A high school teacher in Abbotsford, B.C., received a five-day suspension for showing students a video about “incels,” a fringe internet group of mainly men who are involuntarily celibate.
According to a decision by B.C.’s Commissioner for Teacher Regulation, Justin Thanh Dat Hung showed students in a Grade 12 family studies class a segment from the HBO documentary series VICE, entitled “This is What the Life of an Incel Looks Like.”
The segment features an interview with a member of an incel community that includes “negative views of women, who are described as sexually manipulative, vain and shallow,” the decision reads.
“The video (also) shows graphic, cartoon-like, sexually-explicit images of women as sexual objects and images of men having violent sexual encounters with women.”
The VICE segment also refers to a Global News report about Alek Manassian, a self-described incel who faces 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder after driving a van into crowds of pedestrians on a busy Toronto sidewalk in 2018.
One student reported feeling uncomfortable watching the video and another left the room, the decision says.
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Hung had also not viewed the video prior to showing it to students.
The commissioner received a complaint from a parent regarding the incident in March 2019.
In June of that year, the Abbotsford School District issued Hung a disciplinary letter and suspended him for five days without pay.
In the commissioner’s decision, released on May 5, Hung agreed he did not create a positive learning environment and agreed to a reprimand under the Teachers Act.
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