An Open Letter to #1MillionMarch4Children Protesters… and Counter-Protestors

At the heart of this movement are angry, frightened, and frustrated parents who love their children and see that there is a real possibility that the government could take them away.

(CONTEXT: Who Am I? and What’s my story? Get in touch at anontransparent@icloud.com)

I watched with a mixture of concern and vindication last week as the #1MillionMarch4Children protests and counter-protests took place in many Canadian cities. I am well familiar with the real-life scenarios that serve as the impetus for these protests. These scenarios are far more common than people think.  

Real-Life Scenario

A child grows up in a loving home with parents who love and support her, spend plenty of time with her, and sacrifice whatever is needed for her flourishing and success. She’s had mental health struggles all her life, but nothing gender-related. As a child she is typically feminine: dolls, dresses, Disney princesses, etc. 

Early in her teen years, now struggling more acutely with her mental health, she is told that these struggles are gender-related - and this seems hopeful to her - a cure for her anguish! She identifies as trans and plans to take hormones and maybe even get surgeries that will result in irreversible changes to her mind and body. 

The school, their guidance counsellors and teachers all affirm and promote this path, immediately engaging in the child’s efforts to socially transition and leaving her parents completely out of the decision. There is no discussion with them about this, no meeting to seek an understanding of the history of mental health struggles or what is already being done to address those issues. In fact, the school guidance counsellor threatens to call CAS to intervene because the parents of this child will not put her on the path to lifelong medicalization as a solution to a problem that has been self-misdiagnosed. 

This is our story and the story of our daughter.

The Power of Government 

And now add this to the dilemma: On the official website of the Government of Ontario you can find a page called “Serving LGBT2SQ children and youth in the child welfare system”. (https://www.ontario.ca/document/serving-lgbt2sq-children-and-youth-child-welfare-system)

These guidelines, which are publicly posted online, proclaim that “In some cases, it may be necessary to bring a child or youth to a place of safety while parents or caregivers learn how to better support their LGBT2SQ children and youth…” and that “In situations where a parent-child separation is required, the chosen placement should be one that affirms the child or youth’s LGBT2SQ identity…” Putting them into these “affirming” foster homes means, and I quote,

“allowing them to freely and openly express their identity. This includes supporting a child or youth’s choice of clothing or hairstyle, which can be important aspects of self-expression. It may also include supporting access to tools (e.g., chest binders, packers, stand-to-pee devices), gender-confirming health care and/or interventions (e.g., hormone treatments, hair removal) that for some children and youth may help them to feel their body better aligns with their gender identity.” 

You read that correctly: if you are unwilling to provide your confused child with chest binders, packers, stand-to-pee devices, hormone treatments, and hair removal services, the government is happy to step in, take your child, and help you with that.

Fuel For the Fire

It is this type of aggressive, overheated rhetoric that is raw fuel for movements like #1MillionMarch4Children. At the heart of this movement are angry, frightened, and frustrated parents who love their children and see that there is a real possibility that the government could take them away because, according to the government, they are not loving their children in the right way. 

Just like the trucker's convoy, movements like #1MillionMarch4Children certainly have their utility. They bring important but heretofore relatively unknown issues into the public eye. The downside, of course, is that they seem to attract some crazed extremists along with many concerned citizens. This leads to further polarization on an issue that is already quite polarized and this, obviously, is not good. 

I choose to not engage in such demonstrations. I neither completely endorse them nor do I completely condemn them. I choose quieter advocacy, which includes direct conversations with other parents, with teachers and employees of our local school board, and writing in the public sphere even if, for now, anonymously. 

Vitriol is Not Victory

The vitriol on one side paints every parent who won’t fast-track their trans child into medicalization as a hateful abuser. The vitriol on the other side paints every public school teacher as a monster seeking to devour children. Neither of these, of course, is true for the majority of either side, although to be sure, a small minority of such people do exist. But I find it particularly egregious that our government seems to think that every person, indeed every parent, who wants to exercise caution while they love their confused children is a hateful abuser. 

This is a brutal bullying authoritarian tactic. 

These demonstrations and the counter-protests in the streets of our cities are indeed the result of ideology being force-fed into public schools. This is often done, in my estimation, by people who have good but extremely naive motivations and who overestimate their importance in the lives of other people's children. In some cases, however, the intentions are more nefarious.  

Many other employees of school boards and in the leadership of our public schools (I have spoken to them) are uncomfortable with what is happening but feel powerless to do anything for fear of being ostracized or facing the loss of their career and pension.

That fear is real, but isn't this the way it's always been? And mustn't someone stand up, Bonhoeffer-like to say that this is not good and something must be done?

Thousands of parents quietly suffer through the anguish of their children's self-misdiagnosis, watching what seems an inevitable march toward “gender-affirming care,” which, as it turns out, is often a euphemism for the lifelong body-altering effects of hormones and surgeries that will remove body parts and in some cases make botched attempts to construct new ones. This is surgical abuse and should be dealt with as such.

Our Story

I am one of these parents who is watching in horror. I love my daughter immensely. I spend as much time with her as I can. She is a beautiful, bright, intelligent young woman but has been captured by an insidious ideology that seeks to do her great harm. As she has struggled through her life, we have continued to hold her close and love her in every way we know how. We seek out many sources of support for her and try to divert her from the obvious self-harm that would result from hormones and surgeries. 

Perhaps I myself am naive, but it doesn't seem a great stretch to imagine that we could all agree that at least the scenario I described above is wrong and likely to lead to harm for my daughter and others like her. If we could agree on something as basic as that, we might have a chance to moderate the vitriol that's being spouted in both directions, to sit across the table and talk to each other.

We could talk about what's working and what's not, about what's appropriate to be taught in schools and what's not, about the level of advocacy and the amount of influence teachers, guidance counsellors, and others should exercise over students and about the place of parental authority in the lives of their children. If we can’t find a way to do this, children will keep flooding out of the public system into homeschool groups and private schools, which is what is happening in the area of Ontario in which I live.

No Byline

There is no byline for this article because I write anonymously. I do so primarily for the purpose of protecting my daughter’s identity, but I also do this for the purpose of guarding her safety - and ours - from those who see our home as unloving and “abusive” and seek to “rescue” her from it. Sadly, this includes the Government of Ontario.

That is a sad state of affairs in a country like ours and something must be done about it.

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If you have your own story to tell or you’d like to join me in this fight, please reach out to anontransparent@icloud.com 

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