Article written for Carleton University’s J-School in the fall of 2020

[Unpublished]

After years of being in the wrong body, Aida Kebick emerged from her hometown and hasn’t looked back since moving away from the small town of Beamsville to the city of Hamilton.

As a current undergraduate student at McMaster University, Kebick says she feels right at home. “Going to university and actually seeing other LGBTQ people, people who have experienced what I’ve experienced, is definitely a breath of relief.” The shift from her old life to one in the city has, in a way, granted her a clean slate.

“I started medically transitioning right before university started,” Kebick explains. “I made really close friends, like, the first week. And it was much easier for them to, you know, catch onto my pronouns because they never knew me as a ‘he.’ They only knew me as a ‘she.’”

With a population of nearly 7,000, Beamsville is a rural area encompassed by farmlands and rustic homes. Infrastructure is at a minimum, although residents can get their taste for modern living through Beamsville’s main street. The village’s population has come to grow and, according to a 2016 census by Statistics Canada, should currently be at over 11,384.

Kebick was assigned as male at birth and would later, in her teen years, begin her gender transition. Kebick says her experience as someone who is transgender was shaped by the community’s religious mentality. Moreover, as Beamsville has a high concentration of senior residents, she finds that this factor resulted in frequent gossip that would spread between everyone in town.

Kebick is reminded of what generated the push towards leaving Beamsville. “I think that’s why the town felt so claustrophobic, almost. I didn’t feel accepted because so much of the population was older and doesn’t understand LGBTQ issues.” The priority of religion is also a driver for transphobic beliefs across Beamsville. Growing up, Kebick had been enrolled in Catholic schools, where she experienced the claustrophobic feelings she mentions before.

Transphobia and the rejection of transgender rights occurs amongst many groups and, in particular, within Christian communities. Especially in rural areas, religion takes a place as one of the many catalysts of transphobia.

Within the fog of any small town’s makings, the few individuals who don’t identify with their gender assigned at birth can be overshadowed. Along with the lack of affirmation and support offered to these individuals, medical and mental health resources are far out of reach, as rural communities are also spread further away from bigger, more progressive cities.

In 2019, the Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC) in Vancouver, B.C. conducted a survey about gender identity in Canadian youth. Out of the 923 transgender and non-binary youth across Canada who participated, 149 were localized in rural areas. From these participants, about 40 per cent said they live in their felt gender only part of the time and 13 per cent said they never do. As a result of where some transgender individuals live, their options towards bettering the relationship to their gender identity are severely limited.

Amy O’Leary, a representative for Trans Lifeline, a non-profit organization that provides expertly sourced resources and a support hotline for transgender individuals across North America, has recently started its Canadian Resource Mapping project. Through this initiative, which is set to begin in spring of 2021, O’Leary aims to better train the organization’s operators on the differences in healthcare between Canada and the United States.

“I’m building a huge map of every Canadian, trans-friendly resource in each province,” O’Leary explains. “What we’re aiming for is also including a guide for these American volunteers on how to discuss healthcare options for Canadian callers, which can be a unique challenge.”

Trans Lifeline predominantly relies on volunteers to manage its support and crisis hotline. To ensure that callers receive the best aid, operators must be transgender or non-binary themselves, as their experiences allow them to better serve those who contact the organization. “For volunteers with no [operator] experience, there’s about 20 to 30 hours, or month, of intensive courses on trans medicine, on inclusivity, on social work, on race, and the intersections between race and gender,” O’Leary adds.

While all calls received are anonymous and untraceable, O’Leary explains that based on information sometimes revealed during conversations, the general locations from which these calls originate can be deduced. “I’d say 50 to 60 per cent of our Canadian callers are from … the big five or six Canadian cities. The rest are either living in the outer communities of those cities, or they’re living in very remote areas.”

The phone calls coming from rural regions spotlight transgender issues that are generally not as prevalent for individuals living in metropolitan areas. O’Leary focuses particularly on medical access. “We get a lot of Canadian callers who say, ‘Hey, I’m about to run out of my medicine, so what’s going to happen to me?’ ”

In 2017, a study was conducted in Nova Scotia by medical researchers Ella Vermeir, Lois A. Jackson, and Emily Gard Marshall. The study found that the fear of transphobia in rural health centres is much greater than in urban ones. Moreover, metropolitan areas hold greater tolerance for transgender expression in comparison to rural settings.

“When it comes to those rural communities, finding medications is challenging,” O’Leary says. “Traveling for basic medical checkups, like when you first start hormones, means seeing your doctor every two to six weeks for a couple of years. For people who live in rural areas, they might have to fly to see their doctor.”

O’Leary continues by saying, “These are very unique issues faced by rural trans people in Canada. Furthermore, there’s no infrastructure out there, so if they do have a health emergency, and the person doesn’t know what to do with the trans person, and they kind of freak out because of that, which happens, the person might not get very good care.”

Additionally, while living in a rural area, transgender people are at risk of the consequences that come with expressing their true gender expression to those around them. “Small, rural communities do have an issue of having very tight-knit groups, where everybody knows everything about everybody,” O’Leary says, shaking her head. “Some trans people do face the threat of being outed, and then ostracized from the rural community, maybe losing access to some of those resources that are sought after.”

When Kebick was still living in Beamsville, these fears frequently persisted. Now that she sees her hometown from the perspective of living in the city, Kebick says she hopes for a change in the access transgender people in small towns have to the resources necessary for gender affirmation. “How amazing would it be to have LGBTQ or trans support groups, whether it be in school or Town Hall, that can be run by someone like me who has experience?”

Her hopes for the future of transgender resource accessibility are similar to Trans Lifeline’s objectives, which achieves Kebick’s idea over anonymous phone calls. “It can really help people feel comforted and acknowledged, and help them know that they’re valid, that there are people around them who experienced the exact same thing,” Kebick explains.

“I think that’s a good first step in helping trans youth and LGBTQ youth in small towns feel more accepted in such a claustrophobic environment.”