Transgender columnist Julia Mallott joins Brian on the show to talk about Alberta's new policy on sex education in public schools, and why she thinks it's a step in the right direction. Plus, Brian and Julia debate whether Justin Trudeau is going too far, and if so, how far.
00:03:46.140It is certainly the most comprehensive policy that we have seen to date in any Canadian province.
00:03:51.020This is a topic that's been discussed everywhere, but has had legislation that has come forth in New Brunswick and in Saskatchewan.
00:03:57.540But both of those focus solely on social transition in school or the change of names and pronouns and the acceptability of doing so without the knowledge or the consent of parents.
00:04:09.060And that is included in the Alberta legislation.
00:04:11.440But it also goes much, much further, moving into the realm of medical interventions of surgery and hormones.
00:04:18.960And it also discusses sports and biological males participating in women's sports.
00:04:23.600So these are issues that have been hot topics in gender discourse now for several years, but we haven't yet seen them hit the political landscape in the way that it did with Alberta.
00:04:34.600And for myself, I like to discuss them differently because they're not the same.
00:04:38.020They're all related to transgender matters, but they're different issues that bring in different competing rights and different considerations.
00:04:44.280Well, let's talk about the parental notification of schools.
00:04:50.800This is something that in some cases policies have been in place, like to Toronto District School Board for 10 years.
00:04:58.360And it explicitly says that regardless of the age of the child, and kids start school in age four in Toronto, regardless of the age of the child, if the child says, don't tell mommy and daddy, but I'm transitioning, then they're not allowed to say anything.
00:05:15.980And to me, that is a policy that starts with the idea that parents are inherently dangerous to their children.
00:05:25.400And so it's why I'm opposed to this idea and supportive of parental notification with safeguards for children who are at risk, which I believe that New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have.
00:05:41.040I haven't seen the regulations in Alberta.
00:05:44.120As a parent, where do you come down on that?
00:05:47.200Do you want the kids to or the teachers not to notify parents or do you support notifying parents?
00:05:56.340I think you nailed it when you said as a parent, where do I come down on that?
00:06:27.060And they are fundamentally my ideological steward as long as I am a child in their household.
00:06:32.080And I think that is what gets missed in this conversation so much is that these children live at home with their parents.
00:06:38.980That's where they spend most of their time.
00:06:40.800That's where they get most of their guidance.
00:06:42.860How do we expect this to work if we're now hiding something in the school, regardless of whether we should be hiding something in the school, even just practically?
00:06:50.020How does that work for the teacher to implement an intervention?
00:07:49.120I think that they are being overblown and we're making it sound like this is far more frequent than it is.
00:07:53.340But I also know that those households do exist where there might be a bona fide concern.
00:07:57.940What I don't understand is that we have a solution to this, which is children's aid services.
00:08:04.040What we have done since the 80s in school is we have instructed our teachers to let children's aid services know if there's any potential risk in a house.
00:08:14.200They're not qualified to be able to assess that.
00:08:16.380But they tell children's aid and children's aid has the responsibility to determine if there is a risk, if there is to support the family in mitigating that risk, whether that means removing the children or whether that means supporting the family to work through the issues.
00:08:28.620And that has worked in every other case of potential abuse.
00:08:32.680And all of a sudden, when it comes to conversations about transgender matters, we've said this one conversation needs to be different.
00:08:39.960And if there's even a possible risk of abuse, we need to not remove the kid, but leave the kid and hide it from the parents.
00:08:46.840And that just perplexes me because if there's a risk, we should handle it.
00:08:50.520And if there's not a risk, then we are getting concerned about nothing.
00:08:54.000It's interesting that you say there are a lot of absolutes.
00:08:58.740One of my kids was telling me about someone who had transitioned.
00:10:03.760And if somebody wants to use that to try to get to me, well, then they're an asshole.
00:10:08.100And I don't really want to hang out with them anyways.
00:10:09.440But most people, that's not their intention.
00:10:11.000Oh, and look, we're having the kind of respectful conversation that I've been advocating for a while, but there doesn't seem to be with a lot of people.
00:10:20.560And I'll admit, from the other side as well, from people who are opposed to this, there are folks on both sides, they just want to yell past each other.
00:10:29.280And we'll get into the politics of this in a bit, because I feel like a lot of the politicians are just using this to score wedge points against each other.
00:11:52.360If we don't do this, people will commit suicide.
00:11:55.920And there's no path forward but to make hormones available to every child who, at any point in their life, feels that they need them.
