Alberta is leading the country with sensible youth gender policies. Other provinces should emulate them.
Premier Danielle Smith recently confirmed transgender surgeries will be banned for those under 18 years of age. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will be prohibited for youth under 16, while those 16 to 18 years old would need parental, psychiatric, and medical approval.
Biological females will have competitive sports to themselves. Students under 16 who want to change pronouns at school won’t do so without parental consent.
Fifteen years ago, none of this would be controversial. That was before a transgender trend took hold. In the U.S., not so different from Canada, the number of children on puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones doubled from 2017 to 2021, and cases of gender dysphoria tripled.
Advocates for the transgender approach say one’s inner sense of self must be affirmed by everyone around them and by transforming their bodies as closely as possible to the gender they identify with. Otherwise, they may kill themselves.
Such ideas could be challenged on many levels. If gender and sex are separate, why transform the body? Why can’t gender and sex remain separate and go on happily? By wanting to transform their bodies, every transgender inadvertently confirms the link between biological sex and how people typically are and act.
There are other logical incongruities. Trans advocates usually believe in gender fluidity. That means someone may have one gender now, but they could have another gender soon and even change back again. This presents a problem, given current Canadian bans on conversion therapy.
Once someone identifies their gender with the opposite sex, it is illegal for anyone to oppose it in counsel or therapy, with the punishment of fines and imprisonment. Even if someone wants help to steer their inner sense of self, they cannot receive it. A new whim in their shaky self-identification is the only thing that takes them off the transformation train.
Tomboy girls and boys who like fashion should feel no need to change. But now, at an age where insecurities about weight and appearance are especially common, some teens conclude they were born in the wrong body entirely. This lie presents an awful and insidious burden–that one’s entire body is wrong.
Would it not be better to tell youth their bodies are good and give them time to grow up as the sex nature gave them and the names parents gave them?
Kierra Bell, a tomboy from the UK, never got that chance. She sued the Tavistock Clinic for transitioning her, even though as a 15-year-old she was adamant it was the right path.
“What was really going on was that I was a girl insecure in my body who had experienced parental abandonment, felt alienated from my peers, suffered from anxiety and depression, and struggled with my sexual orientation,” she later recalled.
The UK High Court ruled it was “highly unlikely” for children under 14 to have the capacity for meaningful consent to cross-sex medical interventions on gender. This capacity was also “very doubtful” for 14 to 15-year-olds. As for 16- to 17-year-olds, a court order was recommended before proceeding.
Alberta will save innumerable teenagers from a path of regret. When will other provinces follow?
Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
