Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Holding Multiple Truths

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North

Editor in Chief

Pine boughs decorated with small yellow lights

As the year turns, we’re invited into a season that often arrives wrapped in a package of expectation: celebration, connection, spiritual renewal, reflection. Yet the holidays also hold multiple truths at once, and for many, the season arrives with more complexity than cheer—distance from family, uncertainty about the future, unresolved conflicts, and more questions about spirituality and religion than answers; alongside the not-so subtle pressure to reinvent ourselves on January 1st. This December/January issue of The 44 North looks at the holidays with honesty and curiosity, and joy and hope. Not because everything feels okay, but because to find joy and peace in the holiday season it is not only possible, but necessary, to hold multiple truths at once. To see the world as it is: in all its beautiful messiness. 

This issue, our team explores the realities that shape our well-being at this time of year. Our feature story by Abbigale Kernya examines what it means to spend the holidays away from home—whether by choice, circumstance, or necessity—and how distance reshapes belonging. Abbigale and Helena together take on the pressures of New Year’s resolutions and career planning, challenging the embedded assumption that success and happiness in life can be scheduled like a process, or a destination at which we eventually arrive. The latest Life Outside the Box podcast episode is a powerful and inspiring conversation with Cal Campos, focused on questioning the systems we’re in and having honest conversations about suicide.

We’re also excited to share this issue’s Artist Spotlight, featuring Extended Mic, a community-rooted platform showcasing diverse young creators pushing the boundaries of film and poetry. And in our Book Review, we take a closer look at John Green’s Everything Is Tuberculosis—a deeply human, vulnerable reflection on illness, interconnectedness, and what it means to care for one another in a fragile and inequitable world.

We are honoured to publish a powerful work by Rohit Doel, whose poem and essay on disability justice push us to listen more deeply, to expand our definition of community care. Our Poet’s Corner highlights Terrance Hayes’ “The Same City,” and Mikaela Brewer brings us into the world of social support with a short story about calling 211, asking what trust in community looks like when it’s tested. Plus, we offer a collaborative gift guide from our team—because hope and joy can also taste like a good meal, or arrive as a small, thoughtful gesture.

Lastly, we're excited to be offering our very first essay contest. If you're hoping to submit over the holidays before our January 6th deadline, check out the recording and resource packet from our writing workshop, here.

As we close out another year, we’re not chasing perfection. We’re choosing presence: with ourselves, with each other, and with the complicated realities shaping our world. Whether your holidays are joyful, heavy, chaotic, beautifully quiet, or even all those things at different points, we’re grateful to be there with you on your journey.

Here’s to truth, peace, and possibility!

— Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media

Alberta’s Ban on Trans Women Athletes: On Where The Threat Actually Lives

by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North

Senior Editor

Mikaela Brewer (left) playing college basketball

"It’s not trans women who are the threat—it’s a surveillance-based, misogynist patriarchy. It’s never been about who’s playing the sport—it’s about which men have policing and decision-making power across women’s sports. It’s not about fairness at all. It’s about maintaining a culture of control under the guise of fairness."

As a white, cisgender woman, I had biological advantages playing basketball. But no one threatened my right or ability to exist because of it. I was a bit of a nuisance on the basketball court—in the best way. I’m ~5’10” (probably closer to 6’0” in basketball shoes), but my wingspan is over 6’2,” and I could borrow my 6’4” teammates’ jeans. On defence, I deflected many passes that the other team’s point guard didn’t think I could reach or get to in time. But I did. With such long arms and legs—a “biological advantage”—why didn’t I have to prove my gender to play for Stanford University or Team Canada? Because what’s happening to trans women in sports right now isn’t about biological advantage. It’s about policing women’s bodies. And it always has been.

For our July/August 2024 issue at The 44 North, I wrote a short story titled Hope Tracks, a fictional narrative about two high school students, siblings Lena and Sam, as they prepare for track season. One morning, before their first run of the upcoming school year, the two confront one another in their family kitchen—one sibling is a trans woman, and the other’s curiosity isn’t neutral. The story explores mental health, community, activism, friendships, misinformation, family, high school, and racism. I’d love for you to read it, especially now as trans people—particularly women and non-binary athletes—are violently and invasively attacked and investigated. It’s a vehement myth that this isn’t happening in Canada. It very much is.

