Playing Gender-Role Games With School Boards
"We have overwhelming evidence that the community, or the stakeholders, are not supporting the survey, or the professional policy draft as it is circulated.""So right now, the community sees us as not being up to the job, just dragging our feet. Are we doing anything to address this?"There is no clear expectations from the policy like what we are trying to achieve. The scope of this policy is left to anybody's interpretation. The scope is completely open."Trustee Naveed Ahmed, Halton County District School Board"All students, parents or guardians, teachers, staff and community members have the right to be safe and feel safe in their school community.""With this right comes the responsibility for everyone to be accountable for their actions and contribute to a positive school climate."Ontario Education Act"[Including] inappropriate behaviour.""This is our legal requirement."We need to have the confidence to create a policy to address the inappropriate behaviour."Trustee Xin Ye Zhang, Halton County District School Board
Kayla Lemieux is a teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School. |
Staid
Canada, where nothing much happens aside from endless snowstorms in the
winter months, caught the international media's attention not long ago
with the spectacle of a shop teacher, claiming to be transvestite
wearing grotesquely abnormally large prosthetic beasts under
tight-fitting tops to the surprised bemusement of her students at the
Halton District School Board jurisdiction's Oakville Trafalgar High
School. A few of the students took photographs and videos of the shop
teacher and posted them online. Unsurprisingly, they were an immediate
sensation.
Since
the matter of transgender Kayla Lemieux teaching shop at Oakville
Trafalgar High School, just north of Toronto first erupted, parents and
students have demanded accountability from the school and the board.
Months have passed and none has been presented. The school
administration and the school board along with members of the teaching
staff all declared their support for Kayla Lemieux and 'her' bizarre
presentation with gigantic breasts and a blond wig.
That
resulted in community frustration, parents gathering in roadside
protests, issuing petitions, public outbursts of anger and an eruption
of death threats. Matters became even more threateningly serious with a
series of bomb scares bringing in the police. Throughout this public
backlash Board trustees and officials remained constant in their support
of the teacher and there was no action to be taken. Eventually a
request to draft a policy elucidating a dress code and decorum to
instruct Halton schools was ordered.
Lemieux said her extra-large beasts are caused by a condition called
“gigantomastia,” even though she’s never been officially diagnosed. New York Post |
When,
several months on, the draft policy was presented at a board meeting,
it failed to address the issue squarely and no new rules of any
significance nor regulations were promoted. Parents were anything but
pleased. Curtis Ennis, director of education in the district expressed
his own level of frustration. "I
know we have the policy, the statutes and the guidelines and principles
and policies in place when they arise. We have been doing that for
decades". Until, apparently, they ran up against Woke Theology.
The Ontario Child, Youth & Family Services Act reads: "It
is imperative that forms of identity and expression presented in a
school environment be scrutinized against the child safeguarding
practices enshrined in the Act." And according to the Ontario Human Rights Code:
"The primacy of student safety and well\-being must always be
distinguished, prioritized, and protected by those in position of power.
Students must come first."
There has been a partial solution. The teacher is no longer in the classroom at the high school."While not currently on active assignment, the teacher remains employed with the HDSB. We continue to support the teacher",
commented the board's communications manager, Heather Francey. It took a
foreign newspaper to mount an investigation to clarify the situation.
The New York Post published photographs of the teacher in men's clothing in public, sans wig, makeup or the absurd breasts.
As
for the transgender teacher -- Kayla Lemieux insists those breasts were
not prosthetics; instead they are real. The result of a rare genetic
condition of gigantomastia along with a "hormone sensitivity to
estrogen". She was not actually, she said, transgender but born
intersex. Evidently that has some complex variations in conditions when a
person's anatomy fails to align with typical definitions of female or
male. Strangely enough, neighbours of the teacher claim he goes about
dressed as male, but changes to female clothing heading for the school.
Labels: High School Shop Teacher, Ontario School Boards, Teachers, Transgender, Trustees
<< Home