A few years ago I gave a workshop Algonquin College’s Pride Centre about transmisogyny. Fast-foward a few years later, and I got to revisit the topic as I was asked to give the workshop again, this time at Project Acorn, a summer camp for 16-24 year old queer & trans youth or from rainbow families.
I found out about Project Acorn when I was 25, so I never got to be a participant. Most of my friends have, however, and the experiences they shared of their time at that camp was always glowing. So too was the case for my other friends who went there to facilitate workshops and support the youth-led annual event.
Finally going after all these years, albeit as a workshop facilitator, I can see what they meant. Uplifting community building events. Laughter. There was a dramatic reading of memes when I was there. There were workshops on decolonization and family building.
When it came time to make the slides for this group, I started from scratch. A lot had changed since I had last given this. Language that once needed to be explained, like “cisgender”, was now in everyone’s vocabulary. There was much more awareness about transphobia as a whole. And all the stats and cultural references I had were dated. I also did territorial acknowledgements now that went beyond saying how we were on unceded territory, a tokenistic gesture at best when it was repeated without further advancement of dialog.
The workshop seemed to have gone okay. Feedback was generally positive, though I thought I could have done a better job of promoting dialog, pulling from people’s experiences, and getting a discussion going.
I concluded giving a two-part workshop at Algonquin this week to teach coding. The events were free and open to everyone.
It all materialized pretty fast. Ottawa already had had a few cool events specifically for queer & trans people, including a self-defense class and all bodies swim day. What about going beyond that? What could I enable? I had coding skills, and so what about making that happen?
I asked people on Facebook for their thoughts. It was well received. A post and message later, I had one friend generously grant free space at the Algonquin Pride Centre and another two graciously offer to volunteer. As an experiment, I decided to make the event open to everyone, not just queer & trans folk.
Over a hundred people on Facebook said they wanted to come – far above the twenty seat capacity. A producer from CBC reached out to talk about the workshop (nothing came of it.) In the end I had to create an event on Eventbrite to manage the numbers.
The people who attended the workshop seemed to like it, with almost everyone coming back for the second week. To my relief, the workshop was attended by folks largely under-represented in STEM. It was the best outcome I was hoping for when I opened it up.
If you’re reading this and are interested in the material, you can view the two sets of slides here:
To navigate the slides, use the right arrow (or swipe) to go to the next chapter, and use the down arrow (or swipe) to go to the next page in a chapter.
The 2015 curriculum included content about consent, online bullying, and LGBT realities. None of these were present in the 1998 curriculum, which was devised years before same-sex marriage became legal, when the Ontario government still funded conversion therapy for trans youth, and before Google or even MySpace were founded.
Progressive Conservatives have maintained that this move had nothing to do with homophobia and transphobia. This article demonstrates those assertions to be false.
“Christian right leader Charles McVety, who is also part of the coalition, said it is unconscionable to teach children as young as eight years old gender identity and sexual orientation. He accused the Premier of listening to “special interest groups with an agenda,” including former education minister Kathleen Wynne, who is openly gay.”
The group Ontario Parents and Students Strike put a notification letter online for parents to send to schools. The group also operates a Facebook page, “Parents & students on strike: one week no school,” which has more than 7,500 likes.
The notification letter says the parents object to curriculum material, which it says is “age-inappropriate” and does not “align with the principles and beliefs of our family, and thousands of other families across Ontario.”
Homophobia and transphobia were rife in the opposition to the curriculum. As one parent explained at the time:
Kimberly Cormier, another mother at the protest, told VICE News it’s the parts of the curriculum that discuss gender identity and LGBTQ issues that trouble her most. “We don’t need to tell the kids about transsexual, two-spirited-ness. Actually, I don’t want to use this terminology because the kids are present here today. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to protect them from,” she said.
“It will teach Gay-Trans propaganda starting in grade 1 [age 6]. Destroy the idea of gender, natural law, heterosexual family normalcy. You choose your gender.”
In 2012, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo introduced Toby’s Act to recognize gender identity and expression in the Ontario Human Rights Act. She had introduced it since 2007 but it never became law. Liberal MPP Yasir Naqvi of the Liberals and PC MPP Christine Elliott co-sponsored the 2012 bill. This time, it passed.
I strongly support an updated curriculum that takes into account changing attitudes and the world in which children now dwell. They are being asked to understand challenging topics in ways their parents were not. It is important to have sex education to combat homophobia, and raise important issues like consent, mental health, bullying, and gender identity. The world has changed and so should the curriculum.
In the PC leadership race, there were four contenders. Two were socially progressive: Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney. Two were socially conservative: Doug Ford and Tanya Granic Allen.
“What else in education today needs improving that you’ve got your eye on?” asked Paikin. “Sex ed isn’t going to improve math scores, so tell me about something else.”
Granic Allen’s reply: “Maybe they will focus more on math if they’re not talking about anal sex in the classroom.”
