FAQ
Gegi is an acronym of gender expression (GE) and gender identity (GI). As researchers, when we write about these human rights grounds, we often use these acronyms to save words. One day we were talking about our research and began saying them out loud. We realized that GE + GI = Gegi!
No. Gegi.ca does not provide legal advice for specific situations, and does not advise anyone about their individual experiences of discrimination, their gender identity, or their gender expression. People can contact us (see Q9 below) when they see something that needs updating, but Gegi.ca does not offer advice to individuals. On Gegi’s future sibling website (law.gegi.ca – coming in fall 2021), we hope to share resources on where you can access legal advice.
Gegi.ca lets youth who may be experiencing gender expression or gender identity discrimination know that they are not the problem, and that it’s likely that school rules, procedures or other structures might be the problem instead. In doing so, the project actively supports access to justice. We encourage every student visitor to Gegi.ca to identify a supportive adult (see Strand D2 of The Gegi Curriculum) who can walk beside them as they self-advocate. We hope this is their parent or guardian, which is obviously ideal, but research has repeatedly shown that many of the youth who might face gender identity discrimination, in particular (because they are transgender), may not be parentally supported.
The Gegi Curriculum is a guiding document created by the Gegi.ca team in consultation with a group of experts on gender diversity in education, and gender diversity and the law. The Gegi Curriculum will guide the creation of a suite of tools that Ontario K-12 students, their families, and/or their teachers can use toward successful advocacy at school. Watch for these on Gegi.ca this summer and into the fall!
If you are an educator and wish to create your own resources to support self-advocacy skill development, whether in relation to gender diversity or more broadly, we hope The Gegi Curriculum is useful and offer it for your use.
All of the information on your school board’s student-facing Gegi.ca page is equally relevant to you in advocating for your kid’s human rights. As an adult, there is also likely relevant information on your board’s staff-facing Gegi.ca page, such as helpful resources to share with your kid’s teachers. Above all, we recommend reminding your kid – whether they are a cisgender (non-transgender) girl experiencing persistent and unaddressed gender expression harassment for dressing ‘like a boy,’ a transgender boy prevented from accessing the boy’s washroom, or a nonbinary transgender kid who is constantly misgendered – that they are not the problem, and you know that, over and over again.
Yes. Gegi.ca is a website on the public internet that compiles and translates publicly-available information, and creates advocacy tools that K-12 students, their families and/or their teachers can use if they choose to do so.
Once per visit, you will be asked if you would like to sign up to receive infrequent updates about Gegi.ca and our forthcoming resources as they come online. We might also provide an update about a legislative change or a new school board policy. Saying no has no impact on your access to the website.
Gegi takes your privacy seriously and at all times complies with applicable privacy laws in Ontario, Canada. You do not need to share any information with Gegi to access the information and resources on this site. Everything is 100% publicly and freely accessible – and it always will be. Providing your email address doesn’t give you access to anything more than what is publicly available on Gegi.ca; it only means you will receive infrequent updates about Gegi.ca and our forthcoming resources as they come online, or an update about a legislative change or a new school board policy.
Gegi will never share your email address with anyone and we will not send you any updates that are not about Gegi.ca or law.gegi.ca. You can unsubscribe at any time.
We do not collect any information about individual visitors. Like most websites, we use Google Analytics to track how many visitors we receive and how they use the website. Because we have separate pages for each board’s students and each board’s staff, standard analytics help us to infer which school boards might be seeing increases (or, over time, decreases) in potential experiences of gender expression or gender identity discrimination. This is information that we intend to share with school boards to support their work.
We have created a Bonfire campaign with t-shirts, a mask, a tote bag and a mug. The purpose of the Bonfire campaign is to help raise awareness about this knowledge mobilization project as well as gender identity and gender expression human rights, which are held by every single Ontarian in provincially-mandated areas of life like schools, regardless of one’s age. Due to Bonfire’s policies, we cannot set our profit at 0% but we have set it as low as Bonfire allows us to for a specific product. The percentage of our profit changes based on how many items have been purchased. As of June 15th 2021, Gegi.ca is receiving .03 cents for every mug and .02 cents for every t-shirt purchased through Bonfire.
We saved our favourite question for last. Gegi the Unicorn makes us laugh, a lot, and Gegi is a fountain of joy even in hard times. Humour and joy have been strategies that queer and trans communities have used for generations to resist and reject discrimination, harassment and violence, and to take care of each other. This is why the unicorn.
