Playing Gender-Role Games With School Boards

"We have overwhelming evidence that the community, or the stakeholders, are not supporting the survey, or the professional policy draft as it is circulated."

"So right now, the community sees us as not being up to the job, just dragging our feet. Are we doing anything to address this?

"There is no clear expectations from the policy like what we are trying to achieve. The scope of this policy is left to anybody's interpretation. The scope is completely open."

Trustee Naveed Ahmed, Halton County District School Board

 

"All students, parents or guardians, teachers, staff and community members have the right to be safe and feel safe in their school community."

"With this right comes the responsibility for everyone to be accountable for their actions and contribute to a positive school climate."

Ontario Education Act

 

"[Including] inappropriate behaviour."

"This is our legal requirement."

We need to have the confidence to create a policy to address the inappropriate behaviour."

Trustee Xin Ye Zhang, Halton County District School Board

Kayla Lemieux is a teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School.

Staid Canada, where nothing much happens aside from endless snowstorms in the winter months, caught the international media's attention not long ago with the spectacle of a shop teacher, claiming to be transvestite wearing grotesquely abnormally large prosthetic beasts under tight-fitting tops to the surprised bemusement of her students at the Halton District School Board jurisdiction's Oakville Trafalgar High School. A few of the students took photographs and videos of the shop teacher and posted them online. Unsurprisingly, they were an immediate sensation.

Since the matter of transgender Kayla Lemieux teaching shop at Oakville Trafalgar High School, just north of Toronto first erupted, parents and students have demanded accountability from the school and the board. Months have passed and none has been presented. The school administration and the school board along with members of the teaching staff all declared their support for Kayla Lemieux and 'her' bizarre presentation with gigantic breasts and a blond wig.

That resulted in community frustration, parents gathering in roadside protests, issuing petitions, public outbursts of anger and an eruption of death threats. Matters became even more threateningly serious with a series of bomb scares bringing in the police. Throughout this public backlash Board trustees and officials remained constant in their support of the teacher and there was no action to be taken. Eventually a request to draft a policy elucidating a dress code and decorum to instruct Halton schools was ordered.

 

Lemieux said her extra-large beasts are caused by a condition called “gigantomastia,” even though she’s never been officially diagnosed. New York Post

 

When, several months on, the draft policy was presented at a board meeting, it failed to address the issue squarely and no new rules of any significance nor regulations were promoted. Parents were anything but pleased. Curtis Ennis, director of education in the district expressed his own level of frustration. "I know we have the policy, the statutes and the guidelines and principles and policies in place when they arise. We have been doing that for decades". Until, apparently, they ran up against Woke Theology.

The Ontario Child, Youth & Family Services Act reads: "It is imperative that forms of identity and expression presented in a school environment be scrutinized against the child safeguarding practices enshrined in the Act." And according to the Ontario Human Rights Code: "The primacy of student safety and well\-being must always be distinguished, prioritized, and protected by those in position of power. Students must come first."

There has been a partial solution. The teacher is no longer in the classroom at the high school."While not currently on active assignment, the teacher remains employed with the HDSB. We continue to support the teacher", commented the board's communications manager, Heather Francey. It took a foreign newspaper to mount an investigation to clarify the situation. The New York Post published photographs of the teacher in men's clothing in public, sans wig, makeup or the absurd breasts.

As for the transgender teacher -- Kayla Lemieux insists those breasts were not prosthetics; instead they are real. The result of a rare genetic condition of gigantomastia along with a "hormone sensitivity to estrogen". She was not actually, she said, transgender but born intersex. Evidently that has some complex variations in conditions when a person's anatomy fails to align with typical definitions of female or male. Strangely enough, neighbours of the teacher claim he goes about dressed as male, but changes to female clothing heading for the school.

Kayla Lemieux pictured on a residential street not wearing prosthetic breasts. New York Post

Nick Kozak

Europe, Under Islamist Threat, Forced on Its Back-Foot

"We must be able to discuss topics such as freedom of expression in our classrooms without any outside pressure."

"It may hurt when someone has an opinion that conflicts with your world view or religious conviction, but they have a right to say so in all liberty."

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte

 

"We are ready to accept every Tunisian, but with conditions preserving the dignity and giving him rights to access to all stages of judicial appeals in France before the deportation [in discussions of security matters between France and Tunisia; the deportation of dozens of Tunisian migrants]."

