Nostalgia for the Straight Dictatorship
Our summer of ignorance culminates in the shameful "1 Million March 4 Children."
Growing up gay in rural Cape Breton in the 80s and 90s was an isolating, traumatizing experience, which could have been much worse had I not had the refuge of a loving extended family to return to after school. From a very early age it was obvious to me that being a “fag” was the worst thing you could be, as if I had won the bad lottery, with the prize being a hard, lonely life. Hints of this fate proliferated all around me, through the bullying I witnessed of gay students (either ‘out’ or ‘outed’ by their feminine natures), and the snickering whispers about the lecherous closeted teacher’s wandering eye. In my teenage brain, a battle was set up. I would have to fight this taint, this shame, my whole life.
But for me, at least, the fight never came. I was very fortunate. When I did come out of the closet, everyone was very accepting and society seemed almost uniformly unbothered. Like so many of my tribe, I moved from my hometown to the promise of the city, where I met others like me, and this brought some comfort and confidence, along with a slow fading of the taint I had felt I would always be marked by. The rage that had accumulated in me never got its release. The opponent I had anticipated seemed to be revealed as having been all in my mind. A certain psychology can be nurtured through this dynamic of unresolved and unaddressed trauma and grievance.
Fast forward 30 years.
While there are still many problems, society has evolved and progress can be seen in more than a few areas. In schools, the haunting psychological battleground for so many (and not just in the LGBTQ+ community), an effort is being undertaken to make the learning environment one where those who don’t fit the previously (mis)understood norms of sexuality and gender can feel comfortable being themselves, in conditions free of the hindrances of ignorance, judgement and shame that affected so many generations past. As the epigraph of the SOGI (Sexual Orientation Gender Ideology)-Inclusive Education Resource Guide puts it:
“With higher levels of discrimination and bullying, and lower levels of family, school, and community support, LGBTQ youth face higher risks for significant health challenges, including suicidal thoughts and attempts, and problem substance use. However, when LGBTQ youth experience safe and supportive schools and families, they are much less likely to report these health challenges.”
Cue the reactionary outrage.
You would think school gyms across the nation were being converted into Iraqi-style rape rooms, with teens and pre-teens alike being passed among the most vile pedophiles: Teachers! Grooming these innocents into the ways of Satan with their perverted homoerotica; Cartoon drawings teaching first-graders the names of the filthiest of body parts: The penis! The vagina! THE ANUS! And children shown drawings of the filthiest of acts! These professionally-certified sex-fiends tempting our vulnerable children straight into the operating room, to be butchered and maimed, little penises and vaginas gleefully hacked under the flag of Red China. Puberty blocking drugs thrust into trembling youngsters, who find the lord’s prayer offers no protection. “HANDS OFF THE CHILDREN!!!!! STAY AWAY FROM THE CHILDREN!!!!!”
Even for this crowd, with teeth cut on the absurdly named ‘Freedom Convoy’ and a developing taste for histrionics, the level of exaggeration has been staggering. These burning straw men are all part of a war being waged online, at school board meetings and out on the streets by a loud minority tracing its immediate origins back to the book banning movement which gained steam in the United States in 2021 (or even further back to Anita Bryant’s ‘Save our Children’ campaign of the 1970s.) This most recent incarnation, dubbing itself the “1 Million March 4 Children,” seeks the rolling back of rights and a return to the erasure of the LGBTQ+ community from public spaces. Because the gains gays and lesbians have made in recent decades are clearly recognized, there is a careful attempt at creating a wedge between gay and trans issues to make opponents’ hyperventilations more palatable to the broader public. But as with the convoy, where professions of “love” and “unity” were thrown around like expired garland, you don’t have to pay too much attention before the emptiness of all this babble becomes clear.
So what is actually going on, then. Well, in the province of Ontario, the curriculum has students learning about “different types of families” in grade 3, physical changes experienced during puberty in grade 4, and personal identity including sexual orientation during grade 5. From grades 6 through 8, issues begin to involve more gravity and complexity. In grade 6, students learn about consent in relationships and also “discuss stereotypes and how assumptions about gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, culture and abilities can affect a person’s feeling about themselves, as well as discuss ways to challenge and respond to stereotypes, homophobia and racism.” Grade 7 has students deal with sexual relationships, and “the emotional, social and psychological factors to consider before making a decision. Sexually transmitted and blood borne infections and symptoms are discussed, as well as how to prevent them.” In grade 8, students are taught more about how to make healthy decisions around sex, with discussions on abstinence, contraception and consent. “They also discuss gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation, and identify factors that can help all young people to develop positive personal identities.”
Curricula around the country are variations on this theme. For example in Nova Scotia, the concept of gender identity is introduced in grade 4, which is also when sex education is first taught, for example on topics such as reproductive health and the physical changes of puberty.
