It’s a scary time for parents of trans youth in Canada. The rights of trans kids will be on the ballot this fall as voters head to the polls in the provincial elections of British Columbia, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, where their access to safe education and other critical resources has already been hotly contested. In October 2023, Saskatchewan enacted a controversial “Parents’ Bill of Rights” law forcing faculty and staff to out trans students to their parents. New Brunswick, meanwhile, no longer requires teachers to respect trans students’ pronouns. And although the centre-left New Democratic Party currently holds the legislative majority in British Columbia, the B.C. Conservatives enjoy a slim lead in the polls.
The results could be a preview of next year’s parliamentary elections, which Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau is projected to lose to Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre. If allowed to lead the federal government, Poilievre is likely to advance the CPC’s ongoing assault on trans rights. The opposition leader has voiced support for restrictions on puberty blockers for trans minors and opposed allowing trans people to use gender-congruent public washrooms, although he believes federal lawmakers should not legislate the latter issue. When Trudeau condemned Canada’s anti-trans movement last year, Poilievre accused him of “demonizing concerned parents.”
Many Canadian parents are justifiably concerned about the impact that the election results could have on their children’s existence, especially after getting a front-row seat to America’s conservative anti-trans shift in recent years. Seven years after Donald Trump’s presidency brought heightened scrutiny on the LGBTQ2S+ community, U.S. Republicans are continuing to push record levels of anti-trans legislation. To date, at least 652 anti-trans bills have been introduced in the U.S. this year—the largest number of any single year in history—and 42 signed into law, according to Trans Legislation Tracker. The vast majority of these proposals target trans youth.
With the potential futures of Canada’s trans youth hanging in the balance, Xtra spoke to American parents of trans youth who have already been through this about what advice they would give to Canadian families: How have they coped with watching their own country discriminate against their children? What do they wish they would have known before they were forced to learn it the hard way?
“I want them to take initiative,” one parent who spoke to Xtra says. “I don’t want them to sit back and wait. I want them to be on the front foot with respect to being ahead of these right-wing a-holes. Start raising money. Start identifying those organizations in your country that fight for human rights, that fight for civil rights and that fight back against any of this propaganda. Start building community and networks of support for one another, so that if things go south, you are not now trying to figure out what to do.”
Remember that people have gone through things like this before
When Trump was first elected president in November 2016, Mimi Lemay sat on the floor of her office, cursing herself for being so messy. She couldn’t find her son Lyle’s birth certificate to get it corrected before Trump took office, fearing that they would no longer have that option under his administration. Lyle began socially transitioning at four years old, and she remembers the early times as the “halcyon days,” when Lemay assumed that others would come around to the idea of trans youth if they were presented with the correct information and proper education. “I’ll never forget that feeling of the floor dropping out underneath us,” she says.
The advice she would give to other parents now is radically different from the approach that her family took eight years ago, when they initially remained open about Lyle’s gender identity in hopes of advocating for other trans kids, even despite the risks. ”There wasn’t an organized, coordinated anti-trans youth movement yet,” she says. “It took a while to build.” But soon that movement arrived on their front doorstep: after her son asked Elizabeth Warren a question during a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate forum, he was harassed while using the boys’ bathroom at school. A group of male students banged on the door while he was inside the stall and bellowed, “Maybe this is the girl’s bathroom. Are we in the wrong bathroom?”
It wasn’t until days later that Lemay learned what had happened, when Lyle suddenly burst into tears as the family was preparing to host Thanksgiving. She says the experience fundamentally changed her son, including his willingness to want to be publicly visible. “I noticed him becoming less comfortable with the advocacy that he had been excited to do before,” she says. “We decided that he couldn’t go fully stealth, but we weren’t going to be that family who stood out anymore. It felt like the right thing to do for him.”