00:12:02.680And on the other side, we now have the talking point, which is these are just too dangerous.
00:12:07.840There's nothing we can do to have any sort of safety or discretion around how they're used.
00:12:12.440They need to just go away until you're an adult.
00:12:14.360And I wish that I could take that second stance because more or less, that's where I stand on the surgeries.
00:12:20.780When it comes to the gender-affirming surgeries, whether that's top surgery or bottom surgery or any facial cosmetic surgeries or otherwise,
00:12:28.400I don't see much of an argument to move forward with them in childhood because these are invasive.
00:12:35.200They have all the risks that surgeries can have.
00:12:37.420And there is not any big loss to waiting.
00:12:41.280The loss between doing a genital surgery when you are 12 and doing one when you're 25 is you didn't get to have the genitals you wanted for 13 years.
00:12:55.600And we should do everything we can to make sure this is the right path before we lead someone down.
00:12:59.500The difference with hormones that gets overlooked so frequently is that if you do not go on puberty blockers pre-puberty and if you are not on cross-sex hormones, that ship has sailed once you're an adult.
00:13:16.780I always knew how I felt about my gender, but I did not start transitioning until I was 28 years old.
00:13:22.440So I was an adult, and that means that I am 5 for 10.
00:13:25.720And that means that I have broader shoulders.
00:13:27.240And that means my voice is lower and all of these elements of my face and my body structure that at this point are not fully changeable, even if I were to pursue surgery after surgery after surgery, which I haven't done.
00:13:42.180So for people who are gender dysphoric, it is easier to do this earlier than it is to do it later.
00:13:47.920Now, that doesn't mean that I'm necessarily in favor of this because, of course, what if they're wrong?
00:13:52.200What if they have a feeling when they're 12 and it goes away?
00:13:54.440So I do want to be very, very cautious.
00:13:56.120But what I find most frustrating in this conversation is that the positions that come forward, like we've heard from Polyev, like we heard from Smith, that take a hardline position against hormones, they don't acknowledge this fact of why children want it.
00:14:09.160They don't acknowledge that when you are like myself and you do transition as an adult, we still live in a country that's pretty cruel to you, especially if you are presenting as a woman, because we have made that mean a lot of things.
00:14:21.100I was in the news last week for my daughter's appendicitis.
00:14:24.380She had a really long wait time and I did a number of pieces about Ontario healthcare and the failures there.
00:14:30.000And I was shocked and disappointed by how many times the conversation went into my physical appearance, whether I am a fetishized pervert, whether I'm suitable to have a kid at all, purely based on my appearance.
00:14:41.500And these weren't even transgender stories.
00:14:43.620This is just a parent who's upset with the healthcare system.
00:14:46.780And as long as that's the discourse we're having, of course, kids are going to desperately feel the drive towards this.
00:14:52.160And to just come out and say, no hormones are allowed, no blockers are allowed, and ignore what that means for these kids.
00:14:58.260It's a missed opportunity because we could have a policy that does take a stance on hormones that's either completely restricting or at least very restrictive, except for in pretty clear-cut cases.
00:15:08.880But pair that with policies that say, and when you don't pass as an adult, it's okay because look at what we're doing to make sure that we can change the discourse.
00:15:17.260And none of that conversation is happening.
00:16:35.080And I was a really bad husband because of what I had not processed.
00:16:38.720And so I do think that there's something to be said there.
00:16:41.160But then, of course, on the other side, there's also people who regret these transitions, who have pulled out of it and have taken pathways, who have had surgeries or hormones in ways that they now regret.
00:18:44.100And I did many years of education looking at decision making and various mathematical and computational ways that we can make good decisions.
00:18:51.820In terms of looking at the data and taking that devil's advocate approach to say, is this the right path forward?
00:18:57.340Not just let's do this because this feels good.
00:19:00.420And that's how I conduct everything in my life.
00:19:03.100We're currently looking at buying a house.
00:19:05.840This would change my whole family's life.
00:19:08.520And so we're taking that devil's advocate position of we want this house, but is this good for us?
00:19:13.500What are the ways this could go wrong to see if we can create a reason not to do it?
00:19:17.760And this is how health care has always worked as well.
00:19:20.380There's lots of procedures that we can do for bonafide health reasons that have potential risks.
00:19:25.200So the doctor takes that devil's advocate position to say, is it worth doing this complex surgery for various bypasses and stuff?
00:19:35.100And ultimately tries to land where the outcome is the most likely to be successful.
00:19:40.200And this is what we used to do in transgender matters as well.
