Congratulations to GRSJ PhD student Heng Simone Wang on their recent article published in Our Schools / Our Selves.
Heng’s article reviews the “parental rights” movement and anti-SOGI mobilization in Metro Vancouver over the past two decades. By examining the “difficult knowledge” of racialized immigrants’ involvement in these mobilizations, Heng argues that the rhetoric of “protecting children” can become a rallying cry that scapegoats SOGI policies, obscuring deeper tensions in a multicultural yet unequal society.
Drawing on Sinophone (Chinese-speaking) Canadian parents as a case study, Heng takes up Hok-Sze Leung’s (2017) call for local and national efforts to “create spaces that meet specific cultural and linguistic needs as much as possible while cultivating an ethos of dialogue and solidarity.” It is time to initiate sustained, multilingual dialogue within and beyond schools and to support the coalition-building work already underway in diasporic 2SLGBTQI+ communities.
“Only by transforming this difficult knowledge into collective action can we move toward truly inclusive and equitable educational spaces.”
Heng Simone Wang (she/they) is a PhD student in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. As an interdisciplinary scholar, their research interests are broadly constructed across trans and queer studies, transnational feminisms, sexual and reproductive ethics, social movement studies, Sinophone studies, and Global Asia studies. Heng’s doctoral research examines sexual ethics through the lens of trans of color critique.
Their other projects are community-based, mainly focusing on the queer youth activism in the People’s Republic of China. Heng co-founded and currently directs Haitu, a Vancouver-based grassroots organization supporting Chinese and Sinophone trans and gender non-conforming people.
You can read the article in its entirety by clicking the link below.