Now that Lyle has become more private about his journey, Lemay wishes that they had thought to use pseudonyms in their early activism. (She requested one be used for her son in this story.) Initially, she felt that being open and honest with others about her son’s gender identity would be easier to navigate because, with him being so young, she wasn’t sure if he might simply blurt out that information anyway. But as he grew older, Lemay says it became clear to her that not everyone needed to know—not even friends, classmates or other parents. She says that they haven’t spoken about her son’s gender identity with teachers “for at least five or six years.”
“I almost felt like I had to pre-emptively explain my child in a way that today, with all the information out there, maybe it’s not so necessary,” she says, “To another parent, no matter how well it’s going in your home, I would say: ‘Be very circumspect about who you share this information with, especially if you’re living not in a particularly friendly place.’ People may nod and say they understand, but it can come back to bite you.”
When it comes to her children, Lemay says that she’s remained as honest and open as she ever was. Through some of the struggles that they have had as conservatives continue to encourage hostility toward families like theirs, Lemay has sought to impress upon her son that marginalized peoples have been fighting for equality for centuries, and they haven’t stopped fighting. “People have gone through things like this before,” she tells him. “They have dealt with the worst persecution and hate, and it felt like it was never going to be over. Nobody was on their side, and the tide of history has turned. It will for you too.”
One of the things that has helped Lemay the most in having these discussions with her kids, she says, is trying to “ground this moment in a sense of where [they] are in the history of civil rights.” “Even though we’re hearing this loud, raucous, angry, vile perspective from a certain group of people, I do believe that the majority of people are slowly starting to understand,” she says. “It’s like the Overton window, and I have to believe that it’s shifting.”
Make sure you have a plan
Stephen Chukumba says he intentionally raised his children in a “bubble,” hoping to protect them from the outside world. For a time, that felt like the correct decision, especially as his son, Hobbes, began socially transitioning beginning at the age of 11. They took it slow for the first few years, only inviting close friends and immediate family members into their circle of trust. It helped that, after Hobbes began presenting more masculinely, strangers would often presume that he was the boy that he just so happened to be. All in their world seemed good and safe.
But Chukumba realized their peaceful sanctum was not without its faults after watching a TikTok video in 2021 of a Black trans girl being assaulted by three male classmates at her school. He recalls that scrolling through the vitriol directed at the young woman —who was the target, not the aggressor—in the comment section forced him out of his denial. It showed him, he says, “that the world at large did not have a lot of empathy for trans people.
“That video opened my eyes to the fact that trans youth live in a perpetual state of violence in this country,” he says. “That incident and those comments were a microcosm of what is happening in society at large.”
Since that awakening three years ago, Chukumba says that he has become hypervigilant about the threats that his family might face, even in a progressive area. He now has a news alert for “trans death” on his phone and was particularly shocked by the passing of non-binary, Indigenous teen Nex Benedict earlier this year, who died one day after being attacked in an Oklahoma high school bathroom. His son, Chukumba notes, is just one year younger than Benedict was. “That could be my child,” he says. “That could be any one of our children. That is one of the things that I am petrified about.”
Chukumba believes that it’s important for parents to strike a balance between staying engaged and also caring for themselves, in order to avoid becoming worn down by the world’s myriad evils. Although it’s natural to feel overwhelmed and exhausted, he says that parents “can’t break down” in front of their children because they have to be the source of strength and support. Thus, he recommends grounding exercises to stay rooted in the here and now: from meditation and intentional breathing techniques to going for a calm walk in nature. Having a tight-knit network that you can call upon to help pick up the slack when things feel like too much is crucial, whether it’s relatives, neighbours, or close friends whom you can trust.
“Find out the state of the law where you are, find out where the resources are and make sure you have a plan,” he says. “Continue to parent. You cannot be taken out by the first, the next or any incident that is negative in your life or your child’s life. You still have to parent. It’s important that parents don’t get caught up in feeling sorry for themselves. Unless you are the actual gender-expansive person, you’re fine. It’s your kid that you have to worry about.”
