Parents of a six-year-old schoolgirl have filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario after their daughter’s first-grade teacher taught her there’s no such thing as “girls and boys”.
In January 2018, the children, as young as six, were required to watch a YouTube video titled, “He, She and They?!? — Gender: Queer Kid Stuff #2.” The video contained statements such as, “some people aren’t boys or girls,” and there are people who do not “feel like a ‘she’ or a ‘he,’ and therefore might not have a gender.
A couple of months later, parents Jason and Pamela Buffone, noticed the negative impact the lessons were having on their six-year-old daughter. According to an exclusive interview with The Post Millennial, the young girl began spontaneously and repeatedly asking why her identity as a girl was “not real.”
She asked if she could ‘go to a doctor’ about the fact that she was a girl. She said she was ‘not sure if she wanted to be a mommy.’
After the six-year-old began to show signs of confusion and distress, Jason and Pamela raised their concerns with the young girl’s teacher who informed them that gender fluidity was the School Board policy, that some children are struggling with the idea that gender is binary, and confirmed that the topic of sex change had come up for discussion.
The Buffones then contacted the school principal who told them the lessons were to accommodate a child in the class who had shown interest in self-expression as the opposite sex.
The couple then met with the superintendent of the school board and the curriculum superintendent. According to the complaint, “The school board did not agree to communicate with parents when sensitive discussions took place, nor did they agree to issue any directive or take corrective action in order to ensure that children of female gender identity were positively affirmed.”
In the end, the Buffones were forced to remove their daughter from the school and enrol her elsewhere.
Ms Buffone went on to tell The Post Millennial: “The Ontario Human rights Code states that a poisoned environment is a form of discrimination. We’re going to provide evidence that the manner in which [the teacher] was teaching the concept of gender identity resulting in a poisoned environment. The principal further exacerbated the situation in that the only option provided to us was to remove our daughter from the classroom for these lessons, which is exclusionary treatment.”
“This is an important case,” Ms Buffone said. “Our government seems to have given teachers carte blanche in terms of how they teach this concept [of gender identity]. If this is an example of how it can be taught, I think it’s in the public interest for the HRTO to weigh in on it. Teachers are providing a public service and have a duty of care to all of their students, just as the HRTO has a responsibility to all of Ontarians. I think this case is a good example of why we need to set ideology aside when dealing with human rights.”
