Anika Beaudry
Dear editor:
I read a letter to the editor from last Wednesday’s Times. Now normally I would skip over this part of the paper, and normally I would not even think about writing a response.
However, the letter that caught my eye basically was about how “Day of Pink” should stay out of elementary schools because it is “disheartening and scandalous” for young boys to be wearing pink.
“Day of Pink” is a day to stand up to bullying. “Day of Pink” all started because two boys, who were heterosexual, saw a gay student get bullied for wearing a pink shirt.
After intervening, they decided that they wanted to do more to prevent homophobic and transphobic bullying. They got their entire school to wear pink a few days later to show their support.
I got this information from dayofpink.org (it’s a very lovely website and has lots of information regarding “Day of Pink”).
One quote is this letter that especially aggravated me was “To wear pink is something boys would never do. Boys who are going to grow up and be heterosexual. And this is natural.”
This whole campaign started because a boy wore pink to school. Two students, who were heterosexual boys for that matter, got their whole school to wear pink to stand up against this bullying!
If we live in an era where people are getting bullied for standing up against that very thing, then there is something even worse wrong with this society that there already is. The above quote is homophobic; it goes against the whole point of this day.
Any boy can wear pink if they want to. A colour is a colour. Colours such as pink and blue only are gendered because that is what society made them. Colours weren’t meant to be feminine or masculine.
Also, on “Day of Pink,” nobody is pressured to wear pink. If you don’t want to, then don’t. Young children can decide what they want to wear, too.
Not even all of us high school students wore pink. Maybe some people forgot; maybe some don’t owe pink. That’s okay. However, most students did because many of us know what it is like to be bullied—and we are proud to be able to raise awareness against it.
Have we made up our mind to be decent human beings? Yes, we have because you don’t have to be old enough to vote to decide that.
Now onto those scenarios. . . . (ahem). “Offer 100 men an expensive free coat. They either could choose the brown, black, or the light pink coat. If there were no women (or creamy-faced politicians) around, they would all choose the black or brown coat. Naturally.
“Offer 100 women a very expensive free coat of the same colours. And place them in the 1950s or ’60s. Half of them would choose the pink coat.”
How about, if there has to be scenarios, make them relative to this decade. This is 2016, by the way.
Also, the civil liberties union doesn’t have an answer. I checked. Although the answer doesn’t matter because if the free jackets were worth enough, people probably wouldn’t care what colour it was.
But on second thought, I think I’ll echo the words of J.K. Rowling: “It is our choices . . . that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Sincerely,
Anika Beaudry
Fort Frances, Ont.