Via CBC News: Alberta’s new ban on trans women athletes (12+) will not only require schools, universities and sports clubs to exclude and bar trans women and girls from competing, but report and investigate—via the athlete’s sex on their birth records—eligibility complaints to the government, including the results of the challenge. This ban impacts nearly 90 sports organizations in Alberta. It requires an athlete’s parent or guardian to “confirm in writing that the athlete qualifies under the law to play in a female league.” Boards will be encouraged and empowered to impose “reasonable sanctions” against any “bad faith” challenges launched.

Alberta’s United Conservative Party government says the ban seeks to safeguard the “integrity of female athletic competitions by ensuring women and girls have the opportunity to compete in "biological female-only divisions.”” Further, Linda Blade, a coach and former president of Athletics Alberta, said the ban is “not anti trans, it's not anti-anything. It's pro-women.” Please read more here: Birth records will be key in Alberta's new ban on female trans athletes, regulations show (CBC News), Alberta’s transgender ban in sports exempts visiting out-of-province athletes (Global News), Liberal government 'monitoring' Alberta law banning trans athletes from female sports (National Post). 

These regulations are immeasurably harmful and violent. And they’re not at all “pro women.” In Hope Tracks, Lena shares a quote from Schuyler Bailar, the first trans D1 NCAA men’s athlete: 

“People often forget that in order to exclude trans women, you must police all bodies in the women’s category. Any girl or woman can be accused of being transgender. At what point is a girl “too good,” “too masculine,” or “too tall,” or “too strong,” or “too fast” to be accused of being trans? The attempt to exclude trans women is the legal enforcement of the policing of all women’s bodies. And this disproportionately affects those of colour, especially Black women and girls who already suffer anti-Blackness and misogyny (misogynoir) and are often portrayed as not woman enough due to white supremacy. Ask yourself: Who is ‘woman enough?’ The inclusion of trans girls in girls’ sports does not threaten girls’ sports. Instead, the exclusion of trans girls leads to the destruction of girls’ sport through the enforcement of misogynistic and racist standards of girls’ bodies.”

Further, Violet Stanza’s video excellently and thoughtfully notes that research on “biological advantage,” often applied to sports, comes from the military. Via military data, after two years on HRT, trans women raced the mile similarly to cis women, and after four years, matched max sit-ups in a minute. 

Importantly, Stanza asked another question that haunts me: will we only accept trans women in sports if they’re not competitive—if they’re ‘bad?’ Is this what we should be telling trans women—and because this fight isn’t about who is more ‘pro-women’—all women? That they should only ever aspire to mediocrity so as not to be ‘transvestigated?’ 

There will always be biological advantages in sports—height, weight, wingspan, shoulder width, etc. And truthfully, the real threat is embedded in the anti-trans rhetoric and catch phrase: “Keep men out of women’s sports.” It’s not trans women who are the threat—it’s a surveillance-based, misogynist patriarchy. It’s never been about who’s playing the sport—it’s about which men have policing and decision-making power across women’s sports. It’s not about fairness at all. It’s about maintaining a culture of control under the guise of fairness.

So let me answer Schuyler’s question: when did I feel afraid or threatened? It was when my sexuality was pried into, my food intake monitored, or my body fat and weight weaponized. It was when I was reminded of my ‘selfish’ choice to clash being an athlete with being an ‘acceptable’ woman, ‘jeopardizing’ motherhood. It’s each of these wrapping around our throats, choking what women can do and who women can be into such a thin straw that it becomes a feeding tube. We may have forgotten it’s there because we can’t taste it, thinking we’re safe and protected. We’re not. And especially for those of us who are current or former athletes, we have to speak up.

Reflections on the Sexual Assault Trial of Former World Junior Hockey Players: More Than Just a Few 'Bad Apples'​

by Gillian Smith-Clark

A blurry photo negative of five men in suits

"Layered underneath that fabric of an unhealthy masculine ideal is the broader objectification and commodification of women and gender expansive people, and a culture that too often confuses coercion with consent." ​​

The exact number remains unverified, but a group of young men got the text from Michael McLeod to come to a London, Ontario hotel room that night. E.M. testified at trial that as many as eleven men were in the room over the course of the evening; the Crown’s argument stated that ten showed up. The trial record does not fix a single, undisputed number for how many got the text or how many were present in a way that all sides accept – what we do know is that there was a group text sent to multiple players: some responded, others didn’t. It has also been reported that McLeod, after having consensual sex with E.M., went out into the hallway of the hotel that night and invited more people into the room. 

