in defense of policy 713
Children should be protected from homophobic and transphobic employees in schools. Fucking obviously.
Before you go any further, please do me a favour:
This substack is normally devoted to personal essays, so I’m hesitant to write a political piece. I don’t want to give ignorant and bigoted people access to the soft underbelly of my life. But at the same time, the review of policy 713 is personal to me, and I am angry enough that I am willing to risk homophobic and transphobic harassment.
This review is personal to me not only because I am a queer adult in New Brunswick, not only because I was once a queer child in our public school system, but because I am a person who recognizes the humanity of children. Children, students of all ages, are people, and their emotions and identities are as valid as any adult’s. This includes feelings of anger, sadness, powerlessness, exclusion, hurt, and any and all points on the spectrum of human experience. It is my great fear that the experiences of children will not be taken seriously by this province because children are often unable to articulate to adults what they are experiencing. It is our duty, as adults, to advocate for them and protect them. Furthermore, we have to actively listen to them. Too many children are unheard by the adults in their lives until it is too late, because no one checked on them. No one was looking out for them. No policy, like policy 713, existed to protect them.
The existence of queer children is not up for debate, and attempts to blame leftists or liberals or “woke” culture for their existence is absurd. Children can often tell, well before ever learning of the existence of other transgender or gay people, when they don’t fit into a box prescribed to them by society. Being a queer child does not imply sexual maturity, education, or activity; it only acknowledges that the individual child does not exclusively identify with attraction to an “opposite sex,” or with the gender they were assigned at birth. Gender and romantic/sexual orientation are just as much cultural as they are biological, and these cultural markers can be understood implicitly well before a child may be ready to date, or to define their most fully realized self. These markers - aesthetics, behaviours, social groupings, etc. - are harmless, and more importantly, are often what give individuals a sense of self, a self they can love.
I emphasize the nonsexual aspects of queer identity because there is a long history of accusing gay people of pedophilia and grooming as a means of attacking us. We are not grooming your children, or turning them gay, or prematurely sexualizing them, or molesting or abusing them. We are advocating for their right to self-identify and be treated with respect.
All of us understand ourselves through cultural markers of gender and orientation, including cisgender and heterosexual people. I am a cisgender woman, and I identify strongly with femininity (and also masculinity, because I think that to be a person means having a unique personality and identity, and no one is only feminine social markers or only masculine social markers. I don’t shave my armpits, and that’s a masculine part of my broader feminine identity, if you see what I mean.) I am a queer woman, in that I date people besides cisgender men. But my queerness predates my dating life by at least ten years. While I tend to disagree with the “born this way” argument as the sole basis for the defense of queer rights, it is true that many if not most queer people are simply born that way. Queerness is not reliant on being pubescent or ready to date or have sex; it is a cultural category that children can feel and participate in asexually until they are ready to date. The same is true of straight, cisgender children, who express themselves through gendered hobbies and aesthetics well before becoming romantically or sexually active.
Back to Policy 713, then. This policy says nothing about curriculum, i.e. the educational content taught to students by teachers in alignment with learning goals. The closest thing to a statement about classroom content is as follows:
6.1.6 The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, school districts, and school personnel will ensure that classroom materials and activities contain positive and accurate information related to sexual orientation and gender identities.
This point states that classrooms must have materials and activities that include positive and accurate queer content. This means that, for example, there must be at least one children’s book in a classroom that portrays a family with two same-sex parents. Or there must be a game children can play where they see a nonbinary character. There must, in other words, be accessible representation of queer people in some capacity. This can mean one poster on the wall, or a single example in a single activity, and none of it has to be taught to children. It is just there, for children to access if they’re interested.
Besides this one point, the rest of the policy is only concerned with preventing discrimination and violence toward queer children. It prohibits misgendering, outing children to their parents without consent, harassment about which washroom they use, etc. These practices are, without exaggeration, life-saving. Queer children are among the most vulnerable groups in society, being subject to homophobia and transphobia and having almost no power if the adults in their lives cannot or will not protect them.
There is no mention of drag queens in the policy. There is, as I have said, and as you can read for yourself, nothing pertaining to educational content or goals. It requires that a positive and accurate resource about LGBTQI2S+ people be made available to children in the classroom, and that teachers treat their students with respect and compassion.
Blaine Higgs is inflating a hollow and performative moral panic from a very, very small minority of people who do not want to see queer children protected from adults like themselves. He is deflecting legitimate criticisms of his review of the policy by pearl-clutching about drag queens in schools. He is being disingenuous and stoking the fires of ignorance to further a personal conservative agenda that does not reflect the needs of his constituents.
Final note: I want to give a HUGE shoutout to the students in Saint John who walked out this week in protest of the review. That kind of resistance to authority takes real guts, and I am so proud of the youth in this province for standing up for themselves and one another.
From the CTV article:
Grade 10 student Cadence Anthony has many worries when it comes to the review and is hopeful for no changes.
“I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to go by the gender I prefer to be as and be gender-correct with my pronouns and such when I’m in class,” says Anthony. “That’s something that makes me feel a lot safer when I’m in school.”
Others fear this could undo much of the work the LGBTQIA+ community has fought for over the years.
“This could start a wave of hatred in Canada,” fears Grade 10 student Liam Dow. “It could be disastrous for trans youth and their mental health.”
Howard noted for many students, school is their safe space.
“They’re able to come into school every day and they don’t have to worry about anyone saying anything to them or anyone hurting them. It just makes sure everyone can have a positive learning environment.”
These children’s concern is for their safety, and mental health is a part of that. They deserve and have the right to be safe at school, which may be the only place they can be safely themselves. Supporting policy 713 means supporting the safety of the children of New Brunswick. The critics who would have it reviewed, allowing or potentially forcing teachers to out their students to parents, do not have the safety of our children at heart. Instead they push an intolerant and cruel personal agenda that punishes children instead of protecting their freedom and safety.