No, Schools Don't Need to Celebrate the Sexuality of Students
Why would anyone ever think this should be the case?
I came out as a lesbian in high school in 2006. It was a Catholic high school, in Alberta, no less, so one might jump to the conclusion that it was a horrible experience and I was relentlessly bullied and had a terrible time. But that isn’t true. Aside from one friend who found it weird and distanced herself, everyone and everything else stayed pretty much the same. Oh, and there was the girl in Bio class who told me she heard a horrible rumor about me and then in hushed tones said that the rumor was that I was a lesbian. I laughed and said that was true, and she never brought it up again.
Isn’t it incredible that my sexuality managed to be such a non-issue despite the fact that my school didn’t have a single pride flag anywhere? Isn’t it amazing that I came to an understanding of my own sexuality without borderline pornographic books in the library? How did I ever manage to do it without joining a Gay-Straight Alliance (now known as a Gender-Sexuality Alliance, thank you very much) or without my teachers taking a strong and inappropriate interest in my sexuality?
Before going further, let me say I know my experience isn’t everyone’s experience. Many people, especially those who came out earlier than I did, probably had a harder time. I suspect a boy coming out as gay even in the same year and school I did would have had a harder time. I can’t recall any who even were out because it was probably a pretty scary prospect. But I don’t think pride flags and rainbows plastered on the walls would have helped.
I think that changing cultural attitudes in general is what truly helped me and many others have an easier time coming out than those before us. These attitudes permeated the teachers and students at the school since they all—obviously—live in broader society. I don’t think there needed to be an extra push from school staff to make homosexuality a central topic of conversation, like we are seeing now, even though this was already a few years after gay marriage was legalized in Canada.
In fact, isn’t it interesting that sexuality didn’t start to become such a central topic in schools until gender ideology started to gain steam? The notorious SOGI 1 2 3 (SOGI meaning “sexuality orientation and gender identity”) program, for example, which I have written extensively about, only came into fruition after Canada began adding gender identity and gender expression to human rights codes at various levels of government. This was long after sexual orientation made it in.
But suddenly, schools all across the country were compelled to have such programs and were compelled to teach these topics under the guise of anti-bullying. I think this is backward. Schools should be cultivating an atmosphere and an attitude of respect for everyone rather than hyper-focusing on the gay kids (and now the so-called “trans” and “queer” kids). Kids get bullied for many reasons, and trying to highlight specific “oppressed” traits risks overlooking other reasons for interpersonal problems among children. Not only that, but I also fear this strategy can significantly backfire. If all the “cis” and “straight” kids are constantly being told to show deference to the “queer” kids, then I think there is a very real risk of creating and stoking resentment against them.
I believe we are already starting to see shifts in attitude toward all things associated with “gay” because people are sick and tired of having it forced on them all the time—and especially of having it forced on their kids in schools. Sure, I believe we should be primarily blaming the trans activists and the queer theorists, but every day people don’t have the time and the familiarity with this topic to parse all that. They’d often rather just toss the whole acronym out.
So, that’s the broader societal problem with schools focusing way too closely on the sexuality of students. But I am also worried about the impact it has on the individual students themselves.
I am so glad that pride symbols weren’t all over my school and teachers weren’t trying to talk to me about my sexuality when I came out. I would have just died. My biggest fear when I came out was that I would be known as “the lesbian” rather than as myself. I didn’t want my sexuality to subsume my entire identity. I still wanted to be known as me, as Eva, not as Eva the Lesbian.
It seems that’s the opposite approach that schools take today. Kids are encouraged to wear their sexual and gender identities loudly and proudly. And, of course, what kids take away from this encouragement is that these identity labels are what make them special. You have to look no further than at children’s answers to the sexuality and “gender” questions on Canadian school surveys that are for some reason asking about these things. What I noticed when reviewing these surveys is that, while a small portion of kids are identifying as gay or lesbian, far more are identifying as things like “asexual,” “pansexual,” and “queer.”
Remember that these are minors who, yes, may have started experiencing sexual feelings if they have already entered puberty, but who obviously still lack significant life experience. And yet these kids are being encouraged at very young ages to take on an identity label and to wear it for all the world to see. They are somehow supposed to know, as young as 11 years old, that they lack sexual attraction entirely or that they are attracted to all genders (as in the case of the ridiculous “pansexual” label). Don’t get me started on the fact that these surveys ask kids as young as eight about their “gender identity.
And no, I don’t even think that kids this young should be attaching themselves to labels like “gay” or “lesbian.” Yes, these feelings can start very young. I had my first crush on a girl at 13. But I’m glad I didn’t make a big public pronouncement out of it. At 15, I tried dating a boy, and while this only further proved to me just how much of a lesbian I was, I don’t regret it, and at least this confusing time wasn’t compounded by my having to constantly flip-flop on and clarify my current sexuality label. I was really only forced to “come out” more publicly when I eventually did simply because I chose not to hide my same-sex relationship.
