Social Engineering

"For a transgender person, having the world refuse to accept the gender identity that you say you are is the most profound harm because it's a denial of your human identity."
"[The] dad's expression rights end at the point where they harm [the child]."
"His dad doesn't think that transgender is a thing, that it's essentially not human."
Barbara Findlay, lawyer for transgender child

"It's really hard to explain to anybody who's not transgender how terrible it feels to have a body that doesn't match your gender. Sometimes I feel like I want to rip my skin off."
"[Since hormone treatments were started] When I look in the mirror I see myself. ... It is so amazing to feel normal."
"I don't really want to see my father right now because he only wants to harass me about being trans."
Child's affidavit excerpts

"Just because you say [the father] is acting in a particularly evil manner would not seem to justify restrictions that go beyond what's necessary."
Justice Harvey Groberman, panel member, B.C. Appeal Court hearing

"We're in this complicated situation where it can't be done -- in the face of [the father's] past conduct -- in a more narrow way [without restrictions]."
"[The child] is distressed because of the mismatch between his body and who he really is. And a part of that is how the world receives him, and his dad is a big part of that world."
Jessica Lithwick, lawyer for child's mother

The case started last year as a clash between child autonomy and parental rights

Basically, a family dispute between father and mother and a young daughter who declares herself to have been wrongly identified at birth despite all the visual clues available identifying her as a girl when she really has the mind and soul of a boy, with the mother supporting the daughter, now her son, and the father objecting that the whim of a brain-washed child will not be validated by him. He recognizes the fact that he has a daughter, not a son.

This is the kind of dispute that might once have been settled within the family group, and is now a public interpretation and settlement issue, bringing in consenting physicians and the justice system in defence of a child's insistence that she knows her gender and it is not the one that nature assigned her to. It would be fascinating if a really rigorous study were conducted to determine the number of young girls who fantasize being a boy and who briefly or permanently fashion themselves into tomboys to accomplish that fantasy in part.

Many if not most of these girls outgrow the impulse to act like a boy. Either by losing interest, by acting out the fantasy as a boyish girl competing with boys in recognized male spheres while still maintaining their female alter-personas, or by recognizing that nature frequently cross-fertilizes her creations so that while one gender is the dominant one, an individual can still demonstrate ownership of identifiers of another gender and still fall within a 'normal' persona range.

But just as the global community has finally advanced to the point where homosexuality and lesbians should be accepted for what they are and respected for their individuality, other branches of non-binary identifiers have emerged to declare their equal rights and in the process accuse mainstream society of forcibly closeting gender-identity differences. Guilt-ridden society has succumbed to placating and pleading forgiveness for the truly horrible wrongs done in defence of 'normalcy'.

And while society has adapted to the new normal in equality and human rights, the scales appear to have tipped a tad too far on LGBTQ-2 rights to encompass children's restless explorations of themselves, deciphering all affectations, whether misguided and temporary, dysphoric or legitimate as one and the same. And that parents and society must henceforth accede to all children's 'choices' of gender identity.

In the case cited above a girl who identified as male from age 11, now fourteen years of age, was referred by a psychologist to B.C. Children's Hospital for treatment of gender dysphoria where the gender clinic at the hospital declared the child's best interests would be served to proceed with hormone therapy in transition from a female body to a male. The mother consented, along with the child, the father failed to.

When the father attempted to block the treatment it was ruled by a B.C. Supreme Court justice that the child was "exclusively entitled" to consent to treatment and moreover the child must be referred to by male pronouns. Any effort on the part of the father to refer to his child with female pronouns, or to persuade his child to abandon treatment "shall be considered to be family violence". The sadly wayward father continued to refer to his 'daughter' and used female pronouns, dismayingly.

A month later another B.C. Supreme Court justice issued a protection order restraining the father from discussing the case publicly, leading the father to file another appeal on the basis that all scientific opinion on such treatments had not been considered; an individual the age of his child being incapable of appreciating the possible consequences of a "still experimental treatment", and an order preventing him from discussing his child's conundrum infringed on his freedom of expression.

At the three-day appeal court hearing, another panel member questioned whether the father's actions truly met the definition of family violence to which the lawyer for the child responded that the father's insistence that his child remain someone he is no longer, represented a clear effort at coercion and intimidation.

A case regarding a parent's ability to intervene in their child's treatment for gender dysphoria is before the B.C. Court of Appeal. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

"It is clear that interference of the state and its agents — which include the courts, the schools, and hospitals — is eroding parental authority. Parents are now at the mercy of every agenda-driven school counselor, sympathetic psychologist, and activist judge."
"It is time that Canada took that pledge seriously and protected a parent’s fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children."
"To that end, we need to create a parental bill of rights. If elected, I will work alongside my colleagues to strengthen parental rights legislation. In a free society, the most cherished and sacred relationship is that between parents and their children."

Angelina Ireland, political candidate, People’s Party of Canada, Delta, British Columbia