No one involved, as far as we know, recognized that this could be a situation where a young woman might need help, that she might have found herself in a situation she was not anticipating, might have felt blindsided – possibly scared and overwhelmed in an environment where her judgment was impaired by alcohol, was surrounded by men who were not only strangers to her, but physically intimidating. 

There are so many lingering questions about both the events of that night and the subsequent trial and verdict – the lack of empathy by the judge and prevalence of victim blaming and shaming (e.g. Justice Carroccia’s petty and demeaning finding that E.M.’s evasive response to a mistake she had made about her weight was “telling,”) that was present both at trial and in the verdict; the noticeable absence of expert testimony on trauma; the gruelling nine days of testimony that E.M. was put through on the stand, a judicial system that seems incapable of handling sexual assault cases well and a 91-page final written decision that reeks of bias and internalized miso

gyny.  

Further, a crucial and haunting question is: Out of those men who didn’t respond or participate, why did none question or intervene in any way? Reach out for help or advice from a friend, coach or parent? And by extension, how can we work as individuals and as a society to ensure that future outcomes, in similar situations, end differently? 

The question of the young men who did nothing to help is one that immediately invokes a toxic mixture of strong emotions – sadness, fear, revulsion, anger, contempt – yet understanding the motivation behind the thought processes of the men involved can provide at least some insight into how to change behaviour, change culture, and offer a measure of hope for the future. 

Understanding the ‘Why’

Beyond the bystander effect, fear of social consequences and moral disengagement, we live in a cultural landscape that often characterizes an ideal vision of masculinity as one of power, dominance, aggression, emotional suppression, and impulsivity. Pete Hegseth articulated this philosophy perfectly in a recent speech to U.S. generals, where he describes ideal leadership culture as defined by ‘aggressiveness and risk-taking.’  Hegseth went on to say, “[…] an entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that quote, our “diversity is our strength”.” 

Layered underneath that fabric of an unhealthy masculine ideal is the broader objectification and commodification of women and gender expansive people, and a culture that too often confuses coercion with consent.  Underneath that layer, at the base of everything, is a cultural foundation where boys are inundated from early childhood with the message that they must suppress and lock down their own emotions or risk rejection from those they depend on and love. Activist and writer Jeff Perera speaks about this phenomenon particularly well in a recent podcast episode for The 44 North, “Moving From Harmful to Helpful Ideas of Manhood” alongside his written companion essay, “Five Truths on Not Buying into the Manosphere Bait and Switch.”

 

The result, on that particular evening in London in 2018, was that the text received probably didn’t trigger any alarm bells or uneasiness because this type of behaviour is not only normalized but expected. And too often, it is still celebrated.

These were young, male, elite athletes who were raised in an environment where objectifying and commodifying women was so typical, so woven into the fabric of their society, that they didn’t see it as alarming – they probably didn’t see it at all. Therefore, there was no cause for alarm or an impulse to intervene.

One of the many unintended consequences of boys and young men being systematically taught emotional suppression (and often punished and shamed for certain types of emotional expression, e.g. ‘boys don’t cry’) from an early age, is that they also learn to subconsciously ‘switch off’ their feelings, the prerequisite for an ability to switch off cognition, critical thinking and their humanity in the moment. That foundational mechanism can allow an otherwise intelligent, kind, talented young human to ignore any alarm bells that might be sounding in their heads. This isn’t a case of ‘a few bad apples’, but a foundational problem requiring systemic change. 

Taking Action: What makes a difference?

It starts with us. As individuals and as a society, we play a foundational role in shaping how boys and all genders understand masculinity — what it means to be a “good man,” how to express emotion, how to relate to others with empathy and respect, and how to take responsibility for our actions. Together, we can build a new vision of healthy masculinity — one that values wisdom, integrity, moral courage and thoughtfulness. 

A simple place to start is by celebrating and recognizing the right qualities in all genders – by recognizing our own humanity so that we can see it in others – and by finding everyday role models who exhibit strength through emotional intelligence, compassion, and moderation.  

Further Reading

• One Night in London by Katie Strang, Dan Robson, and Ian Mendes, NY Times

• On Healthy Masculinity by Helena Nikitopoulos and Asante Haughton

• Full Written Verdict

• Analyzing Justice Maria Carroccia’s Hockey Canada Verdict by Sean Fine and David Ebner, The Globe and Mail

• The Skeletons in Hocket Canada’s Closet are our Own, by Asante Haughton, The 44 North

Resources

• Higher Unlearning

• Re: Masculine

• Next Gen Men