I am Canadian, not thanks to any particular choice on my part. In June 1995, I was born in a hospital in Kelowna, B.C., to parents who happened to be Canadian. My birth certificate and passport have a maple leaf on them in the same way they have my name and gender marker — decisions made by borders and cherry-picked aspects of biology.

As a trans and non-binary person, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as Canadians reckon with threats to our sovereignty posed by U.S. president Donald Trump — and as transgender rights face threats from bad actors here and globally. I’ve watched my community of cisgender neighbours loudly and proudly double down on their Canadianness in recent months — and it’s not dissimilar from how trans people affirm our identities every day.

When it comes to gender or being Canadian, it’s not about the borders we were born within or our birth-certificate markers. It’s about what we do and how we live our lives. This embrace of self-determinism is what makes being trans — and being Canadian — so remarkable. In their seminal 1990 book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler argues gender is performative in that it only exists so long as we say it does. Gender is, Butler argues, an act of doing rather than being. Being Canadian isn’t all that different: it’s about the doing, rather than an act of being. A trans person might bind their chest, march in a Pride parade, wear high heels or grow a beard to perform gender. How different is that from wearing a Sidney Crosby Team Canada jersey to perform patriotism?

We call ourselves Canadian. We sing our national anthem. We buy local at the grocery store. We cheer for the Blue Jays (begrudgingly). We say “sorry,” drink Tim Hortons and believe the Rocky Mountains are one of the most beautiful places on Earth. We embrace being nice — both at surface level and as a core value. We welcome our neighbours. We champion socialized health care, where getting sick doesn’t mean going bankrupt. We celebrate our country’s peacemaking abroad, and we relish in slapping a Canada flag on our backpacks and getting a warm reception almost everywhere we go. In doing all that, we are performing Canadianness. 

This extends beyond those of us born here. What is the process of applying for citizenship if not performance? You must prove your commitment to being Canadian through time, a test and a pledge to the monarch. If you choose to be here and perform Canadianness, you get to be Canadian. We are Canadian because we say we are. And, just like with gender, we choose the parts of that we embrace and perform. Many trans people identify strongly with aspects of binary gender even while acknowledging its problems and limitations. Many Canadians rightfully acknowledge the anti-Indigenous sentiment at the root of identifying so strongly with a colonial state.

There is a movement within conservatism that aims to separate queer and trans people from freedom of expression. On the first day of his second presidency, Trump declared a “common sense revolution” that excludes everyone outside his two “biological genders.” Politicians like Trump seek to restrict our freedom to exist — prompting many to reportedly flee here — in the same way his threats to Canadian sovereignty seek to do the same to being Canadian.

But ultimately, they can’t take away who we are. When it comes to my gender, I’ve found my way to a different place than what was decided in that Kelowna hospital 30 years ago. But when it comes to being Canadian, I’ve come to embrace all that it can be.

People move here because they want to be Canadian. Trans people transition because we want to exist as something else. We are boundless possibilities and self-determination. We are true, we are strong and, most of all, we are free.