Article content continued

Continue reading…

[/np_storybar]

The world has been closed-minded, they suggest, in seeing gender as two-pronged — men and women, period. And even as western institutions try to adapt to changing mores, it’s hard to get it right.

“Gender independent children are all the rage again,” quipped Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, a professor of education at Trent University as she presented her research at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences conference.

She had asked rural students in Grades 4-12 for their experiences with gender, and their responses were sometimes cute — “people say I have girl knees,” one child replied — and other times sad (“I have wanted to wear a dress around town but got laughed at too hard and too much.”)

Children are often prevented from doing things they like because of their gender, she found — it can be constraining all around.

Next up was a male scholar who, five years before, had been a young woman though it’s near impossible to tell. He spoke about how deeply his transition impacted his family — especially his sister, who is also present — and how that experience can get lost in academia about trans issues.

Then the conversation turns more directly to North American society at large — one that has for so long thought in black and white, in male and female, but may now be ready for more shades in between. This week, transgender actress Laverne Cox, star of Netflix series Orange is the New Black, graced the cover of TIME magazine, the article’s sub-headline claiming trans issues to be “America’s next civil rights frontier.” On Thursday evening, the Vancouver School Board met to discuss proposed updates to its sexual orientation and gender identities policy; the ongoing debates have become a magnet for controversy.