Welcome back!

Be it school, reality, or a nod to the impending autumn, the gears are turning once again.

This Week in AB

A note for readers: I would love to talk about something else. I would love it if these things didn’t make headlines each week. So long as they do, I will make my case for allowing children the space to be themselves.

Red Deer Catholic School Trustee removed from ACSTA role

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A Catholic School Trustee in Red Deer, who was also the director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees Association, posted a photo of children waving Nazi flags and another of children waving Pride flags. She quoted her post with “brainwashing is brainwashing”.

She was removed as the director on Thursday last week, prompting the president of the ACSTA to release a statement that said “(our) Catholic schools love all students as gifts from God made in His image, irrespective of their sexual orientation and gender expression. Separate school boards are committed to providing ‘a welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environment that respects diversity and fosters a sense of belonging’ in accordance with Section 33(1)(d) of the Education Act.”

I’m not sure how many politically active six and seven-year olds are out there. I suppose we could count the number of kids wearing pink shirts for Pink Shirt Day (an anti-bullying initiative), or orange shirts for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, or poppies for Remembrance Day.

Had she posted a photo of kids waving “F*ck Trudeau” flags instead of Pride flags, it probably would have landed her more than one speaking invitation to a pot luck/fundraiser in rural Alberta.

With that being said, the comparison above reminds me of a conversation I had recently about Pride week where this question came up: is there a point where being supportive of diverse gender expression crosses the line into encouraging diversity in gender expression?

I don’t have an answer yet but I always welcome a good faith discussion of the topic.

To address the elephant in the room, patients in Canada, wait years for gender-affirming surgery, even if they’re adults, and children require parental/guardian involvement.

Schools cannot medically transition youth because they’re schools, not hospitals.

Is it a phase?

Are we talking about wanting to dress like Madonna or Neo? That’s a phase (no offence meant to anyone still dressing like either).

If we’re talking about transitioning, that’s not something anyone manages to obtain on the fly in Canada.

I’ve only known adults who transitioned but the motivation was not something that appeared the day they turned 18.

For others who are simply “bending the rules” of gendered expectations and conformity, it may pass, or perhaps they’ll embrace a more feminine or masculine expression simply because it suits them to do so — plenty of individuals already do without moving to a formal gender transition.

Personally, I see gendered roles and expectations as limiting.

It may come from growing up in a household of women where every task was “woman’s work”. Or it may come from growing up as a less-than-ideal representation of femininity that was described as “athletic” (and everyone of a certain age knows what that meant).

Not meeting an expectation that shouldn’t have been set for you in the first place is not easy on kids.

Being supportive of kids during any difficult time — and whatever may come after — I see as simply an expectation of a child’s circle; parents, school, peers, etc, which I think most families manage for their kids.

The ones at risk of abuse or being shunned do not have the luxury of making a mistake.

Speaking of “freedom”

An E.coli outbreak from a centralized kitchen in Calgary has affected almost 200 daycare attendees (aka: toddlers) and sent a number of them to hospital.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange offered “thoughts and prayers” to the affected toddlers, the same hammer middle American politicians drop whenever a mass shooting happens.

Hopefully, we can find some sort of solution in existing public health requirements that govern the food service industry — if there’s any political will to enforce them, that is.

A class action statement of claim has been filed seeking $150,000 per child infected.

Canada

Who are you?

The Conservative Party of Canada held their annual policy convention in Quebec City this weekend. Most policies (as is the case with most parties) were fairly non-descript and essentially proposals that anyone can get behind and some were reiterating things that already exist but are important enough to say twice.

Other policies targeted other people’s lives and children. When you want something done, you show up to make sure it happens.

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When we talk about transgender adults and kids, we’re talking about a very small portion of the population; according to Statistics Canada in May 2021, those who identify as transgender were 0.19% of the population over the age of 15.

Yet, as school returned in Saskatchewan, pronouns were a hot topic. Parents and others who support children as smaller humans with their own thoughts showed up to a rally at the Saskatchewan legislature to protest the province’s new rules to have schools require parental notification and permission for kids to be called a different name or use different pronouns at school.

Ontario is eyeing the same, still.

In more pleasant news, New Brunswick has backed away from one element of their overreaching education policy that will allow students to request a name and pronoun preference without parental notification.

Meanwhile, some parents in Quebec received a letter advising them that their child may have a teacher who requests the Mx (pronounced “mix”) prefix. The letter said that some discussion regarding the teacher’s preference would be had upon their introduction in the classroom, to some consternation from social media users who felt their preference for archaic identification of the teacher’s sex and marital status should take precedence. And of course the teacher received death threats, because this is about other people’s feelings.

I grew up not really noticing these public displays of gender and marital status — they were normalized and common in most of my interactions with adults (most of whom were teachers, let’s be honest). My mother used “Ms.” but I always thought it was because she was divorced.

Eventually, I saw the double-standard in these small details.

I think Vince Vaughn’s character in Dodgeball, Peter La Fleur, put it best when, attempting to hit on Katherine Veetch who emphasized she was “Ms.”, replied “I don't know how you say Ms for a Mr 'cause it's just Mr, but if there was a Ms Mr, I'm a Ms as well.”

Prefixes were basically just answering the most important question on men’s minds: “can I hit on them?”

Men were just Mr. because it probably didn’t benefit them in any way to announce upon introduction whether they were expected to be somewhere else that night.

“Ms.” became an acceptable alternative in the 1970’s.

“In the persnickety world of editing, embracing a new term in our time-honoured Globe and Mail Stylebook can feel like a massive step. Before we did it, there were questions to ponder: Was (Mx.) a passing fad or was it here to stay? Were there other terms we might want to consider in addition to it, or instead? We moved through our discussions quickly, but our conversations got me thinking about how and when the world adopted another non-binary prefix that seemed radical at the time: Ms. The term seems indispensable today, but once upon a time, it was called a ‘faddish, middle-class plaything’.”

On the evolution of honorifics, by Carol Toller, Deputy Head of Editing, Globe and Mail, 2019

I refer you back to Peter La Fleur’s comment on the matter.

I don’t believe “Ms.” was ever really a gender-neutral address, but I digress.

One particular comment on the whole Mx. letter that encouraged me to delve into this in more detail was “she’s a woman and should identify as such”. That was the moment that I had this overwhelming thought: “it’s none of your damned business”.

Why would we still force women to publicly display their gender and marital status? Especially when we know for a fact that it announces a perceived vulnerability?

If I kindly ask you to refer to me as anything I kindly ask you to refer to me as, why wouldn’t you? Do you need to know my gender and marital status? Is that something that seriously affects your day-to-day?

Far too often, I find that people have rebelled against common courtesy as some sort of stand against “political correctness” or — dare I say it — “wokeness”.

Accepting a request by someone to refer to them by a name of their choosing is nothing more than a simple acknowledgement of another’s wishes — it is no one’s right to know any more than that.

Speaking of “rights”

Trial for anti-health mandate convoy organizers begins

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Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are finally in the seat that will decide if they were guilty of mischief, counselling others to commit mischief, intimidation and obstructing police.

I’m not saying there’s anything similar about the convoy people and the Capitol rioters down south, but some of them received lengthy sentences because they made videos of themselves in the act of doing precisely what they were charged with.

I’m just saying that even if you think you have the moral high ground, maybe don’t record yourself braking the law — just in case.

Final Thoughts