I’m a sixteen year old genderqueer high school student. When I came out, my family and friends were accepting, but I know people who aren’t so lucky. I have friends who know themselves and deserve to express themselves, but don’t feel safe to do so because of the anti-trans legislation in Alberta. They are afraid of being outed to their families, which could put them in unsafe situations. I’m starting to make plans for university, but I’m afraid to study in Alberta, because it’s been made clear to me that the provincial government doesn’t care about the safety, comfort, or health of gender diverse people like me.

My name is Teddy. I’m a 21-year-old transmasculine, nonbinary person, born and raised in Grande Prairie, Alberta. I’ve known who I am since I was 12, but it took years to find the courage to live as myself openly. When I first came out at 16, I had hopes of finding support and understanding, but the reality was much harsher. Facing fear, judgment, and stigma, I made the painful choice to detransition at 18, not because I’d changed but because it felt too dangerous to be myself. An unfortunate reality for many people who have detransitioned. At 20, with renewed support, I found the strength to retransition and work toward self-acceptance. This journey to feeling comfortable in my own skin has been anything but easy, but it’s been essential. Self-acceptance has brought a peace I never imagined possible, and it’s heartbreaking to see young trans people being denied that same freedom. With this recent anti-trans legislation, trans youth today have fewer rights and less access to life-saving care than I did just a few years ago. This isn’t just policy; it’s a dangerous overreach that dictates what people can do with their own bodies, disregarding their needs and well-being. To the trans youth of Alberta: you deserve to live authentically and safely, and there are people who will always stand up for you. I’ll keep sharing my story in the hope that it brings some comfort and shows you that you’re not alone.

My name is Lincoln. I'm 23, born and raised in Calgary, and I've been out and proud as a trans person for the last eight years. I'm lucky. My family and friends were all receptive and understanding to my coming out. For the most part, I was not the target of transphobic remarks. I was surrounded by love and care and many, many other trans people who supported me through my self-discoveries and decisions to transition. I've put a lot of thought, time, and energy into learning about myself and what I feel it means to be trans. And here's the thing, the thing I don't think those opposed to trans healthcare understand: this is about more than us. Stripping away our access to gender affirming care isn't just stripping away trans people's chances to feel comfortable in their bodies -- it is potentially stripping everyone of feeling comfortable in their bodies. It is enforcing strict ideas of who people are and what they should look like and removing personal autonomy on who gets to make those decisions. No one should get to dictate how to feel at home in your skin except for you. No one is you and therefore no one will understand what you need as well as you. Please, stand-up for trans people's rights to self-determination. Because our autonomy is your autonomy. And we all deserve to feel at home in our skin.

I’m a 27 year old transgender woman born and raised in Calgary. I have been on hormone replacement therapy for almost 3 years now and it saved my life. Before I started transitioning I struggled with severe anxiety and depression since being a young kid. I can confidently say that receiving gender affirming care and being able to transition socially and medically is the best most positive thing that has ever happened to me. Whether or not gender affirming care is the right course of action for an individual that should be decided between the kid, their parents, and their medical professionals. The government should not be forcing youth through an unwanted puberty, if I was able to transition in my teenage years and didn’t have to go through male puberty my transition from male to female would of been immensely easier. Removing transgender youths access to gender affirming will take lives that could have been saved and bettered. Denying them the right to the proper treatment they need will do no good whatsoever and will only hinder the individuals growth and progression. Taking away gender affirming care for youth is the wrong thing to do and will have this UCP government remembered for all of the wrong reasons because they will have certainly been on the wrong side of history and done far more bad then good for marginalized communities such as the LGBTQ+.

I’m 67 years old. I grew up in the 1970s when it was just not possible to come out as gay or gender nonconforming. As a matter of sheer survival you learn to hide your true identity and conform to the role that society expects of you. I’ve spent my whole life pretending to be a straight cis male. At my age now, I’m no longer so concerned about what other people think, and I’m finally emerging. Society has changed and become more accepting of gender diversity. I often wonder where I would be today if the same resources had been available when I was a teenager. There are forces attempting to turn the clock back to a darker time. We cannot let that happen and reverse the gains we have made. That is why I have become active in the gender diverse community.

