Talk to Your Kids About ‘Gender’ Before They Do
Activist teachers are indoctrinating your kids. It’s time for people with common sense and courage to speak up.
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According to the 2021-2022 student census taken by the Toronto area Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, a full five percent of students consider themselves a gender other than boy or girl. These other genders include names like “boyflux,” “demigirl,” “trigender,” and many other fashionable bespoke identities. Seven percent say they are either “transgender” or “not sure” if they are. Given current trends, these percentages are sure to increase as gender ideology becomes more pro-actively entrenched throughout the educational system and society more broadly.
My own family’s experience made me intimately aware that activist teachers, supported by their principals and administration, are eager and emboldened to put the tenets of gender ideology that informs their personal worldview into school curriculum as much as possible. For instance, when our daughter was in Grade 1 in an Ottawa public school, we understood that the sex-ed curriculum only entailed learning the names of various body parts. But her teacher took it upon herself to insert what she called “teaching moments”—i.e. planned, but unarchived sessions of gender ideology—into her lessons. One of these teaching moments included informing her 6-year-old pupils that “there’s no such thing as girls and boys,” that “gender is a spectrum,” and that even though you may be one way in your body, you can be another way in your heart. If our daughter had not suffered distress that caused her to describe these “moments,” we would never have known they were taking place.
Teachers are increasingly pestering 8-year-olds in Grade 3 to state their pronouns—a practice that seeds the idea that being a girl or a boy has nothing to do with biology and is instead all about how one feels. By Grade 5, students in Ontario are expected to fill out government-mandated surveys asking about their “gender identity,” with no question relating to their biological sex.
In an email, one mother described to me how completely dumbfounded she was to discover that in her 10-year-old’s class on pregnancy, the accompanying video portrayed a “man” having a baby. Her son assumed that whenever he saw a girl with short hair or a boy with long hair, “they must be transgendering.” But despite being inundated with lessons on gender and sexuality, he still had not been informed what it means to be heterosexual, nor was he taught that biology is predictive of sex-aligned gender identity in all—including those who are gender non-conforming in their presentation—but a very small percentage of individuals.
To the ideologues who supply the teaching materials to educators, the idea of the “norm” is anathema. Instead, what many of us understand to be the norms are purposefully disappeared or even inverted. Consider this poster, supplied by EGALE, at Forest Hill Public School:
The poster, in addition to rooting notions of manhood and womanhood in simple stereotypes, suggests that all choices one may make about their “gender” are both equally anodyne and equally easy to achieve. Breast binding for girls entering puberty, for instance, is portrayed as entirely safe and normal, despite the fact that it can produce harmful effects such as shortness of breath, fractured ribs, and lung collapse. And is what’s “in our hearts” truly everything that “really matters”? You’ll notice there is no mention of life-altering drugs with irreversible effects—including infertility—or surgeries, some of them extremely complex and high-risk.
This poster is not meant to inform; it is meant to influence. Seduce is not too strong a word for the intention in this poster, and it is directed at children considered too young to view commercials for sugary breakfast cereal. And no guidelines exist anywhere to help parents or schools navigate what’s appropriate or not.
In contrast, the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards contains a 28-point checklist to help advertisers determine whether their message is appropriate for impressionable young minds. Number 18, for example, prohibits adults or children from being “portrayed in clearly unsafe acts or situations,” and number 24 prohibits “anything in the advertisement that might result in harm to children.” Yet breast binding, despite the well-documented risks, is somehow allowed to circumvent the parent-informed review and approval process normally required to advertise to kids under 12.
In the United States, Florida has taken a much-needed step forward to put parents back in the driver’s seat in protecting their kids from indoctrination and age-inappropriate materials. Governor Ron DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education Bill was savaged by critics on the Left as the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, even though there is no caveat in the Bill against teaching about different sexualities at an appropriate age, and polling found broad support for the legislation across the political spectrum. A full 70 percent of registered Republicans, 58 percent of Independents, and 55 percent of Democrats support legislation restricting instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to children up to Grade 3.
Child safeguarding and teaching respect and care for our bodies were once important aspects of our education system. The introduction of teaching materials on gender nonconformity was justified by its relevance for anti-bullying education. But we have since taken a long and crooked path away from instruction about bullying. There are many ways to teach children to be kind and respectful of one another. There are many age-appropriate ways to make all children feel safe and valued for who they are. But facilitating the transition of gender nonconforming children by “affirming” their cross-sex identity rooted in sex stereotypes is not one of them. In fact, it is hard to imagine a form of bullying more severe than convincing children they may need to remove body parts to be their true selves.
There must be boundaries. Where are the Canadian politicians with the common sense and courage to push back against this harmful viral ideology? Where are the parents with the courage to raise their voices publicly to call for such action?
It may soon be too late if we don’t speak up now.
Pam Buffone is a Canadian mother of two. She filed a discrimination case on behalf of her 6-year-old daughter against the Ottawa Carleton District School Board asking that guardrails be established for how gender identity theory can be taught. The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal granted a full hearing which took place in March of this year. The decision on the case will be received soon. She started Canadian Gender Report to ensure parents were able to find evidence-based information about gender related topics and appropriate care and support for their gender questioning children.
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The problem is broader than the particular issue discussed here. Public schools are being turned into indoctrination rather than educational institutions. Ultimately, private school which, by necessity, must be much more responsive to parental concerns, is the better solution.
I wrote to both the TDSB Superintendent in charge of DEI policy, my local Conservative MPP and to the Ministry of Education about the poster a few months back, and none would address my concerns about the misleading info in it, or explain what some of it means...you can be a girl, a boy, both or neither?! The only response was that they were trying to be nice to people. The Super did say that the poster was in a part of the school where only older kids, grade 4 and up, would see it.