Saskatchewan's new policy on pronouns and sex education
No surprise that a right wing hack government is perpetuating transphobia
Last week in Saskatchewan Dustin Duncan released a new policy around pronouns and names in Sask schools. The gist of it is that teachers and school staff aren’t supposed to use the pronouns or name that a youth identifies with until they’ve contacted the parents and informed them of the change. It also has some weird stuff in there about organizations, mainly Planned Parenthood, providing materials for sex education.
I suppose it’s unsurprising that someone like Dustin Duncan and Scott Moe would think this is a good idea since they use their religious beliefs to justify all kinds of horrible ideas.
Of course after the government released it’s new policy there was flury of statements from the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation (here), the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, the Saskatchewan Child Advocate, and many others who know that this policy will harm kids and make them vulnerable to abuse by parents who may well be transphobic.
Among other things this policy will limit the way that sex education is taught in schools so that unless it meets this government’s backwards view of sexuality then it won’t get taught and thus will leave kids less educated and more vulnerable to the exact type of sexual victimization that conservatives claim to care about.
All of this, of course, is done under the guise of “parental rights” which we all know is bullshit because as soon as a parent accepts their child as trans then the hate mongers declare them a bad parent who is grooming their own child.
In a recent interview with Stefani Langanegger, Dustin Duncan who is the minister of education in Saskatchewan admitted that he didn’t know much about the research demonstrating policies like this one puts trans kids at higher risk of depression and suicide. You can watch that here
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Duncan is just another conservative in a long line of them who is being led by the party’s base of voters, who it turns out are a bunch of transphobes who watch too much right wing youtube or Fox news.
I don’t have much else I can write about this but I will let you know that there is a lot of stuff being written and talked about regarding this new policy and I’ll try to provide some links below.
If you read this before September 2nd, 2023 then join in the demonstration at the Legislature building at 11 am to show the Sask Party that we the citizens of Saskatchewan care about trans youth and see this policy as harmful, bigoted, nonsense.
All in all it’s typical fare for the anti-trans movement and conservatives in general. They claim to be about freedom and parental rights and not wanting the government to interfere in the lives of citizens but when it supports their bigotry they are able to ignore all their past rhetoric and just go full hateful authoritarian.
https://www.ckom.com/2023/08/22/swift-reaction-to-education-policy-changes-in-saskatchewan/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-opposition-gender-school-policy-1.6945452