Misinformation, anti-LGBTQ protests touch our community

By Gabrielle Liu  – Editor-in-Chief 

Bishop’s should be a campus that stands in solidarity with people of all genders and sexual identities. Despite their physical distance from Sherbrooke, demonstrations and policies that erode comprehensive sexual education and proliferate hate affect us all. 

Protestors, organized under the 1MillionMarch4Children movement, gathered across Canada in multiple cities on Sept. 20 and Oct. 21, including in Montreal. They argue that parents should decide what children learn in schools when it comes to sexual education and gender identity. While their official site says they are inclusive of all LGBTQ identities, the movement’s educational material and protestors’ signs insinuate or outright accuse the queer community of being pedophiles, groomers or sexually indoctrinating kids. Protests occurred in the context of New Brunswick and Saskatchewan adopting policies requiring children under 16 to receive parental consent to use a different name or pronoun in school. Alberta recently passed a similar resolution. 

Charlie Henderson-Bachand, communications director for the BU Gender Equity Centre, said that “for the trans and LGBTQ community, it was very scary. A lot of queer people are used to the transphobic and homophobic attitudes of the public but it hasn’t been a specific target to organize a protest.” They pointed out that several of the arguments protestors made were premised on misinformation. Claims that gender-affirming care is sterilization or abuse ignores the fact that bottom surgery is never done to children in Canada. An advisor from Bishop’s Sexual Violence Support Centre pointed out that, the only instance where this kind of surgery is performed on children is non-consensually on intersex children, a practice denounced by human rights groups. 

“I have never heard of anything on this scale,” says Julien Crossfield about the protests, an education student who identifies with the queer community. He says few acquaintances, including those in the education program, have heard about these protests. “I feel like the work of making the education program queer-friendly is on me”, he said. He specifies that there are professors who are quite knowledgeable about the current climate, but expresses that he wishes professors would be more aware of what is going on or could benefit from sensitivity training. Crossfield said that he felt students could be better trained to defend their queer peers.

“If anything [like the protests] were to happen here, I hope BU would do something about it to warn [students],” he said. He says that a statement of solidarity from universities would be better than nothing, despite these statements being passive. Crossfield says that as an institution of higher learning, the Bishop’s community should care about what happens when parents decide what gets taught in schools, even if changes would apply only to primary and secondary schools. “This is not a time for schools to be silent,” he added.  

Virginia Rufina Marquez-Pacheco, a fourth-year student who identifies with the queer community said, “It was pretty scary to see how many people showed up” in opposition to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. They thought demonstrators were protesting out of a place of concern, but the protests were misplaced and misinformed. “Intention will only get you so far,” Marquez-Pacheco said about the protestors’ claims they were not anti-LGBTQ – it is the impact that matters. They were concerned this would ripple out to affect other marginalized groups.

Academic literature has shown the benefits of sex-ed, including helping youth feel comfortable with sexuality, says Elisa Philibert, an elementary education student. They are working on a research project that helps parents become more comfortable teaching sex education at home for children 3-8 years old.  

Philibert’s research was featured on Bishop’s Instagram page, receiving multiple comments that both praised their work and criticized it. “I really wasn’t expecting people to be so mad,” they said, adding that their work was done with the consent of parents. The sex-ed taught were topics like the names of body parts: “I think people associate the word ‘penis’ and ‘vulva’ [with] sexualizing the child,” said Philibert. As someone who is used to talking about sex-ed in the academic sphere, who identifies as queer and who advocates for sex-ed, they now wonder how an associate teacher would grade them if they spoke up in the classroom. Philibert expresses, “I don’t think I would fit in a public setting because they go directly against my values”. 

“We need diversity, and we need to work through our differences”, says Prof. Cheryl Gosselin of the psychology department. “Parents have an obligation not just to keep kids safe, but to socialize them, insert them into society,” she said about parental rights. Protestors are hiding behind neutral labels of sex-ed when really what they’re doing is teaching kids to be intolerant, she added. She describes her students in her Gender & Society class as very receptive to the issues discussed, but also confused about why it’s going on. Gosselin says that Bishop’s is affected because, at the end of the day, it all filters out to the rest of society. “These kids are going to grow up and go to university,” she said, referring to the protestors’ kids. 

“Access to comprehensive sexuality education through formal education for people of all ages is a human right and is supported by [Health Canada] because we need accurate information to make informed decisions,” says Prof. Jessica Prioletta from the School of Education. Her research examines how gender is produced and reproduced in kindergarten settings and play. “I think what we tend to forget is that sexuality education is always happening already. We’re already always learning about gender and sexuality implicitly or explicitly through the media, through popular culture, through our friends in and out of schools, through our families.” 

Both Prioletta and an advisor speaking for the Sexual Violence Support Centre emphasized that recent protests or resistance to diversity are not new tensions in society. However, media coverage and misinformation in the past year have spun and emboldened a segment of the public into deep misinformation, said the advisor. While there was no protest organized in the Sherbrooke community, Bishop’s isn’t sheltered from the influence of media. 

Resisting this influence and acting upon a shared value that people of all gender identities and sexualities deserve the right to feel safe at BU requires an understanding that we are all stakeholders in media and campus culture. Henderson-Bachand spoke of an ongoing perception that if ‘I’m not contributing, then I am not the problem’. “If you don’t know the facts, or are unsure, look it up”, encouraged Marquez-Pacheco. 

The advisor adds that the Sexual Violence Support Centre, located within the BUnited space in the SUB, also addresses gender-based violence. They are there to be a safer space should students want to speak with them, says the advisor. Students can access the center by drop-in or email/Teams message svsc@ubishops.ca for updated hours and any questions.