An Abbotsford high school teacher has received a five-day suspension for showing his Grade 12 class a short documentary about “incels,” an online hate group consisting of self-described “involuntarily celibate” men.
The incel community is known for blaming their sexual frustrations on women in online forums, which has led some in their cohort to commit acts of mass murder targeting the opposite sex.
The Vice documentary called “This is what the life of an incel looks like” references two of these killers, one of whom is Alex Manassian, a subscriber to incel ideology who drove a van into a busy sidewalk of people in Toronto in 2018, killing 10.
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The seven-minute video features an interview with a member of the incel community who shares his “negative views of women, who are described as sexually manipulative, vain and shallow,” the B.C. Commissioner for Teacher Regulation’s decision says.
“The video shows graphic, cartoon-like, sexually explicit images of women as sexual objects and images of men having violent sexual encounters with women. The text accompanying these images is derogatory and demeaning of both men and women.”
Justin Thanh Dat Hung, the teacher who showed his family studies class the documentary in early 2019, had not viewed the video before watching it with his class, and failed to ensure it aligned with the curriculum, according to the decision.
“This was in breach of the District’s administrative procedures.”
A month after Hung showed the video to this class, a parent made a complaint to the commissioner. One student reported the video made them feel uncomfortable, and another student apparently left the class.
In June 2019, the district issued Hung a letter of discipline, and suspended him without pay for five days.
