What life is like for transgender children now — PrideMonth
, 22 to 43 percent of trans people in Canada, the US and Europe have attempted suicide. A UK study found that nearly half of transgender people under the age of 26 have attempted suicide, while recent results from the University of British Columbia’s Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey report that 65 percent of transgender youth ages 14 to 18 had seriously considered suicide, more than a third had attempted it at least once, and nearly one in 10 had attempted it four or more times.
For the past two years, Warner has lived fully as a girl—growing her hair, wearing dresses and skirts, playing fairy princess and using the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her.’ Photo: Jonathan Hobin, a national support and advocacy group based in Montreal. She laughs when she admits how long it took her to figure out that her nine-year-old, Elijah, who was born a boy, identified as a girl.
And then there are some children who don’t identify with a specific gender—or with any gender at all. M is a nine-year-old in Toronto who was born female but identifies variously as a girl, a boy or non-gendered. Her mom, Rebecca , says M mostly uses female pronouns but prefers to wear boys’ clothes, like baggy pants and baseball caps. For the time being, Rebecca wants to keep all options open. “I neutralize a lot of language when I talk about M,” she says.
Gender declarations on official documents, like passports and birth certificates, are another hurdle. The requirements to change gender identity vary from province to province and types of documentation. But Rebecca says it’s not just the official papers that demand a declaration of gender—it’s everything from permission forms for field trips to applications for after-school programs. For trans kids who identify strongly with a gender, parents can easily tick the boxes.
Melissa marvels at how far her family has come since Warner first told them who she really was. “The rest of us had to catch up. We’re still learning, but we’re more loving and more accepting of all people now. And we wouldn’t be where we are now without Warner.”Sex is a person’s biological identity, based on their genitalia, gonads and chromosomes. People are male, female or intersex .
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