With Pink Shirt Day taking place this Wednesday to raise awareness against bullying in schools, organizations are concerned about an increase in violence against young people in the LGBTQ+ community.
Posted at 6:47 am
Samira Ait Kaci Ali The Canadian Press
To mark this day, community organization Interligne invites the public to wear a pink t-shirt to support young LGBTQ+ people who are victims of bullying in their school environment.
This Canada-wide initiative began in 2007 when two young people, David Shepherd and Travis Price, asked their classmates to wear a pink shirt to school in support of a friend who had been the target of homophobic comments for wearing pink was.
The Interligne organization is taking part in this day for the fourth time. This edition differs from the previous ones as it has the theme of gentleness, a response to “hateful and anti-LGBT expressions that are gaining prominence in the public space,” confirms Pascal Vaillancourt, director of Interligne.
“The logo of the sweater is a teddy bear that conveys tenderness. We went there with an aspect of gentleness because that is what young people who experience bullying need. They need to be looked after,” explains Mr Vaillancourt.
A worrying intolerance in schools
The director of Interligne, an organization that visits schools across the province to provide training to youth and teachers, is concerned about “LGBTQ hateful” speech, which is somewhat more present than in recent years.
“We notice it, we saw it and we also observed it through the media last year,” he argued, referring to an incident in May 2023 when teenagers at a high school in Vaudreuil-Soulanges uprooted and trampled a Pride flag .
Montreal Social Research and Intervention Group (GRIS) director Marie Houzeau agrees with Mr. Vaillancourt. Volunteers from his organization, who are responsible for leading workshops to raise awareness of the LGBTQ+ reality in schools, have noticed an increase in questions asked by students that are “tainted with prejudice or a certain form of aggression.”
The GRIS is tasked with using questionnaires to document young people's comfort level with sexual diversity and gender plurality.
“We still notice that comfort has decreased compared to previous years. “Young people also leave really harsh comments on the forms,” says Ms. Houzeau.
Well done
A study by the Quebec Institute of Statistics conducted in 2022 among 21,000 people shows that young LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be victims of bullying than the rest of their peers.
The survey shows that 28% of LGB people and 34% of transgender and non-binary people experienced bullying in the 12 months prior to the survey, compared to 10% of heterosexual respondents and 11% of cisgender respondents.
In 2020, a SAVIE Project survey found that 43% of young people felt their school environment was still hostile to LGBTQ+ issues.
For Mr. Vaillancourt and Ms. Houzeau, these numbers remind us of the importance of celebrating Pink Shirt Day.
“This is a privileged moment to shine a spotlight on the phenomenon of bullying, which is unfortunately still very present in our school environment,” says Marie Houzeau, who is pleased with certain progress in schools in recent years.
Pascal Vaillancourt, in turn, observes an openness on the part of management to learn more about the reality of LGBTQ+ in order to make the school environment more inclusive for students. He recalls the need to train teaching staff to respond to cases of bullying and to protect the mental health of young people from sexual diversity.