Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, it’s likely you’ve tuned in, picked up or scrolled through some sort of media giving face to the transgender movement. What you may not have noticed is that for every piece of Caitlyn Jenner clickbait, there is another story of a transgender man or woman whose journey has not been filled with designer dresses and national coverage.
Last May, TIME magazine published “The Transgender Tipping Point”, a story heavily focused on Laverne Cox, a transgender woman of colour best known for her roles as a television actress and trans activist. While both Jenner and Cox’s stories of self-discovery, struggle and eventual success, are important, so too are the countless stories of transgender and gender variant people, who are making change on the ground, in their homes and communities.
This year, the Vancouver Pride Society has chosen “Gender Super Heroes” as its theme for the Pride Parade, requiring parade participants to pledge support for West End NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert’s private member’s bill calling for the specific inclusion of transgender and gender-variant people in the BC Human Rights Code.
While Vancouver has long been known as a safe haven for the LGBTQ community, many in the transgender community struggle for recognition and respect. For some, that struggle is life-or-death.
Jessie Anderson is a 24-year old transgender man whose mission to create an inclusive queer/trans space here in Vancouver is taking shape in the form of Big Bro’s Barbershop. A barber by trade, Anderson’s aim is to provide a brick-and-mortar presence to a near-invisible community.
“People are constantly assessing you and forming their own opinion of your gender as a visibly trans person,” he explains. “Offering an inclusive idea of what masculinity can look like means no client’s requested services will ever be denied or modified based on how I, or any other service provider has chosen to interpret the client’s gender.”
Knowing he was always “some flavour of queer”, Anderson began binding his chest at 13, and transitioned from female to male at 16, while attending Vancouver Technical Secondary School. He remembers the process as relatively easy; people were taken aback, not by the idea of being transgender, but by his honesty about it.
“I started Grade 12 with male pronouns, and fortunately for me, never had to change my given name,” he says.
Anderson’s desire to provide resources for his community goes beyond a snappy, new hair cut. Formerly employed by Little Sister’s, Anderson was behind the expansion of gender-affirming products for trans people including the sale of chest binders, gaff underwear (used for tucking the penis), breast enhancers, and “packers”.
With Big Bro’s, Anderson wants to stock the shelves with these and other much-needed resources, including literature about healthcare, how to explore options, and to simply provide a space to meet other trans individuals.
“I want to essentially build my own world,” he says. “A place where trans people are the priority, not the side note.”
Temporarily working out of his West End apartment while raising money through a Go Fund Me, Anderson has procured a 500-square-foot space in Mount Pleasant to be Big Bro’s permanent home. With an accessible washroom and room for two or three stylist chairs, his long-term vision includes a gender variant staff, able to provide a myriad of resources for the community, allies and family.
“I want this to be a place families visit,” says Anderson. “What do you do when your kid comes out as trans? There are no resources for that right now.”
Designing a business model to serve the needs of a community that statistically has the lowest amount of disposable income is a risky business venture. According to BC Poverty Reduction, trans and non-gender confirming people have double the unemployment rate as the general population, and one in five have been refused houses or apartments because of their gender identity or expression. In Ontario, 71 per cent of trans people have at least some post-secondary education, yet almost 50 per cent are living on $15,000 or less a year.
Plans are in motion for a store credit system, as well as a community credit fund.
For Anderson, the need for a safe supportive space is immediate.
A recent study by the University of Western Ontario found 11 per cent of transgendered people surveyed had attempted suicide in the past year, compared to just 0.6 per cent of the general population. The study identified the availability of support as the leading factor in the prevention of suicides in the trans community.
“The clock is ticking,” says Anderson. “This is a space that needs to exist now; it had to exist last year. Trans people are dying now.”
Elijah James understands the need for greater support and visibilty for transgendered youth.
Born female, James struggled throughout his teens to come to terms with a body that didn’t represent who he was inside.
“I knew I didn’t fit in, and found it tough to find others I could have these conversations with growing up in Kelowna,” he says.
Dropping out of high school and moving to Vancouver was a necessity in order to explore his gender identity and search for resources. James soon met two transgender men through mutual friends, and describes the encounter as an out-of-body experience.
“I remember being in a dream-like state, watching and learning about these people,” he explains. “I realized there were options outside of identifying as a lesbian. I knew they were like me, they were real, and so this for me, was finally real.”
James transitioned at 24, and says he felt a strong sense that he was losing a part of himself in his transition, trying to achieve an image of the quintessential male; one who doesn’t possess what society deems stereotypical feminine characteristics.
“I had to change who I was on the outside so people would treat me how I felt on the inside,” James says. “The most frustrating part about transitioning were the lies I had to tell in order to be believed by a system holding the power of approval.”
Post-transition, James says he was able to focus on self-discovery beyond his gender identity for the first time. So, years after leaving the confining halls of a small town high school behind, James decided to return to school, graduate, and go on to study psychology and social work.
“As I’ve grown up and come into my own, I’ve realized that I’m really good at helping people,” says James.
Today, James dedicates his time and energy as a stable, and present voice on the phone at Chimo Community Services Crisis Lines, providing folks of all ages and genders a safe space to connect and be heard.
For James, to assume one trans person can define the trans experience of everyone in the whole world is ridiculous, and impossible. While there are certain realities that many transgender people share –being asked disrespectful questions, devising secretive behaviours, feeling like they have to hide parts of themselves, and feeling uncomfortable for various reasons –no one person can speak for everyone, nor should they.
