Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Coming up in this episode, Lorangism speaks with James Chamberlain, one of the authors of Expelling Transphobia, a new handbook of strategies to address transphobic attacks in the BC school system.
Speaker: A new handbook has been launched to assist school trustees in BC who are being targeted with transphobic and homophobic abuse. It outlines some of the ways that school boards are currently under attack by transphobic and homophobic people, and it offers ways to prevent and address this violence.
Speaker: The handbook was written collaboratively by a committee of the group Lawyers Against Transphobia, and I'm joined by one of the authors. James Chamberlain is a retired school principal. He's been a gay primary teacher and a union activist helping B .C. schools to develop 2S LGBTQIA plus policies and educating teachers for more than 25 years. And I'm delighted to welcome you this morning, James. Hello. Thank you so much, Lorraine. I appreciate being here.
Speaker: Now, chapter one of the handbook is titled A Five Alarm Fire. Remind us of this situation that should cause us to be so deeply concerned. Well, we're basically having a trans culture war across Canada.
Speaker: and different provinces have reacted in different ways. Scott and Mo's government, conservative government of Saskatchewan has been the most extreme to invoke the notwithstanding clause to prevent them from any legal attacks. And they have basically stopped all gender -affirming instruction or care in the province.
Speaker: and students who are in schools are not allowed to use their preferred pronouns and teachers who support students in that way and use their preferred pronouns and their preferred names can be subject to discipline. So that's just the thin edge of the wedge. New Brunswick has passed policy
Speaker: against 2SLGBTQIA plus students and Alberta is in the process of doing it and British Columbia may proceed in that manner if we elect a conservative government because they have been saying that they are going to cancel SOGI which stands for sexual orientation and gender identity resources in schools that support the provincial curriculum.
Speaker: Now, I'd like to just sort of back up a bit. The science on sex and gender has evolved. So how do we need to educate ourselves about this to prevent harm based on ideas of gender that have now been disproved? Well, everybody's on a learning curve in that regard, because thinking back to when I was in school in the 1970s, there was no
Speaker: concept of gender other than the binary male -female. And we now know that gender is more fluid and that people are on a continuum and they don't necessarily identify as completely 100 % male in a stereotypical manner or female. And so people have to unlearn what they have been taught in schools or what
Speaker: they never learned because it was never talked about. And that's a difficult process for some people. It's an opportunity to learn rather than what is currently happening is some of the transphobic and homophobic individuals are operating from a place of ignorance and fear and needing to lash out. And they are lashing out at trans and non -binary youth who are the most vulnerable in our public and private school system.
Speaker: Why are trans kids the perfect political target? Well, trans kids are the perfect political target for a couple of reasons because the extreme right are characterizing this as a parents rights issue and that parents have the right to know everything about their child and what's being taught in school. And some of that is true. They absolutely have a right to know what teachers are teaching and they should be
Speaker: having a good relationship with a classroom teacher and having conversation about anything that they support as well as anything that they're concerned about to know what's really going on. The trans and non -binary youth community are very small and they are voiceless, largely in schools, and it's not safe for them in many situations.
Speaker: Trans and non -binary youth are at a much higher risk of suicide, and so they are the perfect target because people are using parents' rights as the vehicle through which they are denying these students their human rights. What do transphobic actions against schools and school boards look like right now in Canada?
Speaker: Well, I'm going to talk about British Columbia because that's the province I'm most familiar with and I live in BC. Here in British Columbia, there have been trans public individuals who've tried to take over school board meetings, speaking out of turn, sabotaging meetings. School board meetings generally have agendas that they put out in advance to the public and people can get on speaker's lists and state their piece in favor or against particular issues.
Speaker: There have been organized transphobic actions where people have been bombarding school district meetings, trying to force trustees off of their agenda, threatening school trustees, and a number of school boards have had to resort to changing their public meetings to online meetings, which is not their preference. Some school boards have had to hire additional security to keep school trustees safe.
Speaker: and some school trustees in small communities have received death threats and we know of school trustees who are actually fearful of just being out in their communities because everyone knows everyone in small communities and some school trustees who are progressive are under attack basically from these transphobic individuals.
Speaker: These are some pretty serious situations. Now, why did your committee at Lawyers Against Transphobia decide to write this book? What's your goal? Well, one of our goals is to educate everyone. And the handbook is divided into sections around the the rights of students and the roles and responsibilities of school trustees. We are going to also be adding chapters for
Speaker: principles and vice principals, superintendents, teachers, parents, and students. And so all of those chapters are in the process of being written. And so they will be added into the handbook this fall. We started with trustees though, because they are basically on the front lines of attack, as well as trans, queer, and allied teachers who are trying to teach the provincial curriculum in an inclusive manner.
Speaker: And so we want to support everyone who's under siege in the education system, and we want to give them information about what their rights are, what their responsibilities are, and how they can protect themselves in practical and legal manners.
