The Right to Equality:

Direct discrimination is usually the easiest to notice because it occurs when someone explicitly treats you differently because of your sexual orientation, gender identity, or other aspects of your identity.

Intentional discrimination includes, for example:

• If a teacher refuses to refer to a transgender student by the student’s chosen name and pronouns.
• If a principal purposely misgenders a trans or non-binary student.
• If a school prohibits a student from bringing a same-sex partner to a school dance.

Retaliation or reprisals can also be a form of discrimination. For example:

• If a school threatens a student with discipline if they call their student club a Gay-Straight Alliance or Queer-Straight Alliance.
• If a school tries to punish a student for asserting their rights and threatens to share information about the student’s sexual orientation or gender identity without the student’s consent.

An omission or failure to act can also be discrimination. For example:

• If a teacher does not take action despite hearing a student frequently use homophobic slurs to refer to one of their classmates.

Harassment, bullying, sexual harassment, or failing to address or prevent harassment are also forms of direct discrimination.

Indirect discrimination (sometimes called “adverse effects discrimination” in Canadian law) is when a practice or rule applies to everyone equally and appears “neutral”, but it actually harms certain groups more than others, whether this result is intentional or not.

For example:

• Mandating that attendance lists for teachers use students’ legal names. This requirement will not impact most cisgender students, but it may cause trans students to feel uncomfortable, or to be “outed” to their classmates.

Systemic discrimination refers to policies, practices, and structures that create or maintain disadvantage for certain groups, such as queer students. This form of discrimination may be more difficult to identify because you may have been told that this is “just the way things are”. However, if institutional structures are set up in ways that exclude you because of your sexual orientation or gender identity, this is still a form of discrimination.

For example:

• School washrooms designed for use by one sex to maximize space and efficiency, without recognizing the potential problems that gendered washrooms could cause. Trans and non-binary students may feel uncomfortable using gendered washrooms, so if schools don’t provide other options for them, this can be a form of systemic discrimination.
• Outdated sexual education and health curriculums were designed only with heterosexual relationships in mind. When schools use these curriculums in their classrooms, they may exclude queer students from receiving necessary information about health, anatomy, safety, consent, love, families, and relationships.

Intersectionality recognizes that the different parts of our identity, such as our race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability, are all connected and impact you. As a result, sometimes discrimination doesn’t happen based on just one part of your identity. For example:

• Indigenous or racialized queer students may face unique barriers and higher rates of violence at school than white queer students. This is an example of intersectional discrimination—the intersection of sexual orientation/gender identity and race causes additional harm and prejudice.