Teach love, not hate

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

WE MUST all have a vision for the nation and for the world. In my vision, there is no violence or discrimination, and people stay far from those who promote hate and fear, sensing instinctively that their egos and paranoias tear and poison rather than mend and heal societies.

No one teaches others, whether adults or children, to bully or outcast children. No one tells children not to sit next to someone else in class because they are different, whether because of race, skin colour, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or any other quality of a child or adolescent who is doing no harm to others and simply figuring out what it means to be themselves.

In fact, adults protect children from the casual brutality of prejudice. Childhood is considered precious because it offers a buffer against the inevitability of adult biases.

In such a world, adults know that all that children want is to be able to be safe and loved at home as they grow, make mistakes and learn, and to have friends at school with whom they can talk, laugh, play and expect everyday kindness and the certainty that they won’t be put down for just being themselves.

We remember the feeling of being children with no choice but to go to school, survive all the expectations of the world, and hope to emerge without traumatised memories and burdened hearts.

In such a world, the godliest far and wide are known to be the most peaceful, the most loving, and the most committed to promoting connection, compassion, acceptance and tolerance. They live by the creed that we must love others as we wish to be loved.

Anything else, such as the desire to have more than others, consider oneself better than others and deny to others what one takes for granted for oneself, is widely known to be mere power, hypocrisy and greed masquerading as piety.

There were many untruths cast over these past weeks: that LBGT folk are paedophiles (in fact, heterosexual men are the most predatory the world over), that trans children will confuse other children (in fact, they will always be in the minority and face overpowering heteronormative bias), that the Ministry of Education is promoting puberty blockers (which is untrue), that children are getting sex changes without parental consent (which is not occurring either), and that LBGT folk should be segregated as they present a threat to others as they go about their lives (though LBGT people are everywhere and contribute to improving our nation in all kinds of unacknowledged ways).

Not one religious leader sought to dispel those lies. Far from it, all those who have spoken out have spread even more misinformation, divisiveness and misplaced panic. I wondered about their vision for the world and how brutish it must be.

Creating public harmony and trust takes hard work and commitment to painstaking acts of listening, learning and loving. It takes a big man to come down from his pulpit or to raise his eyes from the Quran or Bhagavad Gita to see God in another.

I try to live by this vision. I raise a little girl who has grown up among LBGT folk, who meets my transgender students, and who has friends questioning their sexuality. She knows she is to be kind and not part of any bullying. She is to be friends with those who are kind in return, not bullies of others.

Her own sense of self is not confused by other children’s queer gender or sexuality. Instead, she is learning to avoid confusions created by those who target, put down, stereotype, or treat others badly. We tell her whoever she brings home when she is older, he, she or they must have manners and respect, and must treat her well. She literally gets on with her life as if none of this is a big deal, for she’s been protected from and doesn’t yet conceive how ugly an adult vision for the world can be.

We have had many conversations about menstruation, sex, condoms, consent and sexual orientation in age-appropriate ways. All the conversations people fear, we’ve had. All that has happened is that she has turned out to be gentle, considerate, conversational and lovely.

In my vision for the nation, we teach children to also value those qualities. For her, for myself and for others who need a more peaceful world, I send love and courage to all who continue to work and to dream.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 509

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