Elizabeth Saewyc, the Director of the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia and Distinguished University Scholar gave expert testimony referenced in the ruling on November 20th at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal for the case between Borderland Pride, Mayor Harold McQuaker, and the Township of Emo. The tribunal accepted her testimony as evidence without cross-examination from the legal representation of McQuaker or any other party at the trial.
For Saewyc, Pride events and symbols are crucial to creating safe environments for 2SLGBTQAI+ youth. Moreover, this is not hyperbole, but a perspective backed by decades of internationally peer-reviewed research that has strong evidence to suggest inclusive symbols, like a Pride flag, show 2SLGBTQAI+ youth they are safe in their community and have influence over students’ suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and self-harm. Furthermore, the inverse is also true, suggesting public figures, who publicly make discriminatory statements foster a hostile environment that drives 2SLGBTQAI+ youth away from rural communities in search of that sense of safety.
“When I was asked to testify in this case as an expert witness, they asked some very specific questions about what the research shows related to the particular risks, negative impacts or harms to the development, safety, or well-being of 2SLGBTQIA+ people,” said Saewyc. “In particular, young people in small towns and isolated communities where there’s an absence of inclusive symbols or representations of their community.
“They also wanted to know, are these harms or impacts from not having inclusive symbols or celebrations made worse or exacerbated when local institutions or prominent public figures, like a mayor, are actively or openly hostile.
“When someone is asked for expert testimony, either in a court case or in a Human Rights Tribunal, the role is to provide information to the judge or the tribunal of a technical nature about the research, not about the decision they should make, but strictly about information, about the wider context of research or evidence out there.”
So, that is exactly what Saewyc has done. She wasn’t waxing poetic, using allegory, being prophetic or anything of the sort. She was stating the facts based on decades of research.
“As a researcher who has done research in health and well-being related to 2SLGBTQ people, but especially youth, over the last 25 years, I have a lot of Canadian research. But also there’s research from like the United States that sort of speaks to this. Particularly, in my testimony, I was first talking about just how widespread the Pride celebrations, Pride week, Pride Month, Pride proclamations, a parade, those kinds of events, how widespread they are in the world, as well as throughout Canada,” said Saewyc. “Both in the larger urban centers like Vancouver and Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, but also in mid-sized communities like Windsor and Thunder Bay and Sudbury and Guelph, and then in small rural communities too.” Adding, “There was even a documentary … called Small Town Pride that follows the experiences of three small-town Pride celebrations.”
While there are pride celebrations in small towns across the country and beyond, the 2SLGBTQAI+ community is still “persistently stigmatized” according to Saewyc.
“This is something that is not new and unusual. It’s quite widespread. The reason for this is that there’s been, you know, decades of research in Canada and elsewhere in the world that has documented that 2SLGBTQ+people have been persistently stigmatized for their sexual orientation and/ or their gender identity and gender expression, and that these social attitudes and stereotypes and negative public messages about them as a group, these messages, homophobic and transphobic speech in some cases, can motivate overt acts of hostility and discrimination towards such people,” said Saewyc. “Unfortunately, in addition to it being overt acts of verbal hostility and discrimination, it can lead to physical violence and discrimination in employment, education, housing, healthcare, and that sort of thing.
“All of that, which is what [academics] would call enacted stigma, the actions that let members of a stigmatized group know that they are unacceptable and not welcome in social settings, they have harms,” said Saewyc. “Experiencing stigma and discrimination and violence has impacts on people’s mental well-being, on their stress levels, on even their survival in terms of the experience of trauma that leads to suicidality. So they have consequences that are problematic.”
Moreover, Saewyc wasn’t being hyperbolic in suggesting practices like these are problematic.
“This is backed up by decades of peer-reviewed research here in Canada, elsewhere in the United States, and other parts of the world as well,” said Saewyc. “So, that’s the thing. There’s other research that social psychologists have done, and there was a review that looked at 40 years of research around how derogatory language and hate speech function socially, like, what does it do?”
Saewyc says derogatory language and hate speech is used to establish in-groups and out-groups.
“It’s partly used to establish out-groups that are people who aren’t part of our circle to maintain power and identity. The consequences of that sort of dehumanizing and derogatory language can definitely motivate things like bullying and violence.”
