Category: Human Rights

On Friday (June 9th), a mob of transphobes descended on three Ottawa schools in the west end. They believe that educators are corrupting cisgender children into becoming trans; a reformulation of the old “the gays are recruiting children” trope.

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A week before starting to write this article, neo-Nazis showed up to harass families attending a storytelling event in Toronto. They were incensed that the story was read by a person wearing outfits associated with a different gender. Among the detractors was the leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party and members of White Lives Matter Toronto.

In the past year, gender diverse people across Canada and those who associate with them at story times like this and other events have faced violence that includes:

• Bomb threats
• Death threats
• Arson
• Swatting
• Intimidation

This is terrorism.

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This list is not definitive. It started with what was in my own collection, and then I expanded it to cover more titles that I was aware of or had read. Consider it just a snapshot, limited by my own access and bias. It covers up until 2024.

I’m generally uninterested in trans autobiographies beyond the early titles, as they give way to new genres that better contextualize the subsequent eras. To that end I omit Canadian books like Regarde-moi, maman! by Yanni Kin, Love Lives Here by Rowan Jetté Knox, and Pageboy by Elliot Page. For prolific creators, I only included a subset of their catalog – so there’s a lot missing here from Mirha-Soleil Ross, Xanthra MacKay, Vivek Shraya, Kai Cheng Thom, S. Bear Bergman, Ivan Coyote, Nina Arsenault, Sophie Labelle, Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay and Casey Plett. After the trans tipping point, publishers started to pay for more than ghostwritten autobiographies or poetry, and in came a proliferation of trans history books. I omit a bunch; I am biased towards earlier examples or those that bring substantive new information.

Not all works listed are by Canadians, trans people, or affirming. Their inclusion is to provide context for the social climate. I do mention some films, though largely exclude those featuring trans characters that were written, directed and portrayed by cis individuals like Boys Don’t Cry, Transamerica, Dallas Buyers Club, The Danish Girl, etc.

By in “Canada” I mean within the greater geographic boundaries of what is now the state of Canada. Similarly, “trans” reflects a recent and specific construction in a long global history of gender variance, one intertwined with colonialism, and it is loosely applied below.

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I feel more anxious now in public than I did pre-pandemic.

I avoid washrooms, holding it in to the point of discomfort and minding what I drink when I go out. Change rooms are out of the question; last month I initially declined curling with colleagues because I thought I would need to use them. That also means I can’t go to the local Nordic spa or attend a spin class. I get nervous at the bookstore when I’m passing by the children’s section. Even shopping for clothes, especially something intimate like a sports bra, is incredibly fraught.

I’ve been talking about messaging that trans women like me are predators or threats for years. I’ve never been entirely able to ignore it because that was paired with a body of bad experiences where I was singled out and mistreated for being gender non-conforming in public – including running from a group of men wanting to beat me up. It’s been years since one of those incidents, but I can’t tell if it’s because I have barely gone out during the pandemic, or if it’s because things are indeed better.

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There was two TDoR events last weekend; one on the francophone side of the river and one on the anglophone. I helped a pal carry the displays they made for the English-language event, then attended the French one.

It was intimate; perhaps fifteen or so. Quebec’s transphobic Bill 2 was brought up. There was a mother talking about the loss of her gender diverse child who had passed away by suicide last spring following bullying and school inaction. A trans teen spoke up about their own mistreatment. We took turns sharing what we liked about being trans, and about community.

This one hit different; I’m used to speeches at TDoR that are are a mish mash of academic theory and vocabulary. That stuff resonated when I was younger but now feels like an empty performance, so I go for the newly out to see that they’re not alone. Either way, this event wasn’t like that at all. It was personal.

Part of why this event may have struck a chord could have to do with the kind of week it was.

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