Kindergarten Gender Fluidity Classes

"If everyone has a gender identity, and gender identities are protected under the Ontario Human Rights code, then NB's gender identity as a girl should also be protected."

"Being told that there is no such thing as a girl, which is NB's comprehensive gender identity, is as discriminatory to her as to anyone else."

Lisa Bildy, lawyer representing Buffone family to Ontario Human Rights Tribunal

 

"[It is about] putting up some reasonable guardrails, at the school board level, to rein in the excesses of gender ideology." 

"The Code's protections are intended to assist and protect the historically disadvantaged individuals who are trans or gender-nonconforming and not the majority advantaged group."

Lawyer for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

A Canadian family has filed a complaint in the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, their daughter’s former teacher and the principal of the school for teaching her there are no such things as girls or boys. (iStock)

 

In a primary school in the Ottawa area in 2018 a Grade 1 child identified in a complaint of sex-based discrimination against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, as 'X', was seen as different by the other six-year-olds in the class. 'X' had a short, boyish hair style, she dressed in typically boyish manner, and was attracted to activities generally attributed to boyish behaviour. She was an extroverted 'tomboy'. But a tomboy who, if anyone ever mistook her for a 'he', was quick to correct them. She knew her gender, but she had a penchant for boyishness.

Other children in the Grade 1 class harassed 'X', teasing her relentlessly. When her parents became aware of their little girl's predicament, they contacted the classroom teacher and asked for group discussions to particularly focus on generic attitudes of kindness and respect for one another, but separate and apart from a gender issue.

 

 

The teacher, identified in the complaint as Mme B, decided to make a "teachable moment" of the teasing. That would be to focus on gender expression and identity, issues that had little if nothing to do with the childish persecution of 'X', and contravened her mother's wishes. She introduced the children to a book that focused on a boy who liked dressing as a girl. The teacher informed the students: "There's no such thing as boys and girls", even if you present on the outside as one or the other you may feel differently in your mind.

Mme B also chose to expose the children to a short 2016 film, titled He, She and They, a production of QueerKidStuff. Where a 'queer' girl named Lindsay, with a cropped hairstyle and wearing a dress shirt and tie had a conversation with her teddy bear. "Did you know that some people aren't boys or girls? Some people are boys. Some people are girls. And some people are people. [There are also] transgender [people]." Trans people, she goes on, "do not identify with the gender doctors tell them they are when they are born."

 

The Buffone child, named in the complaint as NB became upset. NB had assumed she was a little girl. After viewing the video in her classroom, the six-year-old informed her parents she was no longer certain she wanted to be a mommy, asking whether she should "go to the doctor" about being a girl, and asking why she was not "real" as a girl. She was so unsettled and persistent in questioning her status as a girl, nonplussed that her girlishness was not 'real', her parents enrolled her in another school.

At the hearing, they explained the move to another school to have been a necessity since a "poisoned environment" had arisen for the child in the school where Mme B taught, given her preferences for gender fluidity trumping biological reality. When the little girl's mother spoke with Mme B, she was informed that gender fluidity represented "a change within all of society" and was school board policy. Mrs. Buffone then spoke to the school's principal who supported Mme B's teaching materials. Describing them as "teaching moments".

In fact,the Ontario education curriculum for Grade 1 states the goal to have children "show an understanding of, and respect for themselves and their bodies by using proper names for body parts"; absent is anything relating to gender identity (which is in fact taught in Grade 5). It seems clear,  however, that gender rights give protection to girls and women who do not conform to stereotype. While those who fall under the stereotypical gender categories' rights are surrendered to the greater issue of respect for gender fluidity.