“The curriculum says the students will also begin to consider the social construction of gender, meaning the behaviour and roles traditionally associated with genders in our society, and they’ll discuss how gender can be expressed in many different ways. By grade 5, gender and sexuality are discussed together, but are limited to the context of how these things are portrayed in the media and how that can impact a student’s sense of self. Those sorts of themes continue through to grade 9.”
In other words, simmer down folks. Certainly though there is room for disagreement in a number of areas. For example, some might think fifth graders, aged 10 to 11, too young to be taught about the categories of heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, etc. Others might protest that discussing sexual relationships with 12-13 year-olds in grade 7 might encourage them to experiment, perhaps even with a member of their own sex (GASP!!!). Or that introducing ideas of gender identity in grade 4, when students are 9-10 years old, might give children ideas they would not otherwise have had.
While I find these concerns misplaced, discussions on these questions could be worth having. I also think there is room for some disagreement when it comes to school library books such as ‘Gender Queer’, which launched the recent ‘porn panic’ resulting in book bans across North America. This graphic novel by Maia Kobabe has been a lightning rod for mostly religious conservatives, who are incensed by a handful of sexually explicit images in the 240 page illustrated memoir/comic book. As one concerned parent put it, “Any 10- or 17-year-old could just check out that book. This could do damage to children if they don’t know what’s in it.” The writer explains:
“I can absolutely understand the desire of a parent to protect their child from sensitive material. I’m sympathetic to people who have the best interest of young people at heart,” Kobabe, the 32-year-old author based in California, said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “I also want to have the best interest of young people at heart. There are queer youth at every high school — and those students, that’s [who] I’m thinking about, is the queer student who is getting left behind.”
To add to all this, the provinces of New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have recently required parental consent for students wishing to change their preferred names or pronouns. While in a perfect world we would of course want parents involved in these life-altering choices, the fact is sometimes that is not in the best interest of the child.
But most of the crowd on social media and protestors in the school board meetings and on the streets are not interested in having these more nuanced conversations. Many opposed to sexual orientation and gender identity in education dismiss pleas to look at the curricula as beside the point. For them, the library book and pronoun controversies are indicative of the real problem: the subliminal messaging bombarding impressionable young minds with posters, pride flags, bulletin boards and worksheets. But like the Christian and Muslim parents screaming themselves hoarse to “stop indoctrinating the children,” advancers of this chaotic roadwork of argumentation show not only a shocking lack of self-awareness, but also miss the whole point of the exercise: dislodging the previously seated straight dictatorship in our schools and the world at large and replacing it with something more balanced and representative of the complex realities of our society.
The sort of thinking displayed here can be especially infuriating to people like me who went through the education system in previous decades. If all this “propaganda” was going to turn children ‘gay’ or ‘trans,’ then I probably wouldn’t have ever been attracted to males, since everything even remotely ‘gay’ in school was erased while heterosexuality was so omnipresent as to be - OF COURSE! - taken for granted. Sexual orientation and gender identity is not contagious (unlike say… Covid-19.) You would think this crew would appreciate that fact.
But I make the mistake here of appealing to logic. Like the “Freedom Convoy”, with its disingenuous pleas for “more conversation” when it was obvious only complete surrender from the authorities would suffice, the point here isn’t to negotiate an understanding but to force a frantic retreat, in this case way back to the 1950s. Not that they’re against gays and lesbians. No no, don’t get the wrong idea. We will still be free to indulge in our deviance in private, so long as we keep the noise down. The pervert parades might have to be cancelled. Being queer might be returned to its rightful place as the dirty family secret no one dared mention. But such is the price of public decency and a safe space for our children. Or as one Muslim protestor in Montreal succinctly put it, “Don’t teach them in school any bad ways. You have your lifestyle. I accept it. I respect it. You have to accept and respect our lifestyle too”
There is a real willful ignorance in all this, an insistence not to understand. We in the LGBTQ+ community were children too, once. We longed for a place that allowed us to be ourselves, where we belonged. In the shouts and pleas for THE CHILDREN!!!!! OHHH THE CHILDREN!!!!!, the protestors forget little boys and girls like me, who for generations had to come to terms with their “deviance” in not so much a void of information as a dictatorship of the straights, where everything ‘gay’ was shamed and ostracized. Now that this poisonous tyranny has lost its iron grip, we have the stale remnants of it ranting and raving about "parental rights" and “grooming.” All while a new generation of vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth struggle to find their footing in this volatile, polarized terrain.
I mentioned earlier about a certain psychology, one “of unresolved and unaddressed trauma and grievance.” This aspect of being gay, queer or trans is one that I don’t think the opposition has yet fully grasped. They underestimate the nerve they keep striking at. The LGBTQ+ community, on the other hand, knows the measure of their opponents, who might soon discover they’ve picked the wrong target.
What amazingly captivating read! Thank you for sharing your perspective in such an eloquently brillant way.