I'm close to the edge? Okay. I'll just say one more little piece, then.
I hope you ask me questions about health issues, because I'm very up to date on the disputes around the DSM, around the upcoming ICD, the international compendium of diseases, and on those discussions at both a medical level and within the trans community.
So I welcome those questions, but I'm not much use around legal questions, I'm sorry.
Finally, one thing for marginalized groups is that when we are growing up, we don't have models for what it might be like to grow up to be a person like me. I had this very touching experience a couple of years ago, at a book launch. A very young person, maybe 16 or 17, came up to me very shyly—and brashly, the way teenagers do—and he looked vaguely familiar. He said to me, “I hope it's okay to say this, but we live in the same neighbourhood, and I saw you going through your changes. I'd see you in the grocery store, and I'd see you waiting for the streetcar, and I'd think, well, that's okay then; when I grow up, I can just be me.”
I can't speak to the legal importance, but I can speak to the symbolic importance of the Government of Canada saying that transgender people have human rights like everyone else. I can speak to the power that might have for a community that struggles with discrimination.
Thank you.