Aidan Gowland was thrown out of his home when he came out as trans to his family. Now he's an advocate for queer and trans homeless youth. Photo by Ryan English.
For Aidan Gowland, coming-out was a cinch.
Gowland, who was originally born as a girl, first came out as a lesbian. He says it was only later, when he opened up about his trans-identity, that he encountered resistance from his family.
“My parents were always very supportive and we had family jokes,” he said. “When I came out as trans, however, my mom was not supportive anymore. She was ashamed, confused and felt humiliated.”
Gowland, who grew up in Toronto, says he struggled in school and life at home became unbearable. Dealing with explaining his identity to his mother, he says, was something he could no longer handle. A week after his 18th birthday, without a place to live, he decided to leave home.
Homelessness is disproportionately higher for queers living in downtown Toronto. Homophobia and transphobia is very common in the shelter system and young queer people find themselves more and more turning to the streets.
Without access to stable housing, Gowland says he barely ate, slept or showered. After couch-surfing for a week, he came home one night in the middle of Feb. to find himself locked out of his friend’s apartment.
“I had no idea she was still at work, so I gave up when I was hypothermic and had a lot of frostbite,” he said. “I ended up at a shelter around four in the morning after having waited for a friend to answer the door for four hours.”
For the first three months he was in the shelter, Gowland identified as queer and people assumed he was a lesbian. He says this protected him from the sexual harassment “that was a daily occurrence for females in the house.”
It wasn’t until a violent experience that happened outside the shelter that Gowland decided to come out as trans.
“I came out after I was sexually assaulted on my way home from work one night, since the assault specifically targeted my trans identity,” he said. “One of the shelter staff, who I felt quite close to and really trusted, found me in bed the next morning as a complete mess, and we talked later and I explained.”
Following the assault, Gowland insisted on having his own room in the shelter due to safety concerns. Despite his repeated attempts, the shelter denied his requests. With the assistance of Supporting Our Youth, an organization aimed at providing employment and housing opportunities to queer youth, he was able to appeal the shelter’s decision and gain access to his own room.
When Gowland decided to undergo hormone replacement therapy, he was required to adhere to a strict, low-cholesterol diet. While the shelter accommodated other dietary restrictions, it refused to acknowledge his as valid. Fortunately, he did not have to return to the streets and eventually moved back with his family.
Ilona Alex Abramovich is a Phd candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto. Her focus is specifically on queer homelessness in Toronto. Abramovich says that most queer and questioning young people she has worked with are from outside the city and learn of available services through word of mouth. She says the experience of living on the streets and in shelters can be more difficult for young queers than it is for their straight counterparts.
Many young, homeless queer people, Abramovitch says, aren’t from Toronto and are unaware of what services are available to them. She says youth who have been kicked out of their homes for their sexuality may have greater difficulty coming-out on the street as a result.
Abramovich says recent studies indicate there are up to 20,000 queer people living on the streets of Toronto each year. Approximately 40 per cent of these youth identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or transsexual. Having grown up in Toronto, she says she was surrounded by homelessness and it was her own coming-out experience that helped her make the connection.
“I had a really rough coming-out experience,” she said. “Because of that, I became very interested in the relationship between being queer and homelessness because I realized just how intertwined they are. They really can’t be separated.”
Abramovich says part of the solution is to open an LGBTQ-specific shelter. She says that young, queer homeless people will simply refuse to sleep in some shelters for fear of homophobic and transphobic violence.
“This is an emergency situation that people are ignoring,” she said. “I’ve spoken with youth who say they feel safer sleeping in the park than in the shelter system.”
Michael Erickson is leading the drive for Toronto's first emergency shelter for queer and trans youth. Photo courtesy of Michael Erickson.
Michael Erickson is a high school teacher and social activist who is rallying to open an LGBTQ shelter in downtown Toronto. He also sat on the board of directors at the Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans Youth Line and understands the barriers young queer people face to safe housing. He says for young queers, shelters can be a more dangerous situation than “the homes they are struggling to stay in.”
“It shouldn’t be (a choice between) horrible situation A, or horrible situation B,” he said. “There should be some options.”
Erickson says young queers who are homeless and under-housed find unique ways of surviving within the shelter system.
“Sometimes we know if youth are selling drugs, then that gives them protection against homophobic and transphobic violence,” he said. “But a 16-year-old shouldn’t have to choose to sell drugs to be safe in the shelter.”
Erickson says he has over 100 organizations endorsing the shelter and hopes it will be up and running within three years.
Gowland, who has worked with Erickson, is perhaps his biggest supporter.
“I have had friends who were the victim of negligence and oppression the same as I was,” he said. “But I’ve known others who were sexually or physically assaulted in their shelter, or on the streets, and although each of those cases were addressed appropriately, they were events that shouldn’t have happened in the first place and wouldn’t have happened, I believe, in an LGBT shelter.”