OTTAWA, August 20, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A radical draft policy being proposed for the Ottawa Carleton District School Board would inject “transgender” issues in every aspect of the curriculum, while students suffering gender dysphoria will be allowed to use the bathrooms and changerooms of their preferred gender, no matter their biological sex.
The district’s draft “Gender Identity and Gender Expression Guide to Support Our Students” tells Carleton school district staff and students that they will soon have to distinguish among sexual subgroups such as “androgynous, gender creative, gender independent, gender fluid, gender variant, gender diverse, gender non-conforming, intersex, two-spirit, transgender, transsexual or trans.” Students meanwhile, can choose to be referred to by their chosen pronoun, including “they, them, zhe, ze, and hir.”
But it's the prospect of “transgender” boys who say they are girls sharing washrooms or changerooms with teenage girls that still triggers the most alarm.
“It raises the frightening prospect of putting a 14-year-old girl in a change room next to a trans person who is biologically male, who is attracted to females sexually and who outweighs her by 50 lbs,” James Doak, an Ottawa parent, told LifeSiteNews. “These guidelines are all about accommodating a minority, making its members feel cared for, but show no concern for anyone else.”
A leader of the parents movement to stop the introduction of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s radically pro-LGBTQ sex education curriculum, Jotvinder Sodji, agrees.
“This shows no concern for the rest of the class. If I have a 13- or 14-year-old daughter, and there is some boy pretending to be a girl who wants to change next to her or use the same washroom, I will not accept that as a father. There could be a disaster, there could be an assault. And if there isn’t, this girl is still not mature enough emotionally to deal with being exposed to that. We do not hand our children over to the school system for this.”
The draft guide makes it clear that only the “transgender” student can determine his or her gender—and his or her washroom. “All students,” it states, “have a right to safe restroom facilities and the right to use a washroom that best corresponds to the student’s gender identity and gender expression, regardless of the student’s sex assigned at birth. Requiring students to ‘prove’ their gender (by requiring a doctor’s letter, identity documents, etc.) is not acceptable. A student’s self-identification is the sole measure of the student’s gender. (editor’s emphasis).”
In one passage the guide allows that school administrators must “balance” the student’s needs with other factors, “including: the dignity of the person making the request; the goal of inclusiveness; health and safety concerns; the cost of the accommodation to the district and the effect of the accommodation on the district’s ability to fulfill its duties under district policies, the Education Act, and the Ontario Human Rights Code.”
The rights, needs, modesty and safety of other students are nowhere to be found on this list, or are they anywhere dealt with in the guide.
“This is trying so hard to be sensitive to the needs of so-called transgendered students,” said Gwen Landolt, vice president of REAL Women of Canada, “that it is completely insensitive to the needs of everyone else. It is totalitarian.”
Agrees Doak: “This whole gender ideology they are pushing is completely disrespectful of people of traditional values. It’s radical and not based on biological science.” Doak and Landolt both argue that there is no science behind the ideas that there are more genders than male and female nor that people can change their gender or be born in the “wrong” gender.
“It’s shame and a fraud,” said Landolt. “You can’t change your gender by cutting off parts of your body. Supporting these children in the belief they have a gender different from their biological one is so harmful to them.”
Landolt noted that the vast majority of people confused about their gender in their teens outgrow their uncertainty in a year or two. To redesign the school system to reinforce them in their confusion “for the sake of being trendy, it is very dangerous and could do permanent injury.”
The adroit use of gender-neutral washrooms proposed in one Ottawa Carleton school for male-to-female “transgender” students is by no means mandated for all. According to the draft guide: “Use of an all-gender single stall washroom is an option students may request, but should not be imposed upon a student by the school because of the student’s gender identity.”
The guide also calls for a thorough de-gendering of day-to-day classroom and hallway practices. Lineups and other groupings by gender are to be avoided, for example. But more troubling in the eyes of some may be the decree that “curriculum and classroom materials and activities contain positive images and accurate information about history and culture which reflects the accomplishments and contributions of transgender and gender diverse people.”
Math students will be told that the empirical evidence that there are more males than females to be found among the highest mathematics achievers, and among the lowest, is wrong. According to the guide, they will be assigned to prove that girls are just as good as boys in math.
Language studies will be revamped to enable transgender students to be referred to by the pronouns they prefer. “Students who wish to use gender diverse pronouns such as ‘they,’ ‘them,’ ‘zhe,’ ‘ze,’ ‘hir,’ to identify themselves will be accommodated.”
Meanwhile Native Studies, Shop, Science, and Social Studies must all play their part in supporting belief in “the range of human diversity, including, but not limited to: a range of bodies, a range of sexes, a range of gender identities and gender expressions, and a range of sexual orientations.”
Nobody with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board would discuss the draft gender guide with LifeSiteNews. A communications officer stated, “While a duty of all school districts under the Ontario Human Rights Code, the OCDSB is committed to ensuring that every student feels safe, welcome, and ready to learn in our schools. The document is currently in draft form. It will be shared with trustees and schools in the fall of 2015.”