Saewyc goes into further detail about other evidence to support this perspective, like Proposition Eight in California.
“There was a study in California where they had a referendum about whether or not to support same-sex marriage, and … this was proposition eight. This was something that had been put forward, and there was lots of public, you know, political messaging around supporting proposition eight, which would insist that marriage is between a man and a woman, or rejecting proposition eight so that everyone can be inclusive during that time and after it.
“[The researchers] took the school surveys that asked about regular bullying and all kinds of other things and different types of bullying and they looked in the years before the proposition was put forward, and then the proposition, Prop Eight got voted down. It didn’t happen. So, they also followed a couple of years after, because these surveys in the high school California schools happen like every year or every other year, and they tracked the rate of bullying over 14 years of surveys before and after, and what they found was that rates of homophobic bullying in schools across California increased and accelerated,” said Saewyc. “Then it dropped after the referendum was rejected. But, trends in bullying based on race and ethnicity, bullying by religion or bullying by gender didn’t have the same increase and decrease.”
According to Saewyc, this proves a strong link between public discourse and bullying among youth.
“That is strongly linked to the speech that was going on in public about the referendum. That is one of those things that identifies that young people hear the messaging in the wider public, by adults, and then they connect on it. They increased their bullying of their fellow students in schools.”
But, this isn’t a unique phenomenon in California. Saewyc gives further evidence to support her perspective from British Columbia, Minnesota, and Massachusetts.
“We’ve done research here in BC, in Minnesota and Massachusetts,” said Saewyc. “It involved interviewing LGBTQ youth in rural areas, and these were like, go-along interviews within communities with young people, identifying where are the supportive resources, and where do they feel safe? [They] included which parts of their communities and spaces, and from this data, from these three very different places, we provide some really deep insight into how young people navigated sometimes hostile communities. How they recognized the services, events, and symbols that signalled that places would be safe or inclusive.
“Interestingly, we didn’t ask specifically, but it came up over and over again that Pride celebrations and Pride parades and rainbow symbols and things like that were the things they spoke about the most. They talked about that as you know, even non-LGBTQ people are there and supportive. And so it feels like that day or month when everyone in a community can come together and be themselves and be accepted.”
So, these symbols serve as valuable community reminders that it is okay to come as you are.
“Those kinds of symbols as visible indicators that a space is inclusive and supportive are really necessary, especially when they do face so much stigma and discrimination in the wider world,” said Saewyc.
For Saewyc, this illustrates how giving young people a safe, supportive and caring environment further enables their success.
“If you’re looking at, ‘How do you ensure that young people grow and thrive?’ One of the key ways is to make sure that their environment is safe, supportive and caring.
“Because they experienced stigma and discrimination in the wider discourse, the messaging out in the community, young people were able to talk about what did make them feel safe and included,” said Saewyc. “Pride events were one or two of those.”
Again, this isn’t allegory.
“That’s the evidence that I was bringing, including our large-scale research that found that the more supportive the community environment is, and this was across 274 different schools throughout BC, rural and urban, but that the more supportive the community environment is in terms of the number of events and youth services and things, yeah, significantly lower odds of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts and self-harm among sexual minority boys and girls.
“Given that there’s so much negative messaging out there, especially on social media, especially from other places outside of Canada, having those very specific messages that say, ‘Hey, it’s safe to be who you are. We respect human rights here. Everybody’s welcome.’ Those are really important for young people to feel like they belong in a community,” said Saewyc, “which is so critical for young people.”
While it may be critical for young people, it’s also critical to retain young, talented people in small and medium-sized communities.
“The other part of it that I think might be really relevant for smaller towns, is that if young people don’t feel safe there, they leave,” said Saewyc.
“[It] is really unfortunate, because one of the really great things about small communities, and I’ve lived in some in my life, is that everybody knows your name, and you can rely on, usually you can rely on your neighbours to help you out. If your car breaks down on the side of the road, chances are the person who’s going to stop is somebody you know, as opposed to a total stranger. There’s often a stronger sense of community and that’s great for everybody, if, in fact, everybody is included.”