Just through small words and actions, teachers have been some of the biggest sources of security in my life. Learning to be open as a gnc teenager is difficult, and my teachers' active support for me and my trans peers was so, so needed to get me through my High School experience and graduate. To think that this relationship between teachers and students could be broken by legislation? They don't want this. My teachers have only ever shown me that they want us to feel secure. My teachers have only ever shown me that they value the unique source of support that they're able to provide to the youth they work with, especially knowing the danger and exhaustion that some kids can face at home. How could we even think of outlawing this source of human kindness?

As a 25-year-old trans woman 2.5 years into hormones, I can say with confidence that gender affirming medical interventions have saved my life. The only thing I regret is not doing this 14 years ago if only I knew this were an option. There was so much transmisogyny, queer hatred, and ignorance in the atmosphere of popular culture I grew up in which made me repress who I was in that time. It was the objective of that ridicule: to keep trans and queer people in the periphery of confusing, freakish, and repulsive. The people who hate me as a man in a dress interloping the property of brittle women are the same hateful people who partly pilot the government. They have no business getting between me and the medicine I need to survive. Being trans is not anyone else's opinion. Ignorance is not an excuse for maltreatment. Disgust is not an excuse for maltreatment. I hope to one day earn a society where transgender people can be proud of how beautiful and special it is to go through this transformation. Instead we hope for enough luck to be invisible, and dread a fate where all we are to others and ourselves is a man in a dress. It's a statistical fact that more people will kill themselves if the government restricts access to gender affirming care-- all for the sake of entertaining the prejudiced disgust of hateful people. This would not be the Alberta I want to be a part of. Self-righteous hateful ignorance cannot be allowed to win.

It has taken me a few decades to figure out who I am. I spent that time trying to understand gender and my place in this framework, experimenting with variations on conformity. For a long time, nothing really fit, but I didn’t understand why. I had no words to describe the way I felt, no examples in media to identify with. I just knew that queerness was vilified, so I didn’t want to be that. Learning about gender and sexuality in my adult years was both an exiting breakthrough and a frustrating experience, as I wished I could have understood myself all those years ago and not spent so much time searching and trying to conform. It breaks my heart to think that kids in Alberta may have the chance to learn and to be celebrated for who they are taken away from them. Kids deserve quality education and respect from the adults around them. They deserve compassionate care from health care professionals guided by science. Gender affirming care is life saving. Having a gender-affirming hysterectomy was one of the best decisions of my life, and I want everyone to be able to make that same decision for themselves should they wish to. I fear what the future holds for our community, as our rights and access to supports is being eroded. And the impacts do not stop with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. As an RN working in sexual health, I see the impacts of sexual health education (good or bad) in every shift. Governmental restrictions on education, access to life saving medical care, and bodily autonomy affect us all.

I am a 19 year old trans man, I had just turned 19 this past Wednesday, October 23rd. My entire life, since I was 13 years old, has just been a battle with my mental health. The only thing that turned my life around was making the changes I desperately needed, changing my name, how I presented myself, etc. Gender affirming healthcare saved my life. No one wants to go through this, no one wants to be seen as a “freak”, no one wants the experience of feeling alienated for something you can’t even control. If I could snap my fingers right now and decide whether I was transgender or not, I would choose to not be. It’s a life full of hardships and experiences not everyone will understand, but it’s my life. As difficult as it is, I do what I can to live it to the fullest. Why would you take this away from us? It doesn’t affect anyone negatively. You understand going through with these plans will literally KILL people, do you want that much blood on your hands?

I am a 12 year old trans girl, and early access to gender affirming care has positively impacted my life. This gives me the opportunity to not have puberty I don’t desire. The thought of puberty of my sex assigned at birth going forward makes me feel not right and uncomfortable. I feel everyone who doesn’t feel right about their body or gender should have the decision to go on puberty blockers if they wish. I also know I am very fortunate to have already started my puberty blockers. I feel really sad for everyone that hasn’t gotten to start. They shouldn’t have to deal with gender or body dysmorphia.