Tunisian Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine

Muslim demonstrators hold placards during a protest against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad in Charlie Hebdo in London (photo credit: REUTERS)

Police in Germany Friday announced raids they had carried out on the homes and offices of four individuals they had linked to the 20-year-old man who launched an attack in Austria. German intelligence had sent a request to Austria to have them monitor several Germans who had met with Kujtim Fejzulai, the Islamist attacker shot dead after he killed four people and wounded over 20 others after opening fire in the central nightlife district of Vienna on Monday night.

The Germans had visited Austria this summer and their contacts had been monitored by German intelligence. Austrian authorities made no move to alter their risk assessment of Fejzulal, on early release from prison with a 22-month sentence for attempting to join the Islamic State, but turned back to France by Turkish authorities. Enrolled in a deradicalization course in prison, he was considered to have been effectively deradicalized, earning himself early release.

Police searches near Hamburg in homes and business premises.

 

According to Austria's Interior Minister Nehammer, "immediate personnel consequences" had resulted over the botched heads-up over Fejzulai when Erich Zwettier, head of the local intelligence office in Vienna had resigned. Mr. Nehammer admitted to "intolerable mistakes" in tracking the suspect prior to his deadly shooting spree. As a result of which he ordered the closing of mosques Austrian intelligence now deems a security risk.

Fejzulai, born in Vienna, held a North Macedonian passport; his parents had emigrated from Macedonia to Austria, accounting for the North Macedonian passport in Fejzulai's possession, as well as an Austrian passport. He had planned the attack in the knowledge that residents of Vienna would be out enjoying the last hours before the onset of a new coronavirus lockdown and curfew. His coordinated actions as he carried an automatic rifle, handgun and knife took him to six discrete sites in a matter of eight minutes where he killed four people and injured others, before he was himself shot dead nine minutes after he began his deadly spree.

Austria's security services have come under close scrutiny, particularly as it emerged on Thursday that Austrian authorities had been warned by their Slovakian counterparts in July of Fejzulai's attempts to acquire ammunition there, for an assault rifle; a "communication" problem accounted for the lack of action on Austria's part, according to Minister Nehammer. A mosque and an Islamic centre that Fejzulai was known to frequent were closed on Friday, with Integration Minister Suzanne Raab stating that institutions which are "hotbeds for the blind hatred and violence we experience(d) on Monday" are slated for closure.

Last month, an assailant who shouted "Allahu akbar!" as he beheaded a woman and attacked and killed two other people with a knife in a church in Nice placed France on high alert. A 21-year-old Tunisian had arrived by ship to Lampedusa, a popular Italian island entry point to Europe for migrants from Africa. He was ordered to return to Tunisia but made his way to Nice instead, where he planned for and carried out his deadly attack.

 

People hold a photo of the history teacher Samuel Paty , who was beheaded last week, during a memorial march in homage to him, Tuesday, Oct.20, 2020 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)

 

This followed the beheading murder of French middle-school teacher Samuel Paty who had received threats from some of the parents of his students after he made use of a Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoon mocking the Prophet Mohammad, in a civics class on French values and freedom of speech. His murderer, a man of Chechen origins living in France, had set out to avenge the prophet after a video produced by a Muslim parent circulated within the Muslim community, identifying the teacher and his school.

Now, in the Netherlands a Rotterdam teacher has been forced into hiding as a result of a classroom discussion of the killing of Samuel Paty. Police arrested a female teen on suspicion of inciting threats against the Dutch teacher. Messages were posted on social media, though it was unclear whether the 18-year-old was a student at the Emmauscollege high school where the class debate occurred. Dutch Prime Minister Rutte spoke of the threats as "absurd" and "intolerable". 

 

Two 18-year-old men and a 17-year-old girl were charged Friday with "criminal terrorist conspiracy" in the murder of French history teacher Samuel Paty, a judicial source told news agency AFP.

 

That class discussion took place as a result of schools in the Netherlands, France and Germany being requested to hold a moment of silence for Paty whose death in October shocked the world community. On Monday, during a classroom discussion at the Emmauscollege, students had taken note of a bulletin board-posted cartoon that had been in place for years. Among the students, some took offence at its presence, a cartoon that won a national prize in 2015, showing a decapitated figure labelled "Charlie Hebdo" sticking out its tongue at a bearded man with a bloody sword.

