(LifeSiteNews) — Earlier this week, I reported on the story of the male shop teacher in Ontario who has begun identifying as female and showing up to teach students wearing massive prosthetic breasts. Predictably, the story has gone viral internationally—this is rapidly becoming the sort of wokery that Canada is known for—and it is worth giving an update on what has happened since, because we’re going to see more such stories in the coming years and this example is illustrative in some ways.
Many commentators observed that what we are seeing is the utilization of gender identity laws—which were always destined to have this effect—utilized by adults in insidious ways. As the Daily Mail noted: “Put simply, this is an adult living out a sexual fetish of some sort.” Tucker Carlson observed that this person appeared to be intentionally attempting to imitate Japanese pornography; Jon Kay, a liberal Canadian commentator who spends much of his time debunking wokeness, gave his analysis the wry title: “The Canadian Gender-Rights Movement Enters Its Hentai Phase.”
In fact, this ridiculous story is evidence of how effective legislation championed by trans activists is—the chilling effect of people terrified of being seen as anti-trans means they cannot even critique something when it is…well, right in their faces. As Kay noted:
This is one of those stories that have spread like wildfire on social media and in niche publications such as Reduxx (which broke the story), but which the mainstream media are terrified to touch for fear of being labelled transphobic. To my knowledge, the only legacy media outlet that has run anything on the story is the Toronto Sun, a conservative tabloid. And even in that case, the editors hedged their bets with a headline—“School board prepares for backlash over trans high school teacher”—that suggests the real story is all the noisy transphobes who are up in arms.
It isn’t just the media that has been scared of touching the story, either. When the story broke, the Halton District School Board issued a statement that was essentially a warning to anyone who might want to complain: “The HDSB recognizes the rights of students, staff, parents/guardians and community members to equitable treatment without discrimination based upon gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity and gender expression are protected grounds under the Ontario Human Rights Code.” As UK outlet put it: “Canadian high school says it is ILLEGAL to criticize trans teacher with huge prosthetic breasts as it’s claimed ‘disturbed’ students are skipping her classes and school board is refusing to address parents’ concerns.”
READ: Ontario high school defends gender-confused teacher wearing cartoonishly large fake breasts
Parents of students being taught by the weird shop teacher have taken this message to heart—just like the media, they’re not sure what they’re allowed to say. “I have spoken to some parents at that school who are anxious about saying anything that even hints at objecting to this particular display, over fear that they will be called bigots — or worse,” Rex Murphy of the National Post reported. “But they are concerned, puzzled and upset.” So are many students, who are skipping class. No doubt they’ll be herded back into line with accusations of transphobia or warnings that their healthy discomfort is evidence of hatred. As we found out during the debate over bathrooms, and locker rooms, and rape crisis centres—the discomfort and even safety of the majority is an acceptable sacrifice as long as the identity choices of trans activists can be affirmed.
As Rex Murphy concluded his scathing column on the subject: “Schools are not seminaries for progressive and woke missionaries with a fixation on gender, racism, identity politics and pronoun etiquette. How about getting back to teaching, to instructing students in reading, arithmetic and science — you know, learning stuff? Canadian school boards have a problem. Or perhaps they are the problem.” Indeed, they are the problem—and public schools now are seminaries for progressive and woke missionaries to inculcate children into their worldview, and they have been for some time. Apparently it takes a deluded shop teacher with incoming back problems to wake a lot of people up.
