Presentation to the Burnaby School Board on Policy 5.45

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this topic tonight.

Two weeks ago when I first learned of the protests against draft Policy 5.45, I created a Facebook group, and a Facebook page, both called the Burnaby Parents' Gay/Straight Alliance. In addition to writing directly to the board, I also encourage all parents who support this policy to use the Facebook page to show your support and be visible.

However, let me be clear that I do not speak for other parents who have joined the Facebook group. I speak for myself, as a parent of a child in a Burnaby school. I speak as a Canadian-born child of immigrants. I speak as a scientist. I am also a person of faith. And I support Policy 5.45.

As a scientist, one thing I can offer is help finding and understanding the evidence about homosexuality and bullying based on real or perceived sexual orientation. I have also spoken to a colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, who is an expert on adolescent sexual development, and she is willing to come to speak to parents and to answer questions.

The more I learn, the more I realize how long overdue this policy is. I am learning that the expression "that's so gay" is pervasive in Burnaby student culture. I am learning that many children are harassed bullied and teased on a daily basis. I am learning that a shocking number of these children take their own lives. I am also learning that many of the children who have taken their own lives were straight children who were singled out, targeted, labelled, and bullied to their deaths.

I have also been shocked to learn that Aaron Webster’s killers came from Burnaby. For those who may not have heard this story, ten years ago, four young men got in a car for some recreational gay-bashing. They drove to Stanley Park, found a gay man, and beat him to death with baseball bats. These young men were a product of Burnaby schools. Why was a policy not put in place then?

The rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people to be protected from discrimination and bullying is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was enacted about thirty years ago.

Four years ago a judge found that school boards were required to pass policies of this type. With our history, and with a clear need for this type of protection for LGBTQ youth, what I honestly do not understand is why this policy is not already in place. I urge the Burnaby School Board to pass this policy, and then to follow the lead of the Vancouver School Board in putting resources in place to improve the school environment.

I would also like to speak to all of the parents who are here. While it may look like we are on opposite sides, I want to recognize that we are all here out of a deep commitment to doing the right thing for our children. And I would like to say that it is possible to be a committed person of faith and to raise your children to have values that are not taught in the classroom.

This can be uncomfortable and difficult. As parents we need to talk more among one another about the challenges of living in a country that respects and tolerates diversity, but that protects the human rights of everyone.

I myself am a Quaker, and my faith leads me to take a strong position of non-violence. The bible says, “Thou shalt not kill.” Jesus offered the most profound example of non-violence in giving his life without fighting, and chastising Peter for using violence in his defence. Nonetheless, I recognize that my daughter shares the classroom with children who do not share this view, and who may come from military families. I also know that she will be taught that warfare is an acceptable way for countries to resolve conflicts. As a Canadian, I need to be able to speak my truth, while allowing others to have their own, sometimes different, beliefs. And this is a challenge I share with many other families, be they Sikh, Moslem, vegetarians, and even atheists.

Last weekend I gathered with my faith community. I would like to close by reading a minute from that gathering in support of this policy:

Western Half-Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) encourages and supports the Burnaby Board of Education in its work of developing policy that makes schools inclusive and safe for all students. In particular, we strongly support the Burnaby Board’s current efforts to develop and implement policy 5.45, the goal of which is, in the Board’s words, “to ensure that all members of the school community learn to work together in an atmosphere of respect and safety free from homophobia, transphobia, anti-gay harassment and/or exclusion regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.” We hold you in the Light as you work toward honouring and protecting the civil rights of all students.

Thank you.

Christine Hitchcock, Burnaby, BC
May 24, 2011.

Interdisciplinarity I

Recently, I attended a workshop on "Intersectionality in Women's Health Research" at Simon Fraser University. It was terrifically stimulating for me, and part of that stimulation is a reframing of my entire way of being in the world.

In some ways, intersectionality is a fancy name for a simple concept. But it has important connotations and context that seem very powerful. And it seems important for me to figure out exactly what I mean by that, why it is so exciting and stimulating, and where I can go from here.

Intersectionality arose as a way of describing the experiences of black women activists, who found that their experiences and challenges were not being met within the women's movement, nor within black activist groups. They describe being dually penalized, and describe the ways in which both marginal (I use it in the statistical sense) movements (women, black) failed to include them and left them feeling that they had no political options that spoke to their needs. So, fundamentally, intersectionality has been a concept that allows people in multiply-marginalized roles to articulate their unmet needs, and to take political action to have those needs included in the wider discourse.

What was exciting for me?

• Complexity as a legitimate topic
• Transdisciplinarity embraced as a powerful research paradigm - a way across/outside of the research silo model of academic organization
• A model for transdisciplinary work that is built on mutual respect and a delight in the ways in which each contributor's expertise can inform the collective understanding
• Resonance with my mathematical modelling history, particularly an intriguing book I read while working for Carl Walters as an undergraduate student in 1985. The book was a set theoretical framework for understanding how natural systems work, and included some very interesting ideas about actors in a complex system, with ways to address features of each actor, and a relation (like a filter) that described how each actor was seen by other actors in the system. So, our observation process will recognize some (but not all) aspects of A and B, but A and B may see one another in entirely different ways. The theory was helpful to me in that it suggested ways in which apparent random processes might actually be driven by incomplete observation processes.
• Where I then went with this is to think about identity- self-identity, identity by others, feedback from others, feedback from groups, systemic recognition (and failure to recognize) identities, and the role of activism and policy work in retuning systemic understanding of individuals to redress implicit and explicit processes by which individuals are seen and categorized.
• Out of this has come some interesting ideas about integrity, the costs of not having integrity, and the ways in which living in a congruent environment facilitates integrity, while living in a fragmented environment makes it much harder.
  
• My math-geek self was also challenged by the fact that both of the introductory speakers (Rita Dhamoon, Ange-Marie Hancock) were struggling to find a representation to visualize what they were describing.

One opening that I believe this may represent is for those of us who find our expertise is excluded from acceptable discourse because we are positioned within biomedicine. Just as class may act through gender, and gender may act through class (Gita Sen, public evening lecture), both may act through physiological mechanisms. If you understand those mechanisms, you can ask more interesting questions, and ask them in ways that are enriching and helpful for policy.

I would like to write more fully on many of these topics, but this is a useful start.