Firstly I’d like to congratulate your staff member on having a bun in the oven, truly ecstatic for them and their partner and wish them both an easy pregnancy and healthy baby.
Now, I picked up Pique for the first time in a while (as it’s just always in my daily trajectory here in Squamish) and I have to say, the first article I read was extremely disappointing, especially from the magazine I respect most in the corridor.
The [opinion column, “Lessons for a girl in 2021,” March 11] hurts me on various levels, so bear with [me] and I’ll explain.
Firstly, Pique shared what is essentially the insight to a gender-reveal party, these things are a serious plight in the transphobic world and it shocked me to even read it in a magazine that has been supportive of trans wellbeing.
I mean your staff gave my Boy In The Blue Dress project a full half-page [article] a year ago and the (journalist/editor) went out of their way to make sure all my pronouns [were] lined up correctly, as it was essentially the first time I came out publicly.
Allow me to elaborate for a mo’ on this point. I had to “come out” because I was assigned a gender. We know what a big deal it is to come out and it should be celebrated; it’s the dismantling of a being forced to live a lie that has dictated mine or anyone else’s life all because of the gender (or heteronormative sexual orientation) that was assigned to them at or before birth.
Now when I started reading [the March 11 opinion column] I was hoping the narrative would take a turn and be some sort of revelation to this awful affair that is revealing the gender of a fetus... it didn’t.
This brings me to my second and combined-third point.
Theoretically… you have been presented with the sex of your child, [but neither] you, your partner nor a doctor can tell you the gender of your child, if they even have one, as only they will know.
Gender is a spectrum, it’s not male or female nor is it in conjunction with the sex. Sex and gender are totally separate things, there are two sexes and 72 genders.
Count your blessings if you have been comfortable in your gender and please just accept that others aren’t and that makes navigating this world difficult. The only time I’ll collectively speak for the entire community is when I say we have enough difficulties and they’d be made a million times easier if [people] just left us [to] simply exist.
This ties into my third point, although your article talks about the big, bad world and traumas your child will or might face, you yourself have also given it the biggest pressure of all by assigning a gender to them based on their sex.
This is [a] pressure kids do not need! You are boxing[-in] your child before they’re even born and that is mainly why I [am] reach[ing] out. [T]his happened to me and I’ve been heavily suicidal up until I came out[—]amongst many other difficulties I face having to live with the gender the world, the government, the doctors and my parents told me I was and… forced me to live a lie for 29 years of my life.
Can you see how damaging this is?
Say you’re a man and you’re forced to wear women’s clothes all day, you’re not gonna like it are you? You can’t speak up about it or even wear the clothes you want, cause guess what, the world will eat you alive. [T]his is a difficulty that I fear for the future soul of this (editor/journalist’s) child, one they have not mentioned and one they as parents might bring to the child’s life before they face the rest of the issues the (editor/journalist) had mentioned, or the ones that are an onset of forcing a gender on a child, like suicidal tendencies.
I write this to you not to attack the writer or Pique (as much as I wish people’s eyes never saw it), but more so for them to realize the potential weight and damage they are doing to a soul that has yet to enter this world by assigning their gender and putting them at risk of losing a lifetime of potential happiness and being the truest version of themselves.
I beg you, as someone who has lived a lie and missed out on so much, and fortunately evaded completing suicide numerous times, please do not force a gender onto your child and please, please just let them find it for themselves, if they even have one. They will tell you, and that day will be more special than giving them pink or blue clothes, I promise and I don’t throw around the “p” word lightly.
If you need someone to talk to about this, my door is always open.
