Ontario’s Ministry of Education has “No Policy” on Child Gender Dysphoria
Ontario’s Ministry of Education has “No Policy” on Child Gender Dysphoria
The provincial government has ceded care of dysphoric kids to the activists running our school boards
By Igor Stravinsky, Teacher and commentator
In Ontario, the Ministry of Education (MoE) is responsible for overseeing all aspects of Ontario’s public education system. Ontario’s Education Act sets out the duties and responsibilities of the Minister of Education, school boards, supervisory officers (superintendents), principals, teachers, parents and students.
Having observed a highly variable response to youth experiencing gender dysphoria which is often described as “a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity”, I decided to reach out to the MoE to find out what the official policy was with regard to the way the condition (among students) should be addressed in the elementary schools.
Here is the reply I received from an MoE spokesperson:
Good Afternoon,
Your email to Ontario’s Ministry of Education has been provided to my office. I am responding on behalf of the ministry.
The Minister of Education has stated that it is incumbent on all school boards to ensure all students – most especially 2SLGBTQ+ students – feel supported, reflected in their schools, and welcomed within our communities. We firmly believe that all publicly funded schools must be safe spaces for all children, regardless of race, heritage, faith, sexuality, and gender.
The Ministry does not have a policy regarding the procedure for elementary school staff when children express feelings of gender dysphoria. Ontario requires school boards to provide conditions that enable all students, including 2SLGBTQI+ students, to be safe and to promote a positive school climate.
Generally all local school boards in Ontario publicly post their local policies and/or procedures on their school board websites. You may wish to review your local school board’s website for their local policy. Contact information for each school board is on the Ministry of Education’s website at www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/sbinfo/boardList.html.
I hope the above information is of assistance, and thank you again for your inquiry to the ministry.
As you can see, the MoE has tossed this hot potato to the school boards. Since most are run by activists promoting the “affirmative care” model, in which any child, no matter how young, is considered to be a transgendered person simply because the child (often with considerable provocation) says they are, that means thousands of kids are being placed on the pathway to transitioning, a pathway which becomes more and more irreversible the further the child goes.
It starts with a new name and pronouns, perhaps as young as age 4. This habituates the child to their new gender identity, which they come to accept. Then, at age 10 or so, the child is encouraged to take puberty blocking drugs which will prevent, to a large extent, the physical changes which would ordinarily take place during puberty. Having made this commitment to transitioning, 95% of these kids will go on to cross sex hormones for a possible lifetime and ultimately irreversible “sex reassignment surgeries”.
So what the MoE is supporting, although they won’t admit it, is drastically increasing the odds that gender confused kids (tomboys, girlyboys, or kids with homosexual feelings) will end up on the road to transitioning. This is of course what the activists want.
They want this in spite of the available evidence, which demonstrates that 80% of gender dysphoric kids will eventually get over their condition and accept their biological sex. Surely, this is a far better outcome. The drugs and surgeries needed to transition have serious negative health impacts, as described here, here, and here. An adult may decide these risks and health problems are acceptable for themselves, but we should clearly not be offering this choice to kids who are deemed by society too young to drive, drink alcohol, vote. Etc.
Why do activists want to put kids on the road to transition?
Gender activists do not believe that gender dysphoria is a mental health condition. They think that a person’s sex is unrelated to the physical body; that there is a kind of “gendered soul”. That is why they say “sex assigned at birth”, which is of course completely illogical since a person’s sex is their body’s reproductive strategy, which can never be changed, and this is determined at conception and simply observed at birth (or before birth by ultrasound or other types of scans). The activists are evangelists spreading their ideology to anyone ignorant and gullible enough to accept it in the name of “inclusion”.
From the point of view of the activists, a gender transition done at adulthood is incomplete. A physically mature man will have difficulty passing for a women, no matter how much makeup he wears, what clothes he chooses, etc. Even surgeries will not fully have the desired effect. But by taking puberty blocking drugs and starting cross sex hormones in youth, the results are physically more dramatic. If large numbers of youth take this path, the activists believe it will “normalize” transexualism and fully entrench gender ideology.
The obvious problem with all this is that by going along with the activists, we are placing thousands of kids, every year, on a pathway to a lifetime of medical problems as well as possible sterility and sexual function issues when most of them, with counseling and time, would have grown to accept their bodies and gone on to live healthy and happy lives as straight or gay adults.
Sure, it would be great if we had a time machine and could see who the 20% of gender confused kids are who would never come to accept their bodies so that we could offer them a seat on the transition train early, but until then, we need to protect the other 80% with a wait-and-see approach. Should they choose to transition as adults, so be it. Any reasonable person has to accept that this is the only logical and compassionate course of action which in no way obviates trans peoples’ rights under our Canadian constitution and human rights codes.
Our provincial government needs to weigh in and kick-start a rational, reasoned, and science-based debate about child gender dysphoria and appropriate care such as that which is taking place in some European countries. The government of Ontario cannot hide from this by passing the buck to school boards run by activists who have their own agenda. This is nothing less than child neglect and abuse.
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Thanks for reading. For more from this author read The Peel District School Board’s Anti-Racism Policy is a Disaster
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Igor writes: “So what the MoE is supporting, although they won’t admit it, is drastically increasing the odds that gender confused kids (tomboys, girlyboys, or kids with homosexual feelings) will end up on the road to transitioning. This is of course what the activists want.” I think self-serving politicians hide from controversial issues, which is the activists were able to capture schools.
Yes, another head in the sand political copout by our feckless, invertebrate, "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, politicians. As tempting as it is to say, "sound off like you got a pair" we must conclude that gender affirmation surgery has already made it impossible for them to do this. Perhaps it is time to change the name "Ministry of Education" to "Misery of Education" to capture its real impact.