Long way to go to protect LGBTQ students and teachers at school, advocates say

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Chase Parker says he always feels unsafe and scared at school.

The 16-year-old from Brampton, Ont., who attends a Catholic high school, came out as transgender just over a year ago. He says he’s been bullied by his peers, his teachers wouldn’t respect his pronouns or chosen name at first, and he once received a physical threat against him from another teenager. He says in the last year, his school has been under two lockdowns due to stabbings among students.

“I was told one time that if I didn’t shut my mouth for standing up for myself, then I would be the next person stabbed,” Parker says.

Parker says the student has now been expelled, but only because his mother - who is unsupportive of his gender identity - stepped in and reported it to the school administration.

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While this is a shocking example of things he says he’s been through, Parker says he’s bullied almost every day because he is trans. He says he’s faced issues with his teachers as well - and not just when he reports harassment from his classmates.

Parker says when he told his teachers he was transgender and he no longer wanted them to use his birth name and to address him using male pronouns, the response was negative. Although the Ontario human rights code protects transgender people – including students in schools - Parker says school officials said they had to go through his parents to get permission to use the pronouns and name he wanted since he was 15 at the time. But since his mother was unsupportive, they refused to honour what he’d asked.

Parker says this led to some teachers just not referring to him by a name at all.

He has since moved in with his father, who is supportive, and the school is now calling him by his chosen name and the male pronouns he uses. But because that change happened when he was 15, the school still needed to get parental permission for anything related to his gender identity.

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Paul Leonard is an openly gay teacher who is an instructor at what he describes as a “smaller, alternative school” in the Toronto District School Board. He says the way schools deal with students under the age of 16 in general creates a “complicated question” here. Since, for example, parents have to approve courses their children take until they turn 16, that means these issues must be solved by going up the “bureaucratic food chain,” so to speak, he says.

“When you’re dealing with students who are under the age of 16, it is a problem for the school if there’s a disagreement between the student and the parent about some aspect of the educational process,” Leonard says. “Obviously, the health and wellbeing of this student should be the primary concern, but parents do actually have a role in the development of their children… just as we can’t tell parents, ‘You can’t teach your children to be fundamentalist Christians,’ it’s also very difficult for us as a system to say, 'No, your understanding about gender identity is wrong.’”

LGBTQ students do not feel safe at school

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Brian De Matos of Queer Ontario says Parker’s experience is “unfortunate, yet typical” of what many LGBTQ students deal with at school. And survey statistics show many also face issues based on how they’re perceived, and don’t even need to come out to be bullied.

“I’m not trans, but my experiences were a lot like that,” he says. “I would wear nail polish and get in trouble."

According to a 2012 national survey commissioned by EGALE Canada’s Human Rights Trust, bullying targeting LGBTQ students is still rampant in Canadian schools. Almost two-thirds of LGBTQ students said they feel unsafe at school.

The survey found 74 per cent of transgender students and 55 per cent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer students reported being verbally harassed about their gender presentation. Thirty-seven per cent of trans students, 32 per cent of female students belonging to a sexual minority, and 20 per cent of male students who are sexual minorities said they were harassed on a daily or weekly basis about their sexual orientation or gender identity.

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That bullying isn’t just verbal. The survey found 21 per cent of LGBTQ students had reported being physically harassed or assaulted due to their sexual orientation, while 20 per cent of LGBTQ students and 10 per cent of students who are not LGBTQ reported they had been physically harassed or assaulted because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. Thirty-seven per cent of transgender students, 21 per cent of LGBQ students, and 10 per cent of non-LGBTQ students reported being physically harassed or assaulted because of their gender expression.

Sexual harassment rates are, disturbingly, much higher. Forty-nine per cent of transgender students reported facing sexual harassment at school in the last year, 43 per cent of bisexual female students said they had faced it, while 42 per cent of male bisexual students, 40 per cent of gay male students, and 33 per cent of lesbian students said they had also encountered it.

The issues LGBTQ students face while coming out has prompted many schools around the country to start gay-straight alliances, or GSAs. EGALE’s website describes these groups as "official student clubs with LGBTQ and heterosexual student membership” that usually have one or two teachers as advisors. The goal is to give students a “safe haven” where they can discuss how better to make their schools more inclusive and “welcoming for sexual and gender minority students,” according to EGALE’s website.

