I don’t get why a female doctor is so keen to slander parents for imaginary trans-phobia when they (the parents) don’t want teenage boys to see their adolescent daughters naked. The Covid phone interview reminded me of the shrill angry feminist of yesteryear but then why the embrace of trans activism, which hurts women and girls?
I gratefully appreciate the work you guys do. This has to be pushed back and people are doing just that. Do you need assistance on the NL front. Things I’ve been noticing in our schools that are not acceptable.
I went to change.org to see the petition. I found it by searching the school trustee’s name, which also turned up a few other petitions with her name on. Made interesting reading. Seems the lady is a little unhinged.
I'm still trying to make sense of this egregious behaviour. Dr. NK-M silenced the father on the grounds that his personal discomfort with adolescent boys and girls changing together should not be considered relevant.
Says the Board: “Individually-held beliefs or feelings of discomfort are not a justifiable reason for discriminating against trans and gender-diverse community members.” Who says? The Board in the persona of NK-M. What if I disagree? What if the parents in Ottawa-Carlton disagree?
She seems to be saying that it would be like a parent in 1950s Mississippi expressing discomfort that black girls would be attending classes and changing with his white daughter in a newly integrated school after Brown v. Board of Education. Since we would, today, dismiss that as grounds to have schools (or locker rooms within them) segregated by race, we should also dismiss locker rooms segregated by sex today.
Is this a valid parallel? For two reasons, No.
First, a parent who did make such a representation to a school board meeting in 1950s Mississippi would be heard respectfully, if for no other reason than many parents in that time and place would have shared the same concerns. It would be terrible politics for a progressive liberal board chair with a crusade to end racial discrimination to silence him. It's easy to say here and now, "Don't let racists be heard", but in an era when having races mixing in the classes much less in the gym showers was a source of great unease, you couldn't just shut down these fears and assume they would go away if only the iron fist of censorship could just hit hard enough.
People must always be heard, even if you don't like what they are saying. It can't be contrary to a Human Rights Code to permit speech that opposes what the Board seems to think the HRC requires it to do. The HRC is not binding on the public -- that's just an excuse for the Board to silence criticism of its policies.
Second, we know that eventually people got used to the idea that girls of all races could shower and change together and the skies didn't fall, ditto for the boys. If there was continuing resentment of integrated schools, and there was, in many places for a long time, it was over the presence of the black students at all, not over shared locker rooms per se. What the Ottawa parents are worried about is more focused than that -- the time-honoured separation of the sexes for undressing and ablutions. Letting boys use the girls' bathrooms and locker rooms is a much more fundamental breach of social norms than letting black students attend a previously all-white school. It's a much bigger ask and so requires a much more sympathetic hearing of parents' common-sense concerns.
The Board should be obligated to explain why, exactly, it is important and necessary for any male person to enter a girls bathroom or locker room. Just because the trans kid feels more "validated" or "in character" in a girls' bathroom is not enough. Parents must be able to voice objections and ask questions, with the expectation that the Board will answer for its policy. Merely shouting that "gender-diverse" individuals will be allowed to use whatever locker room they like and you are a hateful transphobe for saying otherwise, so there!, is not answering the objections from the public.
I recognize that governments have not made school boards' task any easier by writing self-affirmed gender identity into the Human Rights Codes as a protected ground against discrimination. This is foolishness but the boards can't do anything about that. Still, the least they can do is hear out parents who worry for their children.
I offer the above humbly to Shannon Douglas as food for thought in what he will say to the Board in the few seconds he will have before being cut off. Good luck!
--Leslie MacMillan (due to e-mail glitch with Substack it thinks I am Susan.)
I don’t get why a female doctor is so keen to slander parents for imaginary trans-phobia when they (the parents) don’t want teenage boys to see their adolescent daughters naked. The Covid phone interview reminded me of the shrill angry feminist of yesteryear but then why the embrace of trans activism, which hurts women and girls?
Nili Kaplan-Myrth is a dangerous kook who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near children.
I gratefully appreciate the work you guys do. This has to be pushed back and people are doing just that. Do you need assistance on the NL front. Things I’ve been noticing in our schools that are not acceptable.
Pathological woke school boards behaving totally wrong. Trusteeship is the only answer.
I went to change.org to see the petition. I found it by searching the school trustee’s name, which also turned up a few other petitions with her name on. Made interesting reading. Seems the lady is a little unhinged.
I'm still trying to make sense of this egregious behaviour. Dr. NK-M silenced the father on the grounds that his personal discomfort with adolescent boys and girls changing together should not be considered relevant.
Says the Board: “Individually-held beliefs or feelings of discomfort are not a justifiable reason for discriminating against trans and gender-diverse community members.” Who says? The Board in the persona of NK-M. What if I disagree? What if the parents in Ottawa-Carlton disagree?
She seems to be saying that it would be like a parent in 1950s Mississippi expressing discomfort that black girls would be attending classes and changing with his white daughter in a newly integrated school after Brown v. Board of Education. Since we would, today, dismiss that as grounds to have schools (or locker rooms within them) segregated by race, we should also dismiss locker rooms segregated by sex today.
Is this a valid parallel? For two reasons, No.
First, a parent who did make such a representation to a school board meeting in 1950s Mississippi would be heard respectfully, if for no other reason than many parents in that time and place would have shared the same concerns. It would be terrible politics for a progressive liberal board chair with a crusade to end racial discrimination to silence him. It's easy to say here and now, "Don't let racists be heard", but in an era when having races mixing in the classes much less in the gym showers was a source of great unease, you couldn't just shut down these fears and assume they would go away if only the iron fist of censorship could just hit hard enough.
People must always be heard, even if you don't like what they are saying. It can't be contrary to a Human Rights Code to permit speech that opposes what the Board seems to think the HRC requires it to do. The HRC is not binding on the public -- that's just an excuse for the Board to silence criticism of its policies.
Second, we know that eventually people got used to the idea that girls of all races could shower and change together and the skies didn't fall, ditto for the boys. If there was continuing resentment of integrated schools, and there was, in many places for a long time, it was over the presence of the black students at all, not over shared locker rooms per se. What the Ottawa parents are worried about is more focused than that -- the time-honoured separation of the sexes for undressing and ablutions. Letting boys use the girls' bathrooms and locker rooms is a much more fundamental breach of social norms than letting black students attend a previously all-white school. It's a much bigger ask and so requires a much more sympathetic hearing of parents' common-sense concerns.
The Board should be obligated to explain why, exactly, it is important and necessary for any male person to enter a girls bathroom or locker room. Just because the trans kid feels more "validated" or "in character" in a girls' bathroom is not enough. Parents must be able to voice objections and ask questions, with the expectation that the Board will answer for its policy. Merely shouting that "gender-diverse" individuals will be allowed to use whatever locker room they like and you are a hateful transphobe for saying otherwise, so there!, is not answering the objections from the public.
I recognize that governments have not made school boards' task any easier by writing self-affirmed gender identity into the Human Rights Codes as a protected ground against discrimination. This is foolishness but the boards can't do anything about that. Still, the least they can do is hear out parents who worry for their children.
I offer the above humbly to Shannon Douglas as food for thought in what he will say to the Board in the few seconds he will have before being cut off. Good luck!
--Leslie MacMillan (due to e-mail glitch with Substack it thinks I am Susan.)