B.C. teacher suspended for showing video about ‘incels’ to Grade 12 class

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.

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“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.

Hung had also not viewed the video prior to showing it to students.

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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.