EGALE’s survey found students who attended schools with GSAs were more likely to “agree that their school communities are supportive of LGBTQ people,” were more likely to be open with other students about their sexual orientations or gender identities, and were more likely to agree that their overall school climate was “becoming less homophobic.”

GSAs help, but issues are systemic: advocates

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Students have sometimes faced pushback when trying to start GSAs. In 2012, the Ontario provincial government passed a law that states all school boards must allow students to open gay-straight alliances (GSAs) and students have the right to demand them at schools. When that law was introduced, several Catholic groups balked, and advocated “civil disobedience,” arguing the Constitution Act of 1867 protects separate schools and “their right to let Church teaching guide their curriculum,” according to the National Post.

In 2014, a bill was introduced in the Alberta legislature that would have forced LGBTQ students to take school boards to court if they were not allowed to start a GSA. After backlash, the Progressive Conservative government led by then-Premier Jim Prentice introduced a separate bill mandating GSAs in any schools were students want to have them.

But some say starting a GSA doesn’t mean things will get better.

“GSAs do definitely help, but it shouldn’t just be limited to that,” De Matos says.

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Parker says his school “completely cancelled” its GSA because most of those attending were set to graduate, and no one else wanted to go. He says he thinks younger students weren’t attending GSA meetings because they felt unsafe and were worried about being bullied or experiencing violence if their peers found out they attended the group.

“I was like, 'What do you mean? Why don’t you just keep it open for people who feel scared and stuff, so they can just go there?’” Parker says. “It’s just good to have an option.”

Often in cases where students are not being supported by teachers or the administration, their only option is to connect with an agency like EGALE or Queer Ontario and pursue legal action, De Matos says. But that’s not something many want to do, nor can many financially. He points out while Queer Ontario doesn’t have lawyers, it does support students who wish to get one because of issues they may be facing with their school.

ALSO SEE: Transgender, transition and the effects on the family

"It’s unfortunate for youth to have to go through that, to have to decide to be themselves or get an education,” De Matos says. “No one should have to make that choice."

He says the curriculum needs a fundamental revamp for LGBTQ students to truly feel safe and that they are being included in school.

"There’s bullying, sure, but there’s problems with the curriculum,” De Matos continues. “It still doesn’t teach queer history, still doesn’t teach about LGBT rights, etc. Basically, the curriculum is based on segregation."

De Matos points out that while LGBTQ-specific policies are in place in many schools, they are often not enforced, which he says isn’t just an issue affecting students.

LGBTQ teachers also still facing issues

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If students had LGBTQ adults to look up to, it could help solve these issues, De Matos says. But he says an additional problem arises when teachers are themselves afraid to come out because they don’t want to lose their jobs. He says this is particularly an issue within Catholic boards.

"I mean, in the Catholic school board, they can’t discriminate against students, but they can still fire teachers on the basis of it goes against religion-based education,” he says.

In 2008, Jay Buterman was fired from the Greater St. Albert School Division’s teacher’s list in Alberta after he transitioned from female to male because his transition was “not in line with Catholic values."

De Matos says all of this creates an environment where teachers do not feel safe being open about who they are at work.

"If a teacher’s not comfortable coming out, that’s really horrible in that students lack the opportunity to see a really good role model,” he says.

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Teachers don’t just face homophobia from colleagues, higher-ups or school boards, though, and it can often come from parents and students.

Leonard, who started teaching in 1993 and says he’s been out pretty much his entire career, says he’s found his workplace supportive and the homophobia he’s faced has been subtle and nuanced and largely come from parents.

“For example, I would be meeting the parents of a student who had misbehaved or been extremely disrespectful, and I could just tell from talking to the parents that the parents thought that it was perfectly appropriate for the student to be disrespectful because I was obviously gay,” Leonard says. “A parent has never actually said that, it’s the sort of thing that’s very hard to pin down."

He says while his experience has been mostly positive, other gay teachers he knows at larger schools have had a harder time.

"I’ve talked to people who teach in big schools who’ve had issues of like, explicitly homophobic verbal attacks from students, or having their tires of their car slashed, that sort of thing."

When it comes down to it, De Matos says curriculum, effectively enforcing LGBTQ-related policy violations and ensuring teachers also feel comfortable to come out are all key in helping LGBTQ students feel more safe at school.

"Supporting teachers is supporting students,” he says.