In 1998, Ontario kids were hoping for colour Game Boys for their birthdays. If they wanted to get in touch with their friends, they’d have to use a landline or, actually, you know, ride over on their bikes.
Thanks to the new Con government at Queen’s Park, it’s 20 years ago all over again.
Back then, Google was just being launched. Dial-up, assuming you even had a modem, was how you got online. There was no WiFi, no gmail, no Firefox, no camera phones, no YouTube, no My Space, no hashtags, no texting — let alone sexting, Facebook, Instagram and Snap Chat. The i-empire was just a glimmer in Steve Jobs’ eye.
And Android? Was that a robot action movie?
If you wanted to look at naked people “doing it,”you’d have to hunt down a Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler or perhaps some pulpier material under your Dad’s mattress. But revenge porn? Cyber bullying? 4Chan? Doxing?
Oh and sexual assault and child abuse? It happened all the time but in the darkest corners of family and after-school life. #RapeCulture, #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported had yet to have gone viral because, well, there was no “viral.”
As for sexuality identity itself, you were either a boy or a girl and Goddess help you if you were anything between. Most LGBTQIA2S kids would be tormented at school, or beaten up on the way home and maybe even tossed out of the house and into street life. Same sex marriage wasn’t legal and there would be no way a same sex couple would be allowed to adopt and raise a child. And if a child had gay parents, shame.
The good old days were only good insofar as children were protected from sexual predation online but, if it came from elsewhere, too many would have no safe place to understand what was happening and how to get help.
Well done, Doug Ford. In your pandering to your ignorant conservative base, you’ve now encouraged pedophilia, the dissemination of child porn, teen pregnancy, suicide, sexual assault, the spread of STIs, the return of homophobia and other horrors. As the new premier of Ontario — words that make me choke as surely will your enabling of climate change — you win the prize for making the children of this province vulnerable to the worst fates that can possibly befall children.
But hey, you kept your promise to the haters.
Nothing like a leader who charges ahead … backwards.
To sign the NDP petition to restore the 2015 edition of sex ed, please sign here.
P.S. Haven’t yet figured out how to enable the comments. Stay tuned. 🙂
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