I support the right to bodily autonomy because you should be able to decide what does and doesn’t happen to your body. If my sibling didn’t have access to gender affirming care they wouldn’t have felt comfortable in their own skin. I would worry about their mental health and well being.

title? i was born in 1980. i've pretty much always known that i was neither a girl nor a boy, but as a child i was dealing with some pretty intense abuse. so my house was not a safe place to talk about that. i just needed to escape and school offered me that sanctuary. but there wasn't time to ask more complicated questions and i just thought maybe elementary school wasn't the place. surely in high school it would come up. nope. then i went off to art school. surely there would appear my magic place for voicing my alienness to society. nope. so i just put my head down and continued 'doing the things you are supposed to' until my whole life just fell apart and i couldn't leave my house anymore. now i had the time to sift through so many things. why i self harmed, why i hate food, why i have a hard time talking to people. and that if i wasn't going to brave enough to start using the pronoun (xhe) i had wanted since i was 8, then never was anyone going to offer me that opportunity. i really hate being perceived - because the world we have created people try and interact with you as one of the two binaries and i'm just not. there is generally not a toilet for me to use (weird world we've created where gas stations are the best place to go because there's only one toilet) and no fashion for me. and so i watch the disappointing slide towards curtailing rights for humans instead of expanding them and wonder how the future and coming problems in the environment will be solved by people who's imaginations have been squashed, by merely trying to survive.

I'm a trans guy born and raised in Alberta. I recently moved to Ontario to complete my Masters' degree and while I miss Alberta and hope to move back when I finish school, I worry that I will not be able to live here again if I am unable to access the healthcare I need. I transitioned as an adult and can say from experience that gender-affirming care is not very easy to access. To get hormones I had to get a referral from my therapist (paid for out of pocket) as well as my family doctor (thankfully I am one of the few people who still has one) so I could see a specialist doctor who could give me the prescription, a process that took over a year. For top surgery I opted to pay for it privately because I was told the waitlist for a consultation was over three years. This was incredibly expensive and used up most of the money I had saved from working over the past 4 years. I am grateful that I had the resources to make this decision, as I know most people simply could not afford it. This is all to say that if anything, gender-affirming care needs to be easier to access, not harder. Despite the challenges, transitioning was one of the best decisions I ever made. I'm more confident and sociable now that I don't hate the sound of my own voice, and I am thankful every single day I get to experience the joy of not wearing a bra or binder. I am happier and more comfortable in my body than I ever imagined I could be, and I'm a better friend, partner, and coworker to the people in my life because of it. Alberta's youth deserve to feel this happy and successful too. Allowing access to gender-affirming care is a small action that means the world to trans people and those who love them.

My trans child came out late in life. When she was growing up ( born 1981) trans was not talked about only ridiculed on trashy talk shows. Four years ago she came out because she had hit a wall and could no longer live an inauthentic existence. She had hidden this part of herself for so long. I’m a baby boomer Mom aged 71 and I had to educate myself as to what being trans meant. From the day she said she was trans our family began a journey as her transition process began. We all made mistakes (eg: saying a wrong pronoun, etc) however we navigated the transition because we held our love and respect for her as a person and honoured her choices. Before the transition I had a child who was successful yet led a somewhat tumultuous life which is not uncommon for a trans person who can’t live their authentic self. Since transitioning I have a grounded, balanced and most importantly a very happy daughter. It’s been a 360 degree turn. I am so happy that being trans is in the open, being trans is talked about, there is scientific evidence and we have health officials whose care of the trans population is evidence based. The Alberta and Saskatchewan (New NB govt are going to reverse policies) governments are harming trans kids and their families all for political fodder. Pollievre will also go after the trans population. I write weekly letters asking where their ethics and humanitarian values are. These are our trans kids and we love each and everyone of you. I’m overwhelmed when I witness how brave you trans people are to navigate a society where a group disdain you. Know you have allies and know we are with you. We will continue to fight for you. Terry B