 

Soon afterward a photo of the cartoon began circulating on social media, and by Tuesday the teacher who led the discussion began receiving threats, compelling him to go into hiding even as police became involved. That same day a school in a Paris suburb was reported by Le Monde as having received threats against another teacher, leading to the school being closed.

The Tewhid mosque in Vienna | Georg Hochmuth/AFP via Getty Images

French Values, Islamofascist Response

Candles are lit at a makeshift memorial as people gather to pay homage to Samuel Paty, the French teacher who was beheaded on the streets of the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, as part of a national tribute, in Nice, France, October 21, 2020. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo

"It’s as if the students are the mouthpiece for thinking that does not come from them ... but from people who want to impose a religious identity that keeps getting a little stronger."

Delphone Girard, French teacher since 2004 

"I self-censored a lot on issues around laicite. I felt a real hatred for French values."

"[After the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack] We held a minute's silence[in her class] and I moved on. I was cowardly."

Anonymous High School teacher

Secularism has a long history in Quebec dating from 1905, following anticlerical differences with the Catholic Church. It was then enshrined in French law, and the nation's national curriculum was created to provide the framework for the new education system. In its guidance to teachers, they are directed to websites recommending appropriate teaching materials and lesson plans. 

Samuel Paty, threatened with a fatwa  EPA

For lessons for 13-year-olds in Middle School on freedom of expression, such as the one taught by history teacher Samuel Paty, one common suggestion is the Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoons, to give context to the lesson of free speech. And it was just those very cartoons that set off a maelstrom of heated demands from some of the parents of his pupils in the middle class area of Paris where Mr. Paty's school was located.

After that class concluded, where he had beforehand suggested to his Muslim students that they were free to absent themselves from the class if they felt they would be upset over the use of the cartoons, parents of the students were informed of what had transpired, and one in particular began a campaign of lobbying the school administration for the teacher's immediate dismissal. The parent also produced a video condemning and identifying the teacher.

Mr. Paty was also the recipient of violent threats. All of which culminated in a young refugee of 18 of ethnic Chechen heritage, born in Moscow, deciding to avenge the Prophet Mohammad for the unforgivable act of insulting the divine nature of the prophet by parodying his message of sacred divinity. By beheading the teacher, his assailant satisfied himself that he had dispatched his duty to Islam.

Boasting of his success by sending a grisly, macabre photograph of the slain man with a message of triumphant satisfaction to French President Emmanuel Macron, the supreme infidel of France, the country that had granted the Russian-Chechen family haven. Some teachers in France admit to their level of intimidation leading them to censor what they say and do in their classes in a country where the given name 'Mohammad' is common among Muslim families.

 

The scene of the killing has been sealed off and investigation is under way   Getty Images

 

From primary school teachers to high school teachers, a wary mindset has prevailed for decades, and some profess to not having been entirely surprised that one of their own had been violently butchered by an enraged Muslim Islamofascist. Primary school teachers, fearful of giving offence to Muslim children refrain from reading the classic tale of the Three Little Pigs, lest a backlash ensue. Religious satire in particular gets a wide pass from history teachers.

But not, it was seen in a vicious Muslim community reaction, from the mosques and societies and groups enshrining Muslim values above those of the country they are citizens in, when one French history teacher chose to use the Prophet-mocking cartoons as a prop to help get his message across that in France, nothing is particularly sacred, and certainly not extreme religious values in a country that cultivates its secular character. 

 

History teacher Maxime Reppert, resorted to reason when expressing his opinion, a quality of intelligent perspective utterly absent from the emotions that belief in the almighty instills in the  faithful, when he declared: "Caricatures are not Mein Kampf. They are not a call to incite hate." But under Sharia law and in the minds of the fundamentalist Muslim population they are just that, and more.

“Should I bring this up with my students when they return, with a caricature of the Prophet to hand? [Silence, she continued, might be worse]."

"Today I am afraid. But even more so of what could become of such horrors if we let this fear interfere in the debate."

French art teacher, name withheld

That terrifying fear of consequences is called terrorism.

 

Flowers have been left at the school where the murdered man taught   Getty Images