Author and activist Bergman
LifeSiteNews: An online fundraising project to publish new LGBTQ2S picture books for children aged 4-8, with the hope of having the books picked up by schools, has recently met its fundraising target. 693 backers pledged a combined $56,793 to the project, called the “Flamingo Rampant Book Club.” The fundraising goal was $49,000.
The books will “celebrate a great and wide variety of LGBTQ2S kids, families, and communities,” according to the description of the project. The books will also “celebrate gender-independent kids and adults.”
J Wallace
The individual behind the project is S. Bear Bergman (a trans man, storyteller, a theater artist, an instigator, a gender-jammer, and a good example of what happens when you overeducate a contrarian). Given that his same-sex spouse, who goes by the name “j wallace,” is an employee of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), and that these books are being marketed to teachers and school librarians, it is more than likely that these books will end up in elementary school classrooms across Toronto.
The fundraising webpage for the project brags about the positive press the project has gotten, and displays links to articles on websites such as B*tch Magazine (a nonprofit feminist media organization). According to one of these articles, found at Advocate.com, the books produced by the Flamingo Rampant Book Club “will explicitly feature lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirited people,” and that the target audience is pre-K to 3rd grade. Bergman’s own book, which is expected to be titled Is That For a Boy or Girl? “features twelve kids rhyming about their gender binary-defying interests.”
Another of the articles, published on Gayswithkids.com, states that in most currently existing LGBT-themed books, “even when LGBT families are represented, they’re usually white, live in suburbs, and have exactly and only two parents” and that the Flamingo Rampant Book Club will aim to “tell a wider variety of stories.” This has generated speculation that the new books may even portray families with more than two parents.
J Wallace is the student equity program advisor at the TDSB’s gender-based violence prevention office, and a book list on his personal website includes 10,000 Dresses (a picture book about a boy who thinks he is a girl and wears dresses) which he recommends for preschool – grade 2, and My Princess Boy which he recommends for grade 2 children. Also on the list of books he recommends for primary school children are sex-change books such as When Kathy is Keith, and My Mommy is a Boy – which is about a transgendered mother who transitions from female to male.
Furthermore, the TDSB’s gender-based violence prevention office regularly refers My Princess Boy to various schools. In addition, according to the TDSB website, both My Princess Boy and 10,000 Dresses – as well as a book previously published by S. Bear Bergman – are being used in elementary schools in the TDSB.
Should these new books from the Flamingo Rampant Book Club make their way into Toronto’s elementary school classrooms, it will only add to the numerous examples of activists exploiting the public education system to push their own radical gender politics.
From the Flamingo Rampant Book Club web site:
The first year of books we have planned is so exciting! Some of these titles are just working titles, and concepts are subject to change, but we’re keen to tell you about what we have in store. They include:
- M is for Mustache, a Pride ABC book written by playwright, activist, and badass mama Catherine Hernandez. M is for Mustache features not only items of Pride – like beads, flags, glitter and stick-on mustaches – but also values of pride: liberation, justice, community and magic.
- a Onkwehon:we (Indigenous) story of a gender-independent young child finding the power in his long hair by Mohawk and Cayuga artist and shaman Kiley May. In this book, a young boy who values his long hair and femme ways finds the strength to peacefully affirm his own expression of gender.
- Is That For A Boy Or A Girl?, by S. Bear Bergman (that’s me!) an inclusive and feminist book showing twelve awesome kids speaking in first person rhyme about how they and their activities/interests/ clothes interrupt the pink/blue dichotomy in some way.
DCG