Parents take school to court for teaching their 6-y-o girl gender fluidity, causing her distress
An Ontario couple has filed a complaint in the provincial Human Rights court against the school system after their six-year-old daughter was taught gender fluidity in class and started worrying she might not be female.
During a 1st grade class at Devonshire Community Public School in January 2018, a teacher presented a YouTube video on gender called "He, She, and They?!?—Gender: Queer Kid Stuff #2" which was part of the lesson plan that day, according to Canadian columnist Barbara Kay, who interviewed the girl's mother, Pamela Buffone, in the Post Millennial Monday.
"I think you’ve got to get in front of it somehow," Pamela Buffone said in a Tuesday interview with The Christian Post, when asked what she would advise parents who believe as she does about the harms of teaching gender theory to young children.
"Be knowledgeable about trans-activism and read your school’s policies. Ask them how they’re going to teach concepts like gender fluidity and don’t expose too much of your own position first. You’ll learn a lot from how they choose to answer your questions."
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Among the statements presented as fact in the video were "some people aren't boys or girls," and some do not feel like they are a "he" or a "she" and because of that may not have a gender. The young girl, who was thoroughly confused, told her mother that the teacher, who kept teaching this kind of gender theory throughout the semester, would tell the class that "there is no such thing as girls and boys" and "girls are not real and boys are not real."
By March her parents "could see the lessons were having an impact on their daughter, as she began spontaneously and repeatedly asking them 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,'” Kay explained.
Her parents became concerned about their daughter's psychological well-being particularly because she had never shown signs of confusion about her identity prior to the introduction of these materials. They ultimately met with the teacher who was determined to continue teaching gender fluidity to the children; the teacher told them that "a change in society" had occurred thus necessitating the lessons and that they were official policy from the School Board. The teacher also reportedly confirmed to Buffone that the subject of sex change had come up for discussion.
When the couple went to the principal they were told that the lessons had been set in motion to accommodate a child in the class who had expressed interest in self-expression as the opposite sex. The school reportedly has a "gender specialist" with which they consult. The Buffones ultimately withdrew their daughter from the school and enrolled her in a different school, one where her daughter is glad to not have a teacher who is instructing her that "girls are not real."
Frustrated that school officials never adequately addressed her objections she took the matter to the Human Rights Tribunal, arguing the distress of the confusing school lessons were a violation of her human rights.
The Buffones filed the complaint in March, received a response from the School Board, and then wrote their reply. They are presently waiting to hear the next steps from the Human Rights Tribunal.
Although she has been warned that the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has been taken over by the radical left, Pamela Buffone told CP she is determined to remain confident that the Tribunal will review her case with objectivity.
"There are certainly implications of having gender ideology entrenched in law that haven’t been thought through yet," she said.
She added that she hopes the legal action she is presently taking "makes people realize there needs to be some boundaries around this kind of activism that’s coming into our schools and being taught as a universal truth."
Thus far, few if any boundaries on the notion of gender identity in law and public policy seem to exist in the Canadian province. In 2016, the Canadian parliament passed the controversial bill known as C-16, which added gender expression and gender identity as protected ground into the Canadian Human Rights Act and its Criminal Code provisions.
“Our government seems to have given teachers carte blanche in terms of how they teach this concept [of gender identity]," the Ontario mother told the Post Millennial Monday.
"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.”
The distress young children are experiencing at their schools when the possibility of transitioning to a different gender is introduced has surfaced in recent years amid rapidly spreading transgender activism.
In 2017, controversy ensued in Rocklin, California when an area charter school read the "I am Jazz" transgender children's book and reportedly facilitated a gender transition ceremony for one of the 5-year-olds during class, traumatizing other students. The school subsequently put out a statement disputing that this happened.
