School adopts gender-neutral language policy to avoid being sued by LGBTI students
07-20-2016, 02:59 AM
When my oldest son was a boy, my wife, under pressure from her friends (despite my own misgivings), sent him to a trendy public school.
The principal used to send home frequent reminders not to use "exclusionary" terms (implying biological relatedness) like
mother, father, daughter, son
and especially not to prefix them with "my".
You were supposed to say "Susan is the caregiver of Billy". All other options deemed "offensive".
She also had a big poster up on the wall, near the entrance of the school, depicting 6 fatherless living arrangements: single mother with kids, multiple women with kids, grandmother raising kids, etc. The caption said "Families come in all shapes and sizes".
This was years ago. And I doubt it was the principal's idea; she didn't have a particularly creative personality.
I would guess that the genderless and creatively-gendered pronouns are coming soon; that's already hit a lot of the college campuses and will undoubtedly filter down to the elementary schools soon. I would also guess that they will be enforced, as some colleges have already toyed with doing, under threat of disciplinary action for not using the mandated pronoun.
I doubt the threat of lawsuits is the primary motivator. I think that the ratio of teachers and administrators who are themselves LGBTQ&c is significantly higher than that of the general population. This has long been the case, hence the 19th century stereotype of the spinster school-marm.
The principal used to send home frequent reminders not to use "exclusionary" terms (implying biological relatedness) like
mother, father, daughter, son
and especially not to prefix them with "my".
You were supposed to say "Susan is the caregiver of Billy". All other options deemed "offensive".
She also had a big poster up on the wall, near the entrance of the school, depicting 6 fatherless living arrangements: single mother with kids, multiple women with kids, grandmother raising kids, etc. The caption said "Families come in all shapes and sizes".
This was years ago. And I doubt it was the principal's idea; she didn't have a particularly creative personality.
I would guess that the genderless and creatively-gendered pronouns are coming soon; that's already hit a lot of the college campuses and will undoubtedly filter down to the elementary schools soon. I would also guess that they will be enforced, as some colleges have already toyed with doing, under threat of disciplinary action for not using the mandated pronoun.
I doubt the threat of lawsuits is the primary motivator. I think that the ratio of teachers and administrators who are themselves LGBTQ&c is significantly higher than that of the general population. This has long been the case, hence the 19th century stereotype of the spinster school-marm.