All this to say that young people will eventually figure it all out without schools and teachers interjecting themselves into the process. Aside from cultivating a respectful school environment, there is no other role for schools here. Not to mention that throwing the nonsense concept of “gender identity” into the mix makes everything so much more complicated and confusing. And while it isn’t just gay and lesbian youth getting sucked into the gender craze, they are more susceptible to it, especially if they are particularly gender non-conforming on top of being homosexual.
Teachers, I promise you, you are ultimately making things worse for the very kids you are claiming to help. They don’t need to declare or even be sure about their sexuality during the confusing pre-teen and teen years. They definitely don’t need gender ideology to make everything even more confusing. And pushing these conversations in the classroom is doing nothing but contributing to a cultural backlash.
I worry that the pendulum will swing so far back in a few years that young people once again won’t be able to come out as nonchalantly as I did. I just don’t want there to be a big fuss about it—from either side. I don’t want them to receive hate, nor do I want misguided do-gooders to hyper-focus on their sexuality in the name of “inclusion” and “anti-bullying.”
Why is this such a hard balance to strike? To delve into that, we’d no doubt have to delve into the polarized nature of our politics. But while we wait to solve that particular massive problem, kids will continue to be used as pawns.
I started high school in 1969, years after it became clear to me that I was same-sex attracted. At the co-ed Swiss boarding school I attended it was customary for students to pair off into boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. However, in the year of Stonewall it was hardly surprising that there were no out gays or lesbians in the student body or among the faculty, administration or staff. Heteronormativity ruled, albeit implicitly. Though we were lectured about many things and were being chided constantly for breaking rules, nobody ever spoke to us about sex or sexuality. After two years I transferred to the Connecticut boarding school my brother attended. Between institutionalized emotional neglect on the part of the faculty and administration and an unwelcoming student body where vicious backbiting was common, I felt socially squashed. The homophobic slurs directed at boys whose sexual orientation was ambigous kept me in the closet.
It was a terrible time and place to be a gay teen. I had a strong libido but suffered a deficit of the male aggression required to seek guys out to hook up with on the down low. I was ready for sex and would have welcomed romance, but neither was readily available to me for sociocultural reasons. The only thing that would have helped me out of my predicament was a time machine to the early 80s, which is when I was finally able to come out.
For all that, I agree with Ms. Kurilova that schools do not need to celebrate gay and lesbian students' sexuality. What sexual minorities require from their schools is actual physical and emotional safety and a guarantee that they will not be discriminated against for living in accordance with their sexual orientation. Though anti-bullying programs were unknown during my student days, in principle they seems like a vehicle for meeting gay and lesbian students' need for safety. Sex ed, too, has the potential to validate sexual minorities. That does not mean teaching them how to have sex, of course. That would be undignified and unnecessary. No, what's needed from sex ed is an acknowledgement that some people are attracted romantically and sexually to members of the same sex, and that is perfectly OK.
What about that "extra push from school staff to make homosexuality a central topic of conversation"? That includes ubiquitous rainbow paraphernalia, special displays of books in the school library during pride month, workbooks and other pedagogical aids and student organizations.
No, absolutely not. You see, all of that folderol is needed only to indoctrinate youth into the tenets of gender identity ideology. Why is that? It is because Butlerian gender ideology, unlike sexual orientation, is learned not inherent. I've known enough gay men by now to have concluded that most of us experience our sexual orientation as an innate quality that blossoms naturally over time beginning in childhood or adolescence. I know from painful experience that coming out to one's self can and does happen in social isolation. In contrast, kids would never arrive at an inner understanding of the contemporary concept of gender on their own. Since gender identity is made up out of whole cloth, it needs to be implanted in youth and the attitudes and behaviors reinforced by modeling.
In closing, what rankles the most about the capture of our schools and other institutions by gender identity ideology is how undemocratic it has been. Has any school or school district ever held a debate or open community forum on the merits of gender identity ideology? Have parents and other stakeholders in the educational system ever had the opportunity to vote on the implementation of programs to train children about gender identity? For that matter, do elected and appointed officials and their staffs ever give sex realists an impartial hearing, or are we always frozen out of the political process for the sin of being "transphobes"? Why is that?
Funny story: I was talking with a friend about high protein diets, and she said that in the early 1980s when visiting her parents, her dad said "Have you heard about KD Lang?"
Expecting some homophobia (sp), she said "Yes, I know. She's gay."
Her dad said "Yes, I know. Whatever. She's a vegetarian! Her family is in the livestock business. She's being very disrespectful in saying that eating meat is wrong. "
This from a conservative rural man. KD Lang's sexuality was not worthy of comment. Her dietary stance was.