While Pink Shirt Day is being held this Wednesday to raise awareness against bullying in schools, organizations are concerned about an increase in violence against young people from the LGBTQ+ community.
To mark this day, the community organization Interligne invites the population to wear a pink shirt in support of young LGBTQ+ people who are victims of bullying in their school environment.
This initiative, highlighted across Canada, began in 2007, when two young people, David Shepherd and Travis Price, asked their classmates to wear a pink shirt at school in support of a friend who had been the target of homophobic comments for wearing pink.
The Interligne organization is taking part in this day for a fourth year. This edition differs from previous ones since it takes place under the theme of gentleness, a response to “hateful and anti-LGBT speech which is gaining momentum in the public space”, affirms Pascal Vaillancourt, director of Interligne.
“The logo of the sweater is a teddy bear which offers tenderness. We went there with an aspect of gentleness because that is what young people who experience bullying need. They need to be taken care of,” explains Mr. Vaillancourt.
A worrying intolerance in schools
The director of Interligne, an organization that visits schools in the province to offer training to young people and teaching staff, is concerned about “hateful LGBTQ+ speech that is a little more present than it has been since the last years “.
“We notice it, we saw it and we also observed it through the media last year,” he argued, citing an incident that occurred in May 2023, when teenagers uprooted and trampled a Pride flag in a high school in Vaudreuil-Soulange.
The director of the Montreal Social Research and Intervention Group (GRIS), Marie Houzeau, agrees with Mr. Vaillancourt. Volunteers from his organization, responsible for leading workshops to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ realities in schools, have noticed an increase in questions “laden with prejudice or a certain form of aggression” asked by students.
The GRIS has the mandate to document the comfort level of young people with regard to sexual diversity and gender plurality, through questionnaires.
“We still notice that the level of comfort has fallen compared to previous years. Young people also leave downright violent comments on the forms,” says Ms. Houzeau.
Way to go
A study by the Institute of Statistics of Quebec conducted among 21,000 people in 2022 shows that young LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be victims of bullying than the rest of their peers.
The survey reveals that 28% of LGB people and 34% of transgender and non-binary people experienced bullying in the 12 months preceding the survey, compared to 10% for heterosexual respondents and 11% for cisgender respondents.
In 2020, a SAVIE project survey reported that 43% of young people considered their school environment still hostile to LGBTQ+ issues.
For Mr. Vaillancourt and Ms. Houzeau, these figures remind us of the importance of marking Pink Shirt Day.
“This is a privileged moment to shine the spotlight on the phenomenon of bullying which, unfortunately, is still very present in our school environments,” indicates Marie Houzeau, who is delighted with certain advances in schools in recent years. .
Pascal Vaillancourt, for his part, observes an openness on the part of management to want to learn about LGBTQ+ realities in order to make school environments 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.