Within the animal kingdom, there are few images more compellingly grotesque than the Rat King. A cluster of vermin that has been fused together through blood, dirt, and excrement, the Rat King is a harbinger of disease and an omen of pestilence. While the Vancouver School Board’s new policy with regards to students who identify as transgender and non-gender conforming started out as a set of guidelines to ameliorate the development of children who don’t see themselves fitting into the boy-girl paradigm, it’s since the knotted together the city’s ugliest problems: transphobia, anti-Chinese racism, the retrograde values of some immigrant communities, and real estate-related avarice. The controversy has formed the Rat King of Vancouver’s social ills. Let’s start at the top: in the spring, the Vancouver School Board set out to update its policy to support LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) students, which was established in 2004. The proposed update allows students to be called by a name of their self-identified gender (and to be referred to by the pronoun of their choice). Students will also have access to gender-neutral, handicap-accessible washrooms. On a case-by-case basis, they will be allowed to play on the sports team and use the washrooms of the gender they associate themselves with. Advocates of this policy argue that the elevated risk of suicide and self-harm among trans youth is reason enough to enhance their support. In May, the policy was met with concerted opposition from a group led by Cheryl Chang, the president of Lord Byng Secondary’s Parents Action Committee (PAC). Chang argued that the policy required input from medical professionals. She also took issue with the policy that allows students, especially those in primary-school age, to confide with their teachers without the knowledge or consent of their parents. At a widely attended and contentious PAC meeting, Byng parents voted for Chang to withdraw her letter and write a letter of apology to the VSB. The debate didn’t stop there; it changed focus and reeled in other populations and biases. Earlier in June, two school trustees, Ken Denike and Sophia Woo, organized a press conference at a Chinese restaurant, protesting the policy. The city’s ethnic Chinese population was not properly informed about the policy change and thus unable to mobilize and voice their opposition. Furthermore, Denike suggested that, based on conversations from unnamed realtors, the city’s international enrollments in Vancouver schools and property values might decline as a result of the decision. This suggestion is especially explosive given the fact that links between the city’s spiking real-estate prices and Chinese immigration have been deemed racist. Only when the beliefs of some Chinese are threatened, the spectre of property values is invoked. Only when the beliefs of some Chinese are threatened, the spectre of property values is invoked. For Vancouver Chinese, Denike and Woo’s press conference raised a troubling question: Is the Chinese population transphobic or inherently conservative on social issues? The problem with this question is that among the 400,000 people of Chinese ancestry are fourth-generation Chinese-Canadians, Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong immigrants who arrived in the 1990s, and more recent arrivals from Taiwan and Mainland China. Like any diverse population, some Chinese Vancouverites support the VSB policy, some oppose it. To counteract media-generated perceptions, the Georgia Straight even ran an article listing prominent Asian Vancouverites who are gay and trans-friendly (and noted that Chang, while using the Asian surname of her husband, is of European descent). Saying that there is Chinese opposition to LGBTQ+ policy is about as inaccurate and over-generalizing as a newspaper headline that reads, “Ethnic Anglo-Saxon groups are in favour of the Vancouver School Board’s new policy on transgender students.” Like any diverse population, some Chinese Vancouverites support the VSB policy, some oppose it. In the past decade, the clashes between Vancouver’s Chinese population (again, some parts of it) and non-Chinese have shown how cultural insensitivity and political incorrectness can flow in two directions. In 2011, a group of Vancouver condo owners complained when a hospice was planned near their newly built development at the University of British Columbia. They claimed that a culturally imbued fear of ghosts made the hospice’s location undesirable. Their fears were laughed off as the superstitions of a privileged class of foreigners.