Speaker: School trustees are obviously trying to the ones who are resisting restrictive conservative legislation are trying to protect the safety of trans youth as well as making it inclusive. What are the harms to trans youth when this very negative anti -trans legislation is applied to the education system? Well, the harms are that students will drop out of school.
Speaker: that they will attempt or commit suicide, that they will not return to the school system. And in some situations may become homeless, depending on what, how their families respond. Because in some jurisdictions where they're requiring teachers to basically out a student to their parent, whether the parents are supportive or not, that's the situation in Saskatchewan. It's basically increasing the level of harm to
Speaker: trans and non -binary youth beyond the level of the negative societal transphobic situations that are out there.
Speaker: school should be the safest place for these kids. And we all know that any student who doesn't feel safe can't learn to their full academic potential. And it's the responsibility of educators at all levels of the system to help students to thrive academically and be successful at school. And so there's a lot of pressure on these youth and it's unnecessary.
Speaker: This transphobic wave of hate has just bubbled up in the last year or two, and there were transphobic things happening in schools prior to that, but the volume, the vitriol, the intensity of it is magnified dramatically from what it used to be.
Speaker: James, I think both you and I came into the queer rights, queer activism times when we were working hard to open up Canadian society against homophobia at a time where we made a lot of gains for our human rights. You know, eventually I believe we had a consensus in Canada of an inclusive view of queer rights. What's your sense of the battle ahead signaled by this attack centered right now on transgendered kids in schools?
Speaker: Well, you know, we call it the five alarm fire because it's the thin edge of the wedge. If people's rights based on their gender identity or gender expression can be stripped away, then anyone else is next. And so what's happening in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Alberta, and British Columbia, if it continues, we're basically going to end up in a trans culture war very similar to what's happening south of our border.
Speaker: And there's over 500 pieces of legislation been put in place or proposed attacking trans and non -binary youth. And we will see that kind of a situation happening in Canada if we don't put a stop to it. We were both talking about the first chapter, which is the five -alarm fire. What do we find in the second and third chapters of the book?
Speaker: Basically the second and third chapters of the book are the rights of school trustees and their role and responsibilities to students. So it lays out different scenarios. The whole handbook is footnoted with examples and research. And so it's well grounded in terms of what is happening in British Columbia schools. And it has examples of
Speaker: what school boards are doing that is best practice and what school boards are doing where they're really struggling. So we want to provide a resource that educates people but is grounded in the law and in educational research so that people have a go -to guide so that they know what to do in different situations because from election to election we have
Speaker: roughly 30 to 50 percent of school trustees are new. And superintendents may never have experienced this before, this level of vitriolic attack around transphobia. So we're trying to educate everyone. We're trying to give them accurate information and help them to move forward through either human rights complaints or through the grievance procedure in their own unions if it's a teacher.
Speaker: or just practical suggestions that are not legal ones on how to survive this, basically.
Speaker: James, you talked about how this really this kind of level of hate and vitriol has bubbled up in the last couple of years. And I think many people find themselves a little bit disoriented about it and don't know what to do. I'm lucky to know many transgender people of all ages and count many as my friends. How can we be strong allies to transgender youth, whether we know folks who identify as trans or not?
Speaker: For people that don't know anything about trans people, I would recommend that they go to our website lawyersagainsttransphobia .org. There's a plethora of resources on it that will help people to become educated about trans people and their lived experiences. It's not much different if you think about it historically
Speaker: than let's say 30 years ago when most people said that they didn't know anybody who was lesbian or gay. And through queer rights and activism and people coming out over the decades, all of that has generally become normalized now in Canadian society. Same -sex marriage, a lot of legislation provincially and federally, people see it as a human rights issue.
Speaker: Trans issues, on the other hand, have largely been ignored and there's a lot of misunderstanding around them and so it's an opportunity for people to educate themselves on the website. There's a little video about how to be an ally.
Speaker: And I think if people draw parallels to racism, sexism, other forms of oppression that we are still working on, but people understand them more. It's a different target group. It's a different way of attacking, but we're all in the same boat and we're all in this together in supporting people to have equal human rights.
Speaker: Well, I appreciate so much your joining me today and I'll definitely point people to the website and the handbook. And thanks again, James. My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker: I've been speaking with James Chamberlain. James is a retired school principal. He's been a gay primary teacher and a union activist, helping BC school boards to develop 2S LGBTQIA plus policies and educating teachers for more than 25 years. He's one of the authors of Expelling Transphobia, a handbook of strategies to address transphobic attacks in the BC school system. It was written collaboratively by a committee of the group Lawyers Against Transphobia.
Speaker: and you can download a free copy of that book, as well as find many other resources at lawyersagainsttransphobia .org. The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash Red Eye.
