JEDDORE OYSTER PONDS, Nova Scotia (LifeSiteNews) — Parents in the eastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia have pulled their children from class after a “non-binary” male drag performer gave a compulsory presentation on “gender identity” to kids as young as 12.
On October 18, a number of parents at Oyster Pond Academy kept their children home from school after learning that a “non-binary” drag performer called Teo Ferguson had given their children a “gender identity” presentation that students were not allowed to opt out of.
“It went above and beyond what should be taught in the classroom,” Hollie Riggs, a parent with children at the school, told CTV News.
The presentation covered sexual identity, “gender diversity,” and relationships. Ferguson revealed to the Daily Mail that he also taught children how queer-identifying people might express their gender.
Riggs revealed that she first learned about the presentation on social media, prompting her decision to pull her child from class.
“I wanted to have to avoid them having that conversation with their peers after school, to avoid that communication, so I can have it at home,” she explained.
“It was the fact that how much of it was discussed and what the kids had access to after the meeting,” Riggs continued, referring to Ferguson’s inappropriate social media accounts which were shared with students at the presentation.
Following the presentation, Ferguson declared that he did not share his social media accounts, full of pictures of him dressed like a stripper, but rather a teacher gave them to the students.
“The reality is a teacher was really excited initially to see me in their classroom talking about gender, identity, and sexual orientation from grade 7-9,” he originally wrote in a Facebook post.
“Now grades 7 to 8 did not hear about my social media, but in grade 9 they did due to a teacher’s excitement,” he continued.
According to his Facebook profile, Ferguson works as a creative programming facilitator at The Youth Project, an LGBT activist group which encourages children to permanently damage their bodies in order to “gender transition.” He also works as a drag queen under the stage name “Cookie Cunningham.”
Parents also voiced concern that the session was mandatory and their children were not allowed to leave the presentation.
“When I asked him about it, he said, ‘mom I didn’t want to be there, but they weren’t letting us leave,’” Riggs recalled.
Another parent, Greg Austin, said, “My son came home from school yesterday. He was telling me about the interactions he had with the influencer. Mostly for me as a parent, we had no idea that anybody was coming to talk to our kids.”
“He could see people were not comfortable and that other people asked to leave, and they weren’t allowed to,” said Austin. “There wasn’t any other option.”
Following the uproar, instead of apologizing, the school issued a statement reinforcing their dedication to spreading LGBT ideology, claiming doing so ensures every student feels “safe, welcome, and respected.”
Despite the claims of pro-LGBT activists, gender ideology poses a serious risk to children’s mental and physical wellbeing.
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “transition” procedures, including “reassignment” surgery, fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion in favor of “transitioning.”