In the back of my mind with all this, I have this thought that Saskatchewan is doing the right thing here.
Keep in mind this is coming from someone who fully supports 2SLGBTQIA+ rights, it’s not even a question for me and never has been.
But for this I really worry about the kinds of things that could happen if a parent (especially a hardcore bigotted one) finds out about their child’s name and/or gender change in an unexpected way.
Say prime bigot number one (we’ll call him J so as not to disparage any common names) comes to the school to pick up his kid J Jr. J isn’t super proud of his son, thinks he’s a bit of a pansy really, but that don’t mean no nothing no how that anyone else can treat his boy like a pansy. So there’s J watching his son walk up to him, when another kid he doesn’t know comes up behind J Jr and says “Hey M!” (M being a quintessentially feminine name) and little M (nee J Jr) immediately turns, then realizes their dad is watching and freaks out, turning, embarrassed, blushing and runs to the car. J sees all this and misinterprets it as the kid teasing/bullying his son. What happens next?
Or even more simply the school sends a report card, email or letter to one or more bigotted parents at home using the “wrong” name or pronoun for the kid. What happens next?
So anyway, I don’t want any kid to have to go through their transition or find their true selves while dealing with evil, bigotted parents, but the fact is, these are minors and their parents or guardians will be involved, some way, somehow. And maybe I’m stereotyping here, but evil, bigotted parents are also the kind of people you don’t necessarily want to be surprising with info like this.
If their child is hiding their gender expression for fear of the parent’s reaction then the risk is there no matter what. It will always be unexpected to them.
Report cards and other official documents should carry the official name. The rest, I don’t know. All I know is that I think it’s my right to be called what I want to be called, regardless of official name. And I’ve held that point of view since I started school in 1962.
My birth certificate says “Samuel” (not my real name). My parents always called me Sam, never Samuel or Sammy. When I started school, teachers tried insisting on calling me what they wanted to call me. I hated it and eventually it got bad enough that my parents had to intervene on my behalf.
If a person prefers something other than their given name, I think it’s the person’s right to have that honoured, regardless of age.
If you fully support trans rights, then you’ll know that policies like this discourage kids from coming out and leads to unsafe schools. If a kid tells their parents, then it doesn’t matter what a school does. If a kid doesn’t, however, that means it’s not safe to do so. And I can guarantee you that a school with this policy will call home as soon as a child tries to use a different name/pronoun. The point of this policy is to out trans kids and discourage trans folks from coming out in the first place.
If a kid doesn’t, however, that means it’s not safe to do so.
But in that case, my worry is that without this policy, the kid might think they’re safe coming out at school and something terrible could happen. I don’t trust the school, teachers and other kids to keep the info secret from their parents.
