Long Blog #4: “Opposite Gender Day”

When I was in the second grade, my public elementary school’s student council decided to have a school spirit day titled “opposite gender day”, where the boys were supposed to “dress up like girls” and the girls were supposed to “dress up like boys”. As you could imagine, this sparked anger within my small-town community, but not the kind of anger one would assume. I hadn’t thought about my school’s failed “opposite gender day” for years, and when I brought it up to my mother I mentioned how ridiculous it is that something so transphobic and insulting would be approved by the principal. To my shock, my mother then told me that concerns of transphobia were not the reason that the event was cancelled. In the letters that my school’s principal sent out addressing the controversy and cancelling the event, she wrote that it was cancelled because of “serious concerns reflecting a wide variety of personal, religious and family values”. My mother informed me that it was many of the school’s parents who were against the spirit day because they thought it would “turn their child gay”. This made my blood boil. I knew that my town was conservative, but this new information took an already completely disgusting situation and proved that I was raised in a place much more backwards than I was aware of as a child. Now that I am able to reflect upon my years in elementary and high school, I realize I had become accustomed to my school not being a place where queer and transgender people, as well as other minorities, were safe. According to Statistics Canada, LGBTQ Canadians are three times more likely to be assaulted compared to heterosexual people. CBC News also reports that “violent, homophobic incidents common in high schools but few students report them”, proving that schools are not an exception to this rule. Although these reports are terribly alarming, it is impossible to be surprised by them. If students are being raised in an environment where things like “opposite gender day” are seen as wrong not due to transphobia but in fear of “turning gay”, they are more than likely to carry the same intolerance as they grow older. This is an unfortunate cycle that I have observed, as throughout high school many people who I considered childhood friends ended up being intolerant, similarly to how they were raised. Distancing oneself from people with who you share very opposite views obviously creates tension, especially in such a small town. This created a very obvious strain within my high school, which I only realized the root of now that I am graduated. The more “popular” students tended to share the same “conservative” values as their parents, where the less popular students tended to be more progressive. From my experience, the students who would be considered more progressive were by a large gap the minority, meaning that our school was heavily saturated in intolerant norms perpetuated by most students either popular or trying to fit in. In 2012, a telephone survey recorded that over 11% of young Canadians identify within the LGBTQ community, meaning that there are many queer and trans students (whether closeted or not) experiencing homophobic and transphobic school environments. There have been too many incidents where a teacher allows students' rights to be debated in class. There have been too many incidents where queer people have been bullied and sexualized and no teachers take action. This extremely toxic and dangerous environment that has been allowed in schools is caused by the adults in charge, and parents. What adult chooses to raise their child in a way that homophobic and transphobic actions are permissible? What teacher decides that it fair to start a debate in class regarding if it's transphobic to not want to date a transgender person? Many of the parents and teachers let our community down through teaching intolerance. Despite personal beliefs, a school should be a place where every student feels safe to identify as their true self, and it is the job of the school to make sure that nothing gets in the way of that. If safe environments are not created for LGBTQ people, queer and transgender youth will continue to be three times more likely to be victims of assault.