PDSB Director Misrepresents Protests Against Gender Ideology

1 Million March 4 Children

By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher, commentator)

The Peel District School Board is starting to feel the heat as the public is beginning to question the wisdom of “affirmative care”. Yesterday, September 18th 2023, Peel District School Board Director of Education Rashmi Swarup sent out this message to all employees via email:

Dear PDSB Staff, 

We are aware of plans for organized protests across the province against the teaching of Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+ identities on Wednesday, September 20, 2023 including an organized protest in the Peel Region. It has been shared on social media and in news outlets that these protests will be organized across Canada. It is our understanding that the Peel Region protest site is at Mississauga City Hall (300 City Centre Drive). School communities in the surrounding area of Square One could be affected by the gathering of people and the display of discriminatory and hateful language.

On Friday September 15, a communication was sent by the Director to Senior Team, Trustees and Administrators providing information regarding the planned protest for Wednesday September 20, 2023. It included strategies and resources to support administrators to ensure that students and staff, especially those who identify as Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+, feel safe, supported and validated.

It is important for staff to understand that The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows every individual to have our own views, expressions, religious and cultural beliefs. However, The Charter and the Code prohibit us from acting on or expressing those beliefs where they violate the integrity and dignity of a community member. At the Peel District School Board, we foster values of acceptance, respect, understanding and inclusion in all students; of themselves and of their classmates. 

We do this by creating identity- affirming spaces and recognizing the diversity of our school’s population, including diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. Sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression are both protected grounds under the Ontario Human Rights Code and are embedded in various curricular areas. 

As your Director and on behalf of the Senior Team, we are committed to ensuring students and staff who identify as members of Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+ communities feel safe, supported and validated. We stand with you and are here to support you.

Regards,

The statement starts out with a bald-faced lie, that the protests are “against the teaching of Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+ identities”. Director Swarup also anticipates “discriminatory and hateful language”. Yes, there will likely be a few homo or transphobic people among the many thousands of protesters, but that could be said for protests of any kind. Overall, though, Canada is a tolerant and progressive country. The vast majority of people support gay and trans rights, which are written into our constitution and human rights codes. That is not what people are concerned about, and Swarup surely knows it.

No, people are not protesting the right of others to live as gay or trans, but rather the indoctrination of kids into gender ideology (rejected by most Canadians and even a lot of prominent gay and trans people). To be clear, gender ideology is a belief system which consists of (among others) the following tenets.

• People are born with a kind of sexed (gendered) soul which may or may not align with their body’s sex

• Children can say with certainty, at a very young age, what their “true sex (gender)” is 

• Physical, biological sex is non-binary and exists on a spectrum

Most Canadians do not hold these beliefs and there is certainly no scientific proof of any of them. On the contrary, any reputable evolutionary biologist will tell you that sex is a strict binary with a tiny number (less than 0.1% of people) falling into the category “intersex” (meaning they present both male and female sex characteristics). The existence of this tiny number of sex-indistinct people is often a red herring used by trans activists to suggest that there are more than two sexes, but there is no third sex in any physical or biological sense because your sex is your body’s intended reproductive strategy (eggs or sperm). There is no third scenario.

People opposed to indoctrination into gender ideology are generally not at all opposed to students being taught about it, at an appropriate age, in the same way most people would not object to students being taught about world religions. But people would not want their child indoctrinated into one of those religions.

So what harm is there in presenting gender ideology to young people as if it were an objective fact? Potentially plenty, which is what the protests are about. The PDSB, along with most of Canada’s institutions these days, has embraced the “affirmative care” response to youth confused about their sex.(gender). Affirmative care springs from gender ideology, and entails the following:

• Once a child, no matter how young, expresses their trans-gender identity, it must be immediately affirmed by all adults.

• This affirmation includes a new name and pronouns, which all others are compelled to use.

• If the child does not want the parents informed, then the new name and pronouns are kept secret from them.

• Pre-pubescent kids, whose parents may be unaware of their gender transition, are given information uncritically promoting puberty blocking drugs, trans gender drugs, and trans gender surgeries. 

• The information provided comes either directly from trans activists or sources that the trans activists have identified as allies. 

• Sources of information which question affirmative care or provide information about the frequent negative psychological and physical impacts of child transition are blocked, and any teacher who presents such information will be told to cease and desist and likely will face a reprimand.

• It is forbidden to discuss “de-transitioning” or the paucity of evidence to support affirmative care as the best course of action for all gender dysphoric kids (this would be considered transphobic).

Most Canadians are not okay with this. Until such time as we can be very confident that we can identify kids who will definitely choose to live their whole lives presenting as the opposite sex as adults, it is unethical to adopt affirmative care knowing that the vast majority would otherwise outgrow it. We want to be confident kids and their parents are getting honest and accurate information:

• Sex is a strict binary, determined by your body’s intended reproductive strategy. You can never change it, but you can alter your appearance to more closely resemble the opposite sex.

• Confusion and discomfort about your sex is not unusual among young people but usually abates as you get older and in most cases people come to accept and be comfortable with their bodies and identity.  

• Some young people who have these feelings of “gender dysphoria” will never accept their physical sex and will choose, as adults, to present themselves as the opposite sex. This is perfectly okay and such people are protected by the Canadian constitution and human rights codes against discrimination. 

• Taking puberty-blocking drugs is dangerous and can result in an array of serious health problems. The effects are largely irreversible. 

• There are risks associated with cross-sex hormones too, and 95% of kids who start with puberty blockers go on to these hormones (powerful drugs which change your physical appearance).

• Gender transition surgery also includes serious health risks.

• Some people who “transition” through drugs and surgery are happier afterwards, but some regret it and then “detransition” and are left scarred, physically and emotionally, from the experience. The exact number of each group is unknown because there has been very little long-term follow up on trans people.

Rather than casting people who are concerned about gender ideology and affirmative care in schools as “hateful and discriminatory”, PDSB director Swarup should be doing her duty as a leading educator and encouraging a thoughtful, respectful, science-based debate on what is the best way for us, as a society, to confront the challenge of helping gender-confused kids.  

She says “the Charter and the Code prohibit us from acting on or expressing those beliefs where they violate the integrity and dignity of a community member”. This is the go-to for people who advocate for Critical Theory and gender ideology, according to which “marginalized” people's feelings (but not those of the majority) are paramount. To say that sex is binary, for example, is hurtful to a trans person who believes in gender ideology, thus it is not acceptable to engage in debate on the subject in a school. I would like to point out that the heliocentric model of the solar system was very hurtful to most people hundreds of years ago. Authorities tried to ban it.  

Does the Canadian Charter in fact prohibit us from doing such harm? According to the Government of Canada website, “The protection of freedom of expression is premised upon fundamental principles and values that promote the search for and attainment of truth, participation in social and political decision-making and the opportunity for individual self-fulfillment through expression (Irwin Toy Ltd. v. Quebec (Attorney General), [1989] 1 S.C.R. 927 at 976; Ford v. Quebec, [1988] 2 S.C.R. 712 at 765-766).”

What Swarup and her team of zealots at the PDSB are doing is using their authority to quash any debate over gender ideology, notwithstanding the objective to determine the truth about sex, gender, and the consequences of affirmative care. This is clearly contrary to the spirit, if not the word, of the Constitution of Canada. 

Even if you are a true believer in gender ideology, you should be concerned when an educational institution is engaged in deliberately shutting down the search for the truth, which is the main thing the protests this week are about. But Director Swarup wants you to think the protestors are a bunch of rabid transphobic bigots. Don’t fall for it.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Review of the Peel District School Board Strikes Again

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