(Quebec) Bernard Drainville has made a decision: he is banning schools in Quebec from converting entire toilet blocks currently reserved for girls and boys into mixed toilets. In return, he proposes a compromise that he believes is “very reasonable and very acceptable” to accommodate non-binary people: that individual, closed toilets be designated for use by everyone.
Posted at 2:29 p.m.
In a press scrum to mark the resumption of parliamentary work on Tuesday, the education minister returned to the controversial decision made at the D’Iberville secondary school in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, announcing that work was underway on the toilets on the three floors will be mixed from the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.
“There is no question of converting boys’ toilets into mixed toilets or girls’ toilets into mixed toilets,” said Mr. Drainvillele, specifying that his decision was “firm.”
“We will now think about how we can ensure that this decision is respected,” he said.
Avoid ridicule
Explaining his decision, the Education Minister explained that he had imagined a scene in which young teenage girls about to start menstruating would be the target of ridicule from their male counterparts.
“I imagine the scene, the young girls aged 12, 13, 14, for example, getting their period and leaving the cabin, and there are boys aged 13, 14 next to them looking at them . Imagine the scene. The mockery, the sarcasm, the humiliation. You are talking about students who could be harmed, if not injured, by a situation like this,” Mr. Drainville said.
“We don’t want to go there. I think we have to draw a line, and we’re drawing the line now. There is no question that we are heading in that direction,” he said.
On the broader question of the debates surrounding the concept of gender identity, namely the “sensation or [le] “The inner feeling we all have when it comes to being male, female, neither, both, or anything else on the gender spectrum,” explains the organization Jeunesse J Listening, affirms Bernard Drainville, as does his colleague Martine Biron, Minister responsible for the fight against homophobia and transphobia said that the government would like to create a “framework” for its decision-making.
“For all gender identity issues, we consider how we can best respond to the issues […]. We want to give ourselves a framework. Which one now? We’re thinking about it,” he said.