A trainer at the Fondation Émergence, a non-profit organization that fights against homophobia and transphobia, Olivia Baker provides around a hundred training sessions on sexual and gender diversity each year to companies or organizations that request them, both in the public and private sectors.
“In the vast majority of cases, we receive good comments, people appreciate that we came,” she says. But she has recently noticed a liberation of homophobic, and especially transphobic, speech. She also sees distrust increasingly appearing in the workshops she organizes.
Lasting one to three hours, these trainings cover the main concepts related to sexual and gender diversity (“What is a trans person?”, “What is gender expression?”, “What is a cisgender person”, etc.). The issues that LGBTQ+ people may face in the corporate world are also addressed, as well as best practices for ensuring inclusive spaces. Each training also provides an opportunity for a trans person who has transitioned in the workplace to share their experience for about fifteen minutes.
Recognized as part of the continuing education program of the Order of Certified Human Resources Advisors, these training courses are based on several studies and surveys.
Negative reactions
“There are those who sit back and do nothing during the training and refuse to participate in the workshops. There are clearly people who have a problem with the content of the training,” says Olivia Baker.
Sometimes certain negative reactions, which come from prejudices or false beliefs, are deconstructed. At the end of the training, people have usually moved forward, she says. That is exactly what this kind of awareness-raising operation is for.
Except that, for about a year now, Mme Baker notes that the recalcitrants are becoming more numerous, or at least more vocal, as evidenced by some of the messages she has recently received following training sessions.
One participant criticised the workshop for its “activist undertones” and asked that they “not talk about toilets and forms”. This same participant claimed to have the “feeling that a vocal minority wants to shake up the world for less than 1% of the population”.
Another participant criticizes the organization for providing “activist training that propagates ideologies that are not based on scientific facts” and calls for an end to “presenting opinions as facts or as the wishes of all LGBTQ+ people.”
Another still claims to have had “the impression that someone wanted [lui] “to impose a dogma” and speaks of the training as “a compendium of woke ideologies”.
Openly transphobic remarks
Earlier this year, Julien Rougerie, who has been providing training for Fondation Émergence for seven years, was taken to task during a session given at a school in the greater Montreal area. He says that teachers questioned his statements, asked trick questions and made controversial and downright transphobic remarks.
“I’m used to receiving inappropriate comments, but there… They were saying that trans people were not valid, that people who feel fear towards trans people are just as valid. They even went so far as to say, in front of a trans colleague present in the room, that trans women are men disguised as women who attack women in the toilets,” laments the man who has nearly 500 training sessions to his credit.
Julien Rougerie tried to put an end to the controversy. Except that one of the participants followed him into the corridor, where he accosted him again.
“I was told that I was dishonest, seriously incompetent and complicit in an attack in the service of an ideology. The person made insulting remarks about me, it was very disturbing,” he adds, admitting to having been moved by this incident.
Defiance and political activism
Julien Rougerie says that this was not the first time he had to deal with hostile behavior regarding the content of his training. “But it was the first time it went this far! What is perhaps new is that we were in this case in political activism. We feel in particular a lot of tension on the question of trans people,” he explains.
An observation shared by her colleague Olivia Baker. “I have been giving training since 2020 and I would say that I faced less mistrust at the beginning. Recently, the issue of trans people has been much more publicized, we talk about it more. Some of the words are more uninhibited, even if people do not want to come across as the homophobe on duty,” she believes.
There is a kind of backlash regarding LGBTQ+ rights, which had advanced a lot in recent years.
She points to a growing divide in society on issues related to sexual and gender diversity. She also regrets that certain echo chambers contribute to adding fuel to the fire.
“The current context is quite paradoxical. On the one hand, there is interest in the subject and the number of requests for training has exploded. On the other hand, we are receiving more and more comments accusing us of propaganda,” she explains. “We are accused of indoctrination, when we are simply providing resources so that young people accept themselves and others.”
According to Olivia Baker, recent controversies surrounding pronouns, mixed toilets in schools or trans-affirmative approaches to health provide ammunition to the detractors of sexual and gender diversity.
“There is a kind of backlash regarding LGBTQ+ rights, which had advanced a lot in recent years, says Julien Rougerie. We’ve seen that with feminism too, it always comes with a backlash a few years later, because people feel threatened by these advances or because it creates frustrations in them.”
The incident he experienced was certainly an isolated experience, but “it certainly raises concerns,” he says. “It means that there are people, within a school, who are making virulent comments against sexual and gender diversity.”
There is an idea among some people that there is a conspiracy behind the training we provide.
The scourge of fake news
Another challenge for trainers is the rise of fake news about LGBTQ+ issues, which complicates their awareness-raising work.
“There is an idea among some people that there is a conspiracy behind the training we provide,” believes Olivia Baker. “We have also sometimes been accused of being anti-science by denying biological sex. There is a lot of false information circulating, it is a big challenge for us and we see it even more recently.”
For example, during a training, a participant asked them about children who identify with cats and for whom schools install litter boxes, a false news story that has circulated on social media over the past year.
“These fake news stories are created to destroy sexual and gender diversity,” concludes Julien Rougerie, who wonders about his safety in the future. “We wonder what will happen the day we have to deal with physical violence.”