00:19:43.720We used to not proceed until we were at that point.
00:19:47.360We would meet with people for many appointments, maybe many years.
00:19:50.400We would assess where the psychology was at.
00:19:52.480We would assess where their mind was at in terms of what they were expecting to come out of this.
00:19:56.320Do they have realistic expectations or do they have unrealistic expectations?
00:19:59.860And in the end, the doctor would decide how to proceed based on that patient aligned with their fiduciary to try to look at what's best for this individual.
00:20:07.920You're right, though, that we have moved to a place of affirmation that says, since people define their own identity, no one gets to touch that.
00:20:15.980And even doing that work to look for comorbidities and look for anything that might be exacerbating the situation is harmful and that is discriminative and we can't do it.
00:20:25.800And that does scare me because people do change their minds.
00:20:29.660Adults change their minds and kids certainly change their minds.
00:20:31.960And if we really want to provide the best health outcomes, then we do need doctors and psychologists to play devil's advocate a bit and say, okay, you want to transition.
00:20:40.660Let's look at all the reasons why maybe you shouldn't.
00:20:42.520And that isn't because no one should transition.
00:20:45.720I believe there's lots of people who should.
00:21:20.700But when we come back, I want to get your thoughts on some other aspects of Danielle Smith's policy, especially when it comes to the issue of sport.
00:22:19.040The issue of transgendered athletes in sports, Julia, is definitely a hot topic.
00:22:25.760It has taken off in the States, more so than here.
00:22:29.960But, you know, we've seen the podiums where, you know, it'll be a women's sports competition and two of the three people on the podium are biological males.
00:22:41.080A video sent to me last week of a women's rugby team and this big beast of a player just knocking the woman over.
00:22:51.180And he's like, well, that's a biological male.
00:22:52.640Well, when Smith released her policy, Global News was quick to come out and say, no, science shows that women have the upper hand on this, that men are not necessarily bigger and stronger.
00:23:07.480It's like they closed their eyes and said, you know, the opposite of what's actually true.
00:23:14.000What are your thoughts on biological males in women's sports?
00:23:17.000So for a long time, I just avoided the sports conversation, partially because I didn't care because I am not good at sports.
00:23:24.220I don't enjoy watching sports because it's not a topic that I cared about.
00:23:27.860And I'm like, oh, people want to keep talking about it.
00:23:29.440But then I saw exactly what you're describing in terms of some of the national level competitions.
00:23:34.560The most famous, of course, being Riley Gaines versus Leah Thomas.
00:23:57.760And at that level, at the professional level, it kind of makes sense that if you have your best trained biological female and your best trained biological male in a sport like swimming, the taller, stronger individual is going to win.
00:25:16.180And there is an exclusive element when we say, and they're sex-based, just because that's kind of customarily how we've decided to do it.
00:25:23.660Well, look, you'll see a lot of the intramural sports that people participate in this city.
00:25:29.800And often it's co-ed and there's rules.
00:25:33.240You've got to have so many from each side.
00:25:36.820But what I found interesting about Danielle Smith's policy was she didn't say all or nothing.
00:25:43.940And in fact, I found that throughout Smith's was attacked viciously as if she had just stood up and said, transgender people are the worst ever, and we're going to chase them out of Alberta.
00:25:58.840That was not what her speech was, the video that she released.
00:26:03.180And she said that there should be competition for women, but we also need to make sure that there are places where everyone can play.
00:26:17.400The idea that weightlifting has become the most recent one, Canadian female weightlifter, powerlifter is upset because now she's going up against people that were born and did not transition and were on puberty blockers.
00:27:20.040What I notice, though, sometimes is that they ignore the fact that you can raise safety and fairness concerns within a sex bracketed category as well.
00:27:29.360Who's going to win that powerlifting competition?
00:27:34.120Well, because she's bigger, because she has higher levels of testosterone naturally, because whatever reason they are, she's probably a safety hazard to some smaller women in certain sports.
00:27:43.720But no one's saying that we shouldn't allow a 90-pound female and a 180-pound female to do other sports together because of safety concerns.
00:27:53.460When you look at something like wrestling, that's what we've done for a long time.
00:27:55.860We have weight classes recognizing that a 300-pound wrestler and a 90-pound wrestler is not going to be fair or safe competition, regardless who's of which sex.
00:28:04.380That's just, that is a sport where your weight is so related to your ability to be effective in the sport.
00:28:10.240And I think that is a key to how we should be thinking about this.
