(Quebec) Bernard Drainville has made a decision: he prohibits schools in Quebec from converting entire toilet blocks, currently dedicated to girls and boys, into mixed toilets. In return, he proposes a compromise that he considers “very reasonable and very acceptable” to accommodate non-binary people: that individual, closed toilets be designated for the use of all.
In a press scrum at the resumption of parliamentary work on Tuesday, the Minister of Education returned to the controversial decision taken at the D’Iberville secondary school, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, which announced that work is underway to that the toilets on the three floors be mixed from the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
“There is no question of transforming boys’ toilets into mixed toilets or girls’ toilets into mixed toilets,” said Mr. Drainvillle, specifying that his decision is “firm”.
“We will now think about how we will ensure that this decision is respected,” he said.
Avoid mockery
To justify his decision, the Minister of Education explained that he had imagined a scene where young teenage girls who had their first menstruation would be the target of mockery from their male colleagues.
“I imagine the scene, the young girls of 12, 13, 14 years old who start to have their periods for example and who leave the cubicle and there, there are boys next to them of 13, 14 years old who look at them. Imagine the scene. The mockery, the sarcasm, the humiliation. You are talking about students who could be injured, if not bruised, by this type of situation,” said Mr. Drainville.
“We don’t want to go there. I think we have to draw a line and the line we draw now. There is no question of us going in that direction,” he said.
On the broader question of debates surrounding the notion of gender identity, namely the “sensation or [le] internal feeling we all have about being male, female, neither, both, or anywhere else on the gender spectrum,” as explained by the organization Jeunesse J Listening, Bernard Drainville affirms like his colleague Martine Biron, minister responsible for the fight against homophobia and transphobia, that the government wants to provide itself with a “framework” to govern its decision-making.
“On all questions of gender identity, we are considering the best way to respond to the issues […]. We want to give ourselves a framework. Now which one? We are considering this,” he said.