As a trans youth, school has been a massive source of support for me. Knowing my teachers wouldn't dream of outing me to my parents and would dedicate themselves to providing a safe space for me and trusting my decisions has made it infinitely easier to get up in the mornings. Everything from schoolwork to making friends became easier, as crazy as that sounds, all because I didn't feel so scared anymore and I felt supported for my true self. Having that forcefully taken away because of "parental rights" would be a nightmare, not just for me, but for other children who are going through the same thing; I have never met a transgender youth who refuses to come out to their parents for any reason other than a fear of violence or vehement rejection, so forcing a child to be outed to their parents would only cause even more disasters in the lives of an already vulnerable population. Transgender youth need support and access to help, but this choice of legislation will not provide any support at all, and will instead simply increase barriers to support, further harming the community.

My only grandchild grew up in Texas, and was the sweetest gentlest boy. Not interested in playing with cars and other typical boy toys, but that was ok, we are not a family that puts emphasis on gender expectations. He enjoyed school where his chosen playmates were often girls. Then middle school and puberty happened and the confident happy child turned awkward and shy. The early teens were painful to see, and extremely worrying for his family. Isolated socially except for one or two friends who were also high school misfits, he rarely emerged from his bedroom and confided to a parent that he didn’t see any point in living. Any suggestion of suicidal thoughts in a child is terrifying to parents, and every kind of counselling was tried. We couldn’t understand what was wrong, and thought he might be depressed. Perhaps medication was needed? Antidepressants might have been tried. I don’t know, but nothing helped much. In due course he graduated high school and applied to a University in Canada. We all saw him settled in a fairly pleasant dorm room on campus. It was a boys’ dorm of course, though he didn’t have to share a room. We hoped that he’d enjoy college when he got to know a few people. By Christmas, he came out to his Mom that he was not comfortable being a boy and wanted to transition. This was a bombshell to all of us at first, but very quickly we felt happy about this because now we understood the source of all his unhappiness! Perhaps living with other boys brought on emotional clarity? I will switch pronoun now. She was able to find a doctor at home that started her hormone treatments - since she had already passed puberty, her voice had deepened somewhat and facial hair had emerged. Fortunately she is fair haired and not very hirsute. Shaving is minimal. So far she has no plans for surgery. Seeing her now, you would never mistake her for a boy. Over the following years, I have witnessed a transformation in her, a return of joy. It’s wonderful! If only she could have been helped sooner! I think of how much happier she could have been. Which is why I believe its a good thing for sex education in school to include gender diversity. It’s not a question of sex, really its a question of identity and self acceptance. Talking about these things in a school environment promotes acceptance of difference and so helps prevent bullying. Children that are comfortable in their gender are never going to choose to transition. That is a myth to scare parents, and would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.

When I came out as ftm trans at 16, school became my safe place with supportive teachers and students. At home it became what amongst my family is still referred to as a war. The people that called me mentally ill and in every way they could, tried to convince me not to be trans or that I am not trans, are the same people who support the legislation proposed. It is being presented as protecting kids but as someone who is the trans child of people who support these policies, I can say that listening to, supporting and loving is not included in their side of the conversation. The nuances of being trans are dismissed or ignored. These policies are damaging and will do nothing but further isolate kids who need people around them to give them the space and time to find confidence in who they are. Gender affirming care gave me comfort in my body that I otherwise wouldn’t have. It is personal and private and the government should not be dictating who does and does not have access.

I am a transmasculine, non-binary, genderqueer Edmontonian. I had grown up in a household, a church community, and a province that wouldn’t believe I am who I say I am. When I came out to my parents, they made me get an MRI to see if something was wrong. I knew there was nothing wrong. When I came out at church, I was asked to step down from leading worship. I knew I was still loved and included by God. School was my only safe haven, where I was able to express myself as I am. I personally know the life-saving value in being able to use my correct names and pronouns and getting gender-affirming care when I needed it.

I am a parent of a transgender youth. I want to decide what is best for my child, with the input of experts. I do not want an ill-informed government to make that decision for me. My right as a parent to care for my child will be taken from me. My right to access medical care for my child will be taken from me. I hate it that my child lives in a province where they're not supported.