00:28:13.700On a sport-by-sport basis, we've got to look at this and say, does your biological sex have a huge impact?
00:28:30.620Last year, the International Chess Organization, whatever they're called, they announced that transgender women can't compete in chess anymore.
00:28:38.340And when you get to that point, it's like, okay, this conversation's gone a bit wacky because that's very different.
00:28:43.280I didn't realize there were gendered categories for chess.
00:29:33.920She's never going to be a world-class swimmer.
00:29:35.740Because she's never going to be able to compete with Riley Gaines either.
00:29:37.940And so, you know, we get this conversation where, in my mind, the way to do swimming competitions, say, fairly, would be to have classes that are divided by weight and height.
00:29:46.900Because it's not really whether you're male or female.
00:30:00.380So from just the spirit of inclusivity and giving more people opportunity, I would love to see, where possible, us take more of an approach of classing things out on sports so that the camaraderie of it and the competition of it can be what, you know, we focus on rather than just these silly discussions that we end up upon.
00:30:20.740I'd like to get your take on the politics of it all, because this is something that obviously appears to be a culture war issue, but it's also something that both the left and the right are going at pretty hard on this.
00:30:36.560I mean, the prime minister's language has been nothing short of vitriolic and disparaging to people who actually have your point of view on things like notifying parents.
00:31:04.980I certainly agree that our discourse around this is not productive.
00:31:09.780We have been swinging back and forth with the pendulum.
00:31:12.060And the reason why I got into this and I started being one of Canada's most vocal voices about this topic is because of my fear of where this swings next.
00:31:20.140When I look back 20 years ago, that was when I kind of had the language to understand how I felt about myself.
00:31:26.180And Canada would have been a very scary place to transition.
00:31:29.180There was no protection to make sure that I was remained employed or had any housing protection or anything at all.
00:32:09.320And they've been lobbying within especially social conservative circles to get wins in that sense.
00:32:15.520And I have always feared that we're going to swing back too far.
00:32:18.020And we're just going to end up bouncing back and forth between these two extremes rather than finding something in the middle, which quite honestly is what about 90% of Canadians want.
00:32:27.900They just want something in the middle that's balanced, that maintains dignity and respect for transgender people, doesn't go so far as to take away their rights and stewardship as a parent.
00:32:52.360I think a lot of Canadians would just simply have a live and let live attitude if we had rational conversations.
00:32:57.900But as we've discussed several times, people like to ratchet it up or come in with these all or nothing stances.
00:33:10.620You actually said in your National Post piece that if Danielle Smith's policy were a bit more nuanced, it might be accepted.
00:33:18.940I'm going to disagree with you because I think that the activists on the transgender side are just as we won't give an inch as the activists on the social conservative side.
00:33:32.060And they will say all or nothing we're playing for keeps.
00:33:39.260I think that there is a small group of pretty extreme and fixated individuals on both of these sides that I don't think they can be helped.
00:33:49.260I've been trying for a few years, but they are very ideologically captured on one end or the other.
00:33:54.800And if they don't get their way in its entirety, they're going to be unhappy.
00:33:58.180And much like issues like abortion or gay marriage that have, I would argue, long been resolved in Canadian discourse, they'll probably linger for a long time and be continuing to bring those matters up.
00:34:09.140But that's not where most Canadians are.
00:34:11.700Most Canadians are just in this middle spot.
00:34:14.420They have compassion for people like me.
00:34:16.720They might have concerns with a few things they've seen with our current policy, but they don't want me marginalized.
00:34:22.320They just want us to find some balance here.
00:34:23.940And I have been encouraged by the conversations that I have on Twitter, where I have quite a following on my YouTube channel.
00:34:31.900And now that I'm doing a lot more stuff in Canadian media, that I regularly get to have these conversations afterwards with people who are just normal individuals who haven't given this a lot of thought, and they're just looking for balance.
00:34:53.940About the difference in the dissent that I receive from the trans rights activists and from the social conservative activists.
00:35:02.460I get it from both, which to me tells me I'm doing something right.
00:35:06.000Because if both extremes don't like my position, then that means I've found something that is actually listening to both sides and not just ideologically captured in one or the other.
00:35:14.040But I will say that the stuff that I receive from people who are not accepting of trans people is more vulgar.
00:35:31.460And they don't like some of the positions that we've discussed here today that I think would really help us to find some balance.
00:35:37.300But they don't usually go for me personally, the way that I have been attacked by some of the people on the other side who do genuinely have contempt and disdain towards transgender people and have masked it and hide behind arguments of children or parental rights.