Despite the fact that the world is often unkind to trans kids like his son, Chukumba says that he attempts to centre joy in their family’s day-to-day lives. That mission became paramount following the passing of his wife, he says, ensuring that his children “are as happy and carefree as possible.” For Chukumba’s son, that has meant celebrating the many milestones in his transition: from his top surgery to receiving his first shot of testosterone. Chukumba says that, on the first day Hobbes was able to start gender-affirming medication, he acted as if he had “won the fucking lottery.” “My heart swelled,” his father recalls. “I was just so happy for him because I knew that this was a meaningful first step in his journey, and that was like a portent of things to come.”
However, as tapped into the anti-trans zeitgeist as he has become, Chukumba stresses that he tries not to overburden Hobbes by telling him too much about the hate that’s out there. Although he believes that parents have a duty to be informed, it’s OK to shield your kids a little, Chukumba says. “I don’t want to be the one to constantly harp on the gloom and doom,” he says. “There’s a lot of that happening everywhere and so I want his perspective on it to be informed by him and what he takes in and not try to inundate him with negativity. I don’t want him to feel like his future is not hopeful.”
Find people who can stand by you
Like many parents of trans youth in the U.S., Vanessa Ford didn’t realize how bad things would get. “When Ellie first transitioned, I didn’t know people would hate them,” Ford says of her 13-year-old child, who is non-binary. “I knew that people may not accept, but I didn’t know that people would hate. Because of the misinformation and the coordinated attacks, this discomfort with the idea of kids being trans has turned into hate for trans kids. I never expected it to get to this level. That might be naiveté, but we’re here, and we’re starting to see it all over the globe.”
Ford and her family quickly learned the value of having a community that they could lean on as the attacks on trans youth have intensified. Those supports have ranged from online parent support groups to her best friend, whose teen daughter is also trans. They talk every day, even though they live thousands of miles apart and haven’t seen each other in over three years. “Find somebody who can be by your side,” Ford advises. “Even better if they’re going through it as well.”
Building the support network that her child needs to thrive often takes a great deal of proactive advocacy on her part, which Ford lightheartedly calls her “reconnaissance.” Now that her child is in eighth grade, Ford met with Ellie’s teacher to make sure that they would be respected and affirmed in the classroom. In an email, Ford advised the educator to speak to Mr. Weber, a former teacher who Ford says really “got” Ellie. Much to Ford’s delight, the teacher responded with a thoughtful message that used Ellie’s correct pronouns. “I hope for Ellie,” the new teacher said, “that we can each be a Mr. Weber this year.”
But there are times, Ford notes, when Ellie doesn’t want her to step in. When Ellie went off to summer camp this year, they declined their mother’s help in letting counsellors know that Ellie would be using they/them pronouns and the gender-neutral washroom on the campgrounds. “I’ve got it,” Ellie told her. “I’m handling it. If it comes up, I’ll deal with it.” Ford says those moments are a reminder that her children can handle “hard things.”
“As much as I want to protect them, it’s critical that they’re able to have their own thoughts, their own experiences and their own questions,” Ford adds. “If I protect them too long from those hard things when they come from them for the first time, I may not be there to be a sounding board.”
Although it’s important not to shy away from the complications and difficulties that her child may face as a trans person in the U.S., Ford believes it’s important to centre joy in Ellie’s life. Being the parent of a trans child can be lonely, she says, because of the increasing hostility aimed at her family. But Ford says that she has taken so much hope and inspiration from the trans adults who have become part of her child’s lives through their advocacy work, which includes authoring a 2021 children’s book with her husband, J.R. “They are models for what is possible,” Ford says. “As a parent, it’s really critical for me to see trans people experiencing joy, thriving, getting married and having children because it’s a vision that I have for my child.”
For parents who are waking up to right-wing hate on the doorstep, Ford advises to immerse their family in that same spirit of possibility and to seek it wherever they can.
“I would just encourage parents who are having to have conversations with their children about what politicians are trying to do to take away their rights to refocus on what brings their child joy and lean into it,” she says. “We are strong here in the U.S. right now. We are joyful and hopeful, and hopefully we won’t be looking at a second Trump administration.”
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