But, creating safe spaces, means talking about it. And, having recently become a parent, this is what James is now doing more of. Conceiving their daughter through IVF, James and his wife realized in order to raise their child in the open, honest, and unashamed way in which they live their own lives, a certain amount of autonomy would have to be sacrificed.
“Everybody feels entitled to know what is going on,” says James. “This is about my life, my goals, my journey, to find the meaning in my life. But becoming a parent has shown me my child has to learn how to navigate this, also.
“The safest, most loving and logical path is to not keep this a secret. If we’re not talking about it, we’re creating shame around it and you can’t tease someone for something they don’t feel shame for.”
James also volunteers with Big Brothers of Canada - mentoring a nine-year-old boy once a week – his interest in the organization having been sparked by his own frustration of the limited constructs of masculinity.
“Big Brother is an organization built around socializing males and I wanted to have the opportunity to be a role model that transcends the narrow view of what it means to be a man,” he explains. “I don’t think gender is as important as society makes it.”
There were no representations of any sort of gender diversity in Vancouver’s suburbs when James Kelly was growing up in Richmond, 30-odd years ago. Raised in a religious family, Kelly describes his childhood as that of a moderately content child.
“I don’t feel like I have the typical trans lineage story. I think many of us don’t,” he says. “There is this idea that there is a certain process, that you’re young and you’ve always known and you’re born in the wrong body and then you go through a series of medical procedures and then you’re successfully transitioned.
“There’s a story that gets told, and that we tell ourselves, and that wasn’t my experience.”
He describes the queer community as a place where he was able to live with enough comfort and safety to express his masculinity until transgender visibility grew. The feeling that something didn’t quite fit, suddenly had a word and a definition to articulate it.
“The representation that did exist was not favourable, and you didn’t actually know anyone who was living a happy life in their preferred gender,” he says of those years.
And so at 38, after describing his experience as “occupying a middle space for a long time”, Kelly began the journey to become physically male.
“It was really through networking with friends that I was able to access the care that I wanted and that really highlighted the privileged position I’m in, living in Vancouver and in the queer community,” he points out.
As the executive director of Peak House, a provincial alcohol and drug treatment centre for youth 13-18 of all genders, Kelly lives within this comparative privilege day to day. He transitioned with a supportive network of co-workers, and an insider’s perspective on how to navigate an often problematic medical system, especially in terms of trans healthcare.
The wait list for subcutaneous mastectomy, or “top surgery”, currently sits around the two-year mark. There is only one physician in all of BC who performs the procedure, and currently no operating room time is dedicated to it. Up until recently, guidelines required trans individuals to live what was referred to as, “Real Lived Experience”, meaning, to live in your chosen gender for a year. For trans people who may not pass as the opposite gender in the eyes of society, this can be an incredibly unsafe reality.
“The gate-keeping practices have opened and they’re saying ‘great, surgery is covered’, but you can’t get it,” Kelly says. “What happens to someone while they’re on a waitlist can be really detrimental to their well being.“
Private care is an option, requiring the patient to pay out of pocket for surgery, often in another province or country, but post-surgery care is often completely inaccessible.
Kelly was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Ohio for top surgery. However, for many trans people, the travel and the expense put private surgery out of reach.
“Trans people are not receiving the same level of healthcare the rest of BC residents have come to expect,” says Kelly. “We have longer wait times, confusing regulations and a general lack of awareness and knowledge around our healthcare needs.”
It is this stark reality that drives Kelly to live a life dedicated to helping build bridges, to be out about his trans identity and to lead by example.
“It’s important to me that young people in our program have direct access to the people in power,” he says, “Currently two of our 10 beds are occupied by people who identify outside the gender binary.”
In addition to his role at Peak House, Kelly is a board member of QMUNITY, BC’s queer resource centre. He is active in community engagement, facilitating workshops and providing consultation services alongside community organizations to help support safe and inclusive spaces for trans and gender non-conforming people and their allies. Deeply committed to social justice work, Kelly’s aim is to improve the wellbeing of his community.
“We have a history in this country of not supporting marginalized communities,” Kelly says, “and gender is the next place of learning for society.”
Despite the media coverage of the trans community in recent months, accurate representations of transgender individuals, let alone positive ones, have been few. Many in the transgender community feel the public’s perception of what it means to be trans – what it looks like and who it involves – has been distorted and sensationalized by the media.
Instead of stories about the countless trans victims of suicide and murder, the attention is focussed on Jenner, whose visibility is very much a double-edged sword, sending a misconstrued message of acceptance.
However, Jenner, herself, is using her newfound visibility to shine a light on the often violent reality of transgender life.
“11 trans women have been killed in the United States in the past six months – most of them trans women of color,” Jenner wrote on her website earlier this week. “No one should be killed simply because they are transgender.”
Despite the difference in their personal experiences, Anderson, James and Kelly share a philosophy of inclusion. Working to provide space for the trans community in a society that leaves little room for it, begins with visibility and understanding.
As Jenner she so poignantly said in her acceptance speech for the Arthur Ashe Award of Courage at the ESPY’s, “while it may not be easy to get past the things you [don’t always] understand, I want to prove it is absolutely possible – if we only, do it together.”
