A letter published last Saturday in this section and signed by health professionals accuses the parents of the collective Pour les droits des enfants du Québec (PDEQ) of “spreading hatred”, of “attacking trans children and adolescents” and even to “dehumanize people”. This was to attack an open letter we sent to the Minister of Education asking that parents be informed of a change of name, pronoun or gender designation of their child at the school. To do this, the authors distort our words to make them seem false. I’m surprised that people could have misunderstood us so much, lending us sinister motives that aren’t ours. So I’m going to say it another way, in the hope of sparking some constructive thinking.
To begin with, I feel deeply betrayed by Quebec institutions. How can one use one’s status as an expert in health, or in education, to sweep aside the parents’ knowledge stemming from their close bond with their child? The signatories seem to suspect, a priori, parents who do not adhere with closed eyes to the transaffirmative movement of being bad parents or of wanting to prioritize their personal interests over those of their children. But what personal interest can we have, apart from that of ensuring the well-being of our child?
Let’s correct some misinformation first.
PDEQ is an independent and autonomous group of parents and is not the “satellite” of any other organization. It is, however, entirely accurate to say that we share similar perspectives with other groups, including Genspect (an international alliance of professionals, transgender people, detransitioners, parent groups and others who seek care quality for gender-related disorders) and SEGM (society for evidence-based gender medicine).
In this sense, we favor a cautious approach, based on high quality research and favoring exploratory therapies, which is in total agreement with the choices of the Ministries of Health of Sweden, Finland, Norway and, more recently, from the United Kingdom. For comparison, the statistics presented in last Saturday’s letter are taken from a survey (online or paper participants). Although useful and inexpensive, this type of survey qualifies, in the pyramid of standards of evidence, as “low quality”.
We are asked to “educate” ourselves. However, it has been years that parents looking for the best practices for their children have been informed, read research, studies, scientific reports on all scientific approaches, all movements combined, related to gender dysphoria. Not coming to the same conclusions does not necessarily mean a lack of knowledge.
We fully agree that the only way to approach a young person who is questioning their gender or their sex is to have a welcoming and caring attitude. But the solution is not automatically that of validating a social or medical transition. World experts are very divided on the effectiveness, benefits, reversibility and safety of different therapeutic approaches. If there is scientific consensus, it is on the lack of solid evidence to decide in favor of one approach or another.
Moreover, contrary to what the authors of the letter suggest, a social transition is not a neutral act. For this purpose, the Dr Hilary Cass, a child psychiatrist commissioned by the British Ministry of Health to revise treatment protocols for dysphoric minors, declared in her interim report that “a social transition may not be considered an intervention or a treatment, because it produced outside the framework of health services. However, it is important to consider it as an active intervention, as it can have significant effects on the child or adolescent in terms of psychology”.
A second undisputed fact that PDEQ parents are well-informed about is this: “The social transition of prepubertal children will significantly increase the persistence rate of gender dysphoria compared to follow-up studies of children with gender dysphoria that did not receive this type of psychosocial intervention and, curiously, could be qualified as iatrogenic. This claim is corroborated and supported by 11 studies referenced in an expert report.
It is this information that motivates parents to ask the Minister to issue clear directives so that the school communicates to them information concerning their child. It is not up to the school administration to take the place of health professionals, or of the Department of Youth Protection to declare parents unfit to look after the well-being of their child.
Let us now address the question of “outing”.
The confidences of a pupil to an adult of his school must obviously remain secret, within the limits authorized by law. Unlike the disclosure of a sexual orientation which can be entrusted to a limited number of people and which does not change the care of the student by the school team, a social transition is, by definition, a public act. , because it implies a change of first name and pronouns, accompanied by an obligation for the members of an establishment to use them.
What confidentiality are we talking about when the entire school, from the management team to teachers, including classmates, administrative staff and cleaning staff, is aware of the name change? a student while having the instruction to hide it from the parents? And what about the fact of not registering the change of the use name of a young person in his school file, in order to hide it from the parents? This is a maneuver which, to say the least, does not seem to us to promote healthy school-family communication.
The authors of the letter speak of depressive symptoms and suicidal behavior. However, informing the parents of their child’s psychological distress has nothing to do with “outing”, it is quite simply the school’s responsibility. A good number of mental health and psychosocial professionals are trained in the school approach, which involves close individual-family-network collaboration. In Quebec, the eminent child psychiatrist Guy Ausloss, who has worked with adolescents placed in institutions, has always praised the competence of families and, during his long career as a clinician and trainer in systemic family intervention, considered parents as partners and collaborators.
Why should it be otherwise in the case of deep psychological distress linked to gender? How can parents be kept in the dark about psychological distress that could lead to their child’s suicide?
It is amazing to note that all good practices and measures of caution in terms of medical approach or psychotherapy are redefined as soon as a young person expresses discomfort related to his biological sex, as if he were not above all a child. To believe that the laws no longer apply, that the articles of the Civil Code enshrining the right and the duty of the parent to ensure the custody, supervision, education and well-being of his child have more course. The exceptionalism of everything related to transidentity puzzles me.
Mr. Drainville, wouldn’t it be better to review the recommendations given to schools in the light of all the knowledge available and by hearing the point of view of all the parties concerned?