Jo Bartosch

Guest Columnist

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ON A GREY Tuesday afternoon in the quiet Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar aimed a gun at his mother Jennifer and stepbrother, Emmett. He killed them both, then headed to the local secondary school and opened fire before turning the weapon on himself. By nightfall, at least six were dead and 25 more were wounded.

At the time of writing, 12-year-old Maya Gebala, shot in the head and neck, remains in hospital, fighting for her life. As the authorities were scrambling to respond, police issued an active-shooter alert describing the suspect as a “female with brown hair in a dress”.

Early reports from the BBC to Reuters repeated the description. But there’s a crucial detail that has since come to light. Jesse wasn’t like the other girls. Because Jesse was male.

An omertà seems to have descended on officialdom; few are willing to say aloud that, far from the traditional portrayal of trans people as eternal victims, an opposite-sex identity is, in some troubled young men at least, a warning sign.

Local police chief Dwayne McDonald certainly seemed reluctant to acknowledge it. At a hastily arranged press conference, a journalist asked whether the suspect was known to police and if there was a history of mental health problems.