Throughout the leadership debates, Doug Ford and Tanya Granic Allen became a team, often supporting each other’s points in opposition to the two institutional candidates. Granic Allen had little chance to win the PC leadership but nonetheless had a base, with her support critical for Ford’s leadership race win.
Following the election, supporters and opponents made their voices heard.
A petition was put together by supporters of the 2015 curriculum asking the government not to repeal the updated sex ed. Over 50,000 signatures were collected.
Meanwhile, opponents were vocal too. The National Post ran an op-ed by Barbara Kay on July 3rd advocating for the repeal:
“Much of what children are learning about transgenderism today, at a very tender age, is not science-based, but activist-dictated theory that can result in psychological harm.”
“The doubt-encouraging “Genderbread” charts, which attempt to explain differences between gender identity, sexual preference and biological sex and have been brought into Ontario classrooms by some teachers, should disappear altogether.”
“If they believe in social-engineering theories, let progressive parents teach their kids “social construction” and “gender fluidity” at home.”
“The sex-ed component is going to be reverted back to the manner in which it was prior to the changes that were introduced by the Liberal government,” Ms. Thompson said. “We’re going to be moving very swiftly in our consultations, and I will be sharing with you our process in the weeks to come.”
There were protests by supporters of the sex ed curriculum. Educators, such as the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, released statements opposing the repeal. However, it is telling to look at the views post-repeal of those who wanted that sex ed curriculum gone.
“The curriculum promotes the idea that there are more than two genders and that gender identity is socially constructed.”
“A curriculum that teaches gender fluidity is misleading and will impair a child’s ability to have an accurate understanding of the world.”
On CBC News, Barbara Kay was invited to speak on the sex ed repeal. She stated that teaching about gender identity was child abuse. On Twitter, she also alleged that trans people were “body snatching kids”:
A National Post op-ed by Marni Soupcoff cited the article “The New Sex-Ed Curriculum Would Have Saved Me From Torment Growing Up” by a gay man and the opinion of a dad who lost his daughter to bullying that “the 2015 sex ed curriculum could have saved my daughter” when she called such responses to sex ed “sad and misguided.”
“We know they need to learn about consent,” she said at the legislature. “We know they need to learn about cyber safety, we know they need to learn about gender identity and appreciation. But we also know that the former Liberal government’s consultation process was completely flawed.”
A short time later, Thompson told reporters that only a portion of the curriculum will be rolled back, not the entire document.
“What we’ll be looking at is the developing sexual relations,” she said. “That’s the part in the curriculum that we’ll be taking a look at.”
“While these consultations occur, we are reverting to the full health and physical education curriculum that was last taught in 2014.”
As the backlash continued, Lisa Thompson attempted to present the 1998 curriculum as the “2014 curriculum”, reflecting the last year the 1998 curriculum was taught. This was presumably to improve the optics of substituting the 2015 curriculum with one from 1998. Take this interview with her on July 26th:
Q: Okay straighten out the confusion about what curriculum is going to be taught in September?
A: In September teachers will be using the 2014 curriculum.
Q: But that’s based on the 1998 curriculum, it’s the same curriculum is it not?
A: Teachers are going to be familiar with the curriculum they are using because they utilized it in 2014.
Q: But it’s the 1998 curriculum. There is no such thing as the 2014 curriculum is there? Or can you provide that for us?
A: What we are going to be doing is asking teachers to use the 2014 curriculum as we embark on the most comprehensive consultation this province has ever seen when it comes to education. We made a campaign promise to respect parents and we are going to be doing that.
Q: There is no such thing as the 2014 curriculum. It’s the same curriculum that was taught in 1998 am I not correct?
A: The curriculum in 2014, teachers will be very used to…
“The requirement is that the curriculum be followed,” Elliott said. “But of course there’s lots of student questions that come to teachers every day. Of course, a teacher is able to have a private discussion with a student to answer the questions.”
When asked if those discussions could include topics in the now-repealed curriculum, Elliott said teachers should help put students in touch with appropriate resources.
The government did not appear to provide any further rationalization for rescinding the sex ed curriculum in the weeks following its repeal, beyond reiterating the allegation that there was insufficient consultation. The government did not conduct any consultation before replacing the curriculum with twenty-year old information.
Conclusion
By this point, it is clear that the repeal of the sex ed curriculum was rooted in homophobia and transphobia.
The repeal was popularized by a virulent homophobe and transphobe who ran for the PC leadership on that issue alone. Her low probability of winning meant her base was up for grabs with whoever she endorsed. Ford, the other social conservative in the leadership run, became that person. He adopted the same rhetoric as Granic Allen vowing to “scrap Kathleen Wynne’s ideological sex-ed curriculum and replace it with one that is age-appropriate“. Ford won the leadership race. Then he was elected Premier, and followed through with the repeal.
The media coverage of conservative voices following the repeal further indicated that the repeal was motivated by the inclusion of content pertinent to trans experiences. Inclusion of this material was consistently presented as harmful or abusive to children.
