assault is already illegal. It would have meant that police forces would have recorded instances of transphobic violence that were reported.
Laws don’t do much to address all the tiny manifestations of discrimination or their staggering cumulative impact. When opportunities are systemically denied due to discrimination, then it’s not just laws like what C-279 proposed that come into play, but Canada’s repressive laws against sex workers and toxic attitudes towards the poor or those without post-secondary education. It’s also the hierarchies of administrators and policy makers unwilling to introduce change that would address obstacles disproportionately experienced by trans people. Bill C-279 was never going to fix all those things but act more as a symbol for where we want to be.
Given the supportive reaction to this bill’s outcome, however, a future where violence against non-cis people isn’t regarded as normal might not be as out of reach as I once imagined.
There’s a bakery downtown that makes butter tarts in puff pastry and they’re amazing. I decided to make my own version; albeit without raisins as I really don’t like raisins.
The end result was really good. I didn’t make my own puff pastry for this one, I bought some dough from a local French baker. For the grocery store they’ll usually be in the frozen section.
I’m currently spending lots of my time questioning how I see myself, in particular in relation to my body. I identify as male, that lines up with my sex, I use male pronouns, and have a mostly masculine gender expression. I don’t expect that to change. Nevertheless, there are parts of me that really don’t jive with that. So I’m exploring.
If I divulged that on this blog, it means that I had been thinking something for a while and I thought it might go somewhere. Of the three main digital platforms I write about myself in, this blog is the most sanitized. Prospective employers read this, for instance, so anything too personal is usually omitted. For me to then talk about gender incongruity was a big step.
I documented by evolution in 2013 with the following explicit selfie essay:
January: Tucking whenever my crotch is visible.
February: Realize that while I strongly dislike using my own junk, I’m really fine with using a strap-on.
April: Start to bind. Can’t explain why at the time.
August: First bra.
August: First bra bought without having someone there with me.
August: First skirt. Ignore the stain.
August: First public outing in girl mode. Photo credit goes to Eliot Waddingham.
September: Start shaving legs, then eventually arms.
September: First gaff.
December: First time in women’s washroom.
That I’m topless in most of these has to do with my never having been comfortable with my body before this point and finally embracing it. Part of that had to do with my body-image issues around weight, but also the dysphoria I hadn’t been aware that I was carrying until it started to dissolve with transition.
Through this two-year stretch I legally changed my name, changed my sex marker on my driver’s license and health card (still waiting for those in the mail), movedtwice, dropped out of school, quit a suffocating job and went to work for a start-up, came out to my immediate family, my friends, and to work. I froze my sperm. I nuked my Facebook and Tumblr profiles. I went low-contact with my parents and as it stands they do not know where I live.
I eventually started hormone-replacement therapy. It’s been five months now and there’s been noticeable changes. Breast growth – I’m perhaps an A now. My hair isn’t greasy in the morning anymore. I’m no longer producing semen. I’m still exclusively read as male in public, but my comfort with my body has grown to heights I never thought were possible.
The last two years in particular have opened my eyes. I thought I understood what transphobia looked like. I went to a trans march three years before I came out. As it turns out, I had no idea. It wasn’t these overt display of hostilities, so much as the constant grinding away of people by those with power over them. I became interested in communicating part of those difficulties to the sexist/transphobic/homophobic eighteen year old me. I wrote a fewpieces.
I also made the comic below. It doesn’t speak to the institutional difficulties, because I’ve been lucky. My friends have dealt with schools refusing to change their name, causing them to be outed to their class and not wanting to be there. They’ve dealt with provinces that said they couldn’t change their ID without undergoing surgery – even if there is no medical need for that surgery and they don’t want it. Not being able to change their ID means that they’re outed every time they show it. That makes getting jobs that deal with vulnerable peoples, which is what they went to school for, impossible. Being outed still means being treated very poorly in so many fields. There are so many stories of them turning to higher ups in each of these institutions for assistance, only to be met with resistance and things not changing.
Anyways here’s that comic, my latest attempt to communicate my thoughts on tranphobia:
Author’s Note: This post was in my drafts and never published. Putting it up now, some two years later.
I identify as a radical queer. “Radical” is a big scary word, so I thought I’d go into what that means.
In contemporary North American culture there exists people whom I call “the othered.” These are people whose rejection from society is actively encouraged. In that group there are trans people, who are under constant attack from propaganda dehumanizing them. There are non-binary people whose existence defies society’s very narrow tolerance for departing from gender conventions. There are polyamorous people, asexual folk, intersex people, sexually active women, sex workers, fat women, seropositive individuals, victims of sexual assault, and so many more who are ridiculed and rejected by society.
If you want a concise list just turn to Cards Against Humanity or even Apples to Apples and look at the options there. You’ll notice that the people they let you pick on are the same ones that everyone already picks on. Ready to ridicule midgets, trannies, or the homeless again?
Which brings me to the current rights narrative. When you look to the end goal for gay rights organizations, and increasingly trans rights organizations, they are not interested in having a society in which everyone is valued equally as a participant. What they want is for them to be in on the joke. Remove their card from the Cards Against Humanity deck, but keep all those others in there.
What ends up happening is that the lobbying by professional rights organizations advocate for those from “the othered” who are the best candidates for assimilation within society. “We’re just like you!” Those organizations never end up advocating for the others. Professional gay rights lobbied for marriage and adoption, but then was all but silent for the elderly queers, young homeless queers, queers who are victims of assault from inside their communities, disabled queers, and pretty much everyone else except for a small sliver of people. Which not coincidentally in order to be accepted by society had to be “good gays” : affluent, monogamous, working age, middle class, able-bodied, and white. There is always less tolerance for diversity in the newly assimilated others – they have to be homogeneous in other ways. The gay thing has to be the exception.
As a radical, I don’t believe in cherry picking. I want everyone to be regarded in society as fully-fledged people. That’s the “radical” part of my beliefs. That also means that I view the entire structure of society, which at every level enforces this rejection of people, as flawed. That goes from newspapers, to who gets elected, to what goes into movies. The end goal I see is change at every one of these levels.
