Gender and Sexuality Studies

Abstract

In Canada several provinces passed provincial laws that limited the freedom of gender expression for trans youth. Saskatchewan passed a controversial law The Parents’ Bill of Rights in 2023 not allowing students in K12 classrooms to use another pronoun that aligns with their gender identity without parental consent. As a result of this law sex education by third party organizations such as the Saskatoon Sexual Assault Center or Out Saskatoon have been barred from K12 classrooms. This was followed by similar laws in Alberta and New Brunswick. During the provincial election the acting premier Scott Moe pledged the first thing he will do if re-elected would be to ban boys from girls’ locker rooms. This galvanized his support in rural areas, and he narrowly won re-election. 
During the presidential campaign Donald Trump promoted transphobic discourse equating gender-affirming surgery for minors as “child sexual mutilation” or child molestation, and the RNC launched expensive campaign adds targeting trans youth. These transphobic discourses galvanized the religious right and were very successful in helping Trump get re-elected. President Trump signed a series of executive orders targeting transgender youth ending federal funding for gender affirming care, banning trans athletes from women’s sports. In his first address to congress despite having upended the international security and economy order, Trump chose to emphasize these transphobic executive orders. Under the guise of defending women from gender ideology President Trump also signed an executive order to supposedly restore the biological reality of sex, restoring the man/woman binary as the only two genders acknowledged and thus undoing decades of gender progress that gender theorists have made in separating sex from gender. This paper explores the implications for trans youth of such right-wing policies in Canada and the US and considers how we teach students in women and gender studies programs about these divisive issues in the age of an attack on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Biography

My research is situated at the intersection of Modern Chinese history, gender history, intellectual and cultural history and medical history. I am interested in different forms of eugenics in praxis, in particular birth control praxis and venereal disease policies in 1930s China. I am also interested how different ideas pertaining to eugenics insert themselves by means of translation into other debates on love, birth control, population and sexology in 1920s Chinese women's magazines.