PC MPPs can deny that transphobia and homophobia had any part to play, citing “process” instead, but that would be false. Ignorance and prejudice towards sexual and gender minorities was the leading reason for its repeal.
Update – November 2018
The resolution passed on November 17th, 2018.
On November 17th 2018, during the convention for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, delegates passed a resolution introduced by Tanya Granic Allen that “an Ontario PC Government will remove the teaching and promotion of ‘gender identity theory’ from Ontario schools and its curriculum.” Two days later, Doug Ford stated he was “not moving forward with that.” Ford did not have to. His government had already removed all trans-related content from the curriculum.
In the intervening months, two lawsuits have also been launched. The first was initiated in August by six families with an eleven year old trans youth as the lead applicant. The second was put forward in September by a pair of trans teens. Their outcome is still pending as of the time of this writing.
This article is actually in favour of anti-discrimination policies. This is about frustrations around poor implementations.
Anti-discrimination policies are like degrees from fake universities: they look good on paper but you wouldn’t want people’s lives to depend on just that.
I have three observations to share:
People don’t believe in discrimination they don’t experience
Stated differently, the obstacles that they can’t experience aren’t seen as discriminatory
Thus the removal of these barriers is deemed unfair, an imposition, and divisive
These beliefs define the lens through which anti-discrimination policies are conceived and implemented. Hence anti-discrimination policies are in virtually every organization and yet little has changed for women or other disproportionately underrepresented groups.
One factor I think is that these policies are about accountability in theory, but in practice are tools to absolve organizations of responsibility. They get introduced in discussions about discrimination as a conversational book end, rather than in their absence creating the space for uncomfortable self-reflection. They often require victims to act as agents of organizational change, which is worse than having no such requirements.
That’s not to say that i think all such policies are worthless. When paired with a lot of unpopular work distributed across the organization, things change. But what I’ve observed is that organisations almost never want to put in that work. They leave it at producing a document and some token gestures. There’s little desire to break some eggs and to be accountable over outcomes.
So then these policies end up being great sounding statements with no real actions to back them. There’s another word to describe documents like that: bullshit.
I carry a lot of privilege. I am a white settler in a country that devalues black and indigenous lives. I am able-bodied in a country that puts barriers for those who are not. I have been perceived as a boy in a country that pushes down girls. I grew up with affluent parents in a country that punishes the children of poor parents. I work as a software developer in an economic system that removes opportunity, diminishes time with close ones, facilitates bad housing situations, denies health care, restricts mobility, and otherwise punishes those in other lines of work. An economic system even more cruel to those without employment. I have been lucky in an environment where that luck is largely determined by privilege.
I’m also a transgender woman. Men shout at me from cars and mock me from the streets. I’ve been assaulted for being visibly trans after a date. I’ve been yelled at in a change room and outside a washroom. I have been harassed walking on a sidewalk, shopping for clothes, getting my brows done, and attending a concert. My family didn’t support me: my sister refused to use my name and pronouns because it would “confuse” her children while my step-dad also refused telling me it would harm my mom. The Globe & Mail and National Post regularly publish op-eds portraying people like me as threats to children, as have politicians and Canadian television personalities. It’s emotionally draining. A quarter of Canadian men are uncomfortable with a trans person moving next door and about half don’t support access to washrooms and these people get to decide if I get hired. I am afraid to use washrooms especially when there are children there. I am afraid to go to the gym or buy underwear.
In short, I experience discrimination. But I also came out as pansexual in 2007 and transitioned in 2013. That matters, because while I’ve endured some violence, it is nothing compared to the losses that have been incurred by those before me. Every trans person I know has been penalized for opening up to the world with those losses diminishing as both the age and year in which they came out increased. My privilege has insulated me from much of that violence. The violence they endured like all violence is self-perpetuating, continuing despite a more accepting world. A more accepting world won’t change the cumulative effects of decades of denied opportunities and poverty. A more accepting world won’t remove trauma from undergoing conversion therapy, being homeless, being sexually assaulted doing sex work, or being fired. It won’t remove criminal records.
But because I experienced discrimination, I thought it was right to take the space created for advocacy in the name of trans people to speak. I gave workshops. I spoke at various events. I lobbied. I participated in a panel on trans health care for a year. I was wrong. I am not sure what is the right amount of space to take, but it is much less than the space I have taken.
My forebears faced the most violence and fought hard to create a place in this world. Their success in turn created greater room for advocacy. That space has become filled with people such as myself, who mistake our own experiences of discrimination as making us qualified to take that space. We are not. Our voices have been elevated above more marginalized voices by design from a system that always prizes those with most privilege. Meanwhile, the pioneers who created that space to advocate aren’t desired in that space because the privilege they lack makes them unpalatable. I have wondered as to the mechanisms that create the transition from advocating for those most on the edges to elevating those closest to assimilation.
I suspect, perhaps, ignorance has been the engine of this shift. Increased acceptance reduced the losses for those with more privilege and helped them preserve that privilege. They then did what those with privilege almost always do – take space and elevate that privilege while ignoring those without it.
