As someone else mentioned, I'm confused by your use of "charged" in this context. A school district obviously can't charge anyone with a crime. Anyway, if you repeatedly call someone something that is intended to annoy or offend them after they've asked you not to, that is harassment.
Strange how we expect our kids to put up with treatment that we wouldn't expect other members of our society to put up with. If your wife told you that a group of coworkers repeatedly demean and insult her every single day at work, would your response be "oh, well that's life. Some people are just dicks! Suck it up."? Probably not. But that's basically what we tell kids.
First off, that's the NY Post, hardly a reliable source of information.
Second, that article makes no mention of the actual behavior of the students. It just says they refused to call a student by their pronouns. It does not say if the students were following the victim through the hall going out of their way to misgender them repeatedly. If that is the case, then something absolutely needs to be done. Maybe not a sexual harassment charge, but something.
This "news", like this thread is high on words that trigger good ol boys, and low on information. LR forum posters getting triggered is the real story here!
I’m a teacher. Students call me Mr. Leonard and refer to me as he/him since that’s how I identify.
if a kid insisted on calling me Ms. Leonard and calling me by she/her, it would be worthy of some type of discipline. This is essentially what is happening here.
for a student to do this exact same thing to a fellow student is at the very least bullying. It could certainly be seen as sexual harrassment as the victim student is made to feel lesser based on their gender.
Nobody is going to remember pronouns for every person they meet and you can't force them to. You're a man. You're a Mr. Or a sir. Good day, sir.
I mean, the "article" is from a source with a strong political leaning. It really tells us very little about what happened. My guess is that their pronouns were known & the other kids were bullying them. Could be totally wrong but that's what it sounds like to have it escalate like this. Which leads to the prompt from a teacher saying he would find some type of discipline if someone referred to him as a she.
I think some of you need to not feel so attacked when stuff like this happens & remove your partisan worldview to see how kids that don't use he/she pronouns get treated all the time. This isn't an attack on your America. This is what that community faces daily & then is normalized on places like this.
An indefinite pronoun does not refer to any specific person, thing or amount. It is vague and "not definite". Some typical indefinite pronouns are: all, another, any, anybody/anyone, anything, each, everybody/everyone, everything, few, many, nobody, none, one, several, some, somebody/someone.
How many of you would be willing to refer to a kid as "nobody" if that is their chosen pronoun?
Exactly how these policies unravel at the local police and local school level. It's like a bad game of telephone and the city of Kiel a distortion of the original intention. What's ultimately sick is this could turn into a landmark case.
There is no police. The article uses the word "charged" as click bait, this is simply some kids who misbehaved at school, got punished, and are going to the media to turn it into a circus. This is a non-story. Since no details about the incident is provided, I assume we aren't getting the full story, and that the kids did something beyond using the wrong pro-nouns.
I’m a teacher. Students call me Mr. Leonard and refer to me as he/him since that’s how I identify.
if a kid insisted on calling me Ms. Leonard and calling me by she/her, it would be worthy of some type of discipline. This is essentially what is happening here.
But would it be sexual harrassment? Would you file charges?
The kids weren’t being respectful or considerate— totally true— but taking it to the point where we are calling it criminal activity is a bit much.
I’m a teacher. Students call me Mr. Leonard and refer to me as he/him since that’s how I identify.
if a kid insisted on calling me Ms. Leonard and calling me by she/her, it would be worthy of some type of discipline. This is essentially what is happening here.
for a student to do this exact same thing to a fellow student is at the very least bullying. It could certainly be seen as sexual harrassment as the victim student is made to feel lesser based on their gender.
Nonsense. A person is a he or a she. They is made up woke bs.
I’m a teacher. Students call me Mr. Leonard and refer to me as he/him since that’s how I identify.
if a kid insisted on calling me Ms. Leonard and calling me by she/her, it would be worthy of some type of discipline. This is essentially what is happening here.
But would it be sexual harrassment? Would you file charges?
The kids weren’t being respectful or considerate— totally true— but taking it to the point where we are calling it criminal activity is a bit much.
Nobody is going to remember pronouns for every person they meet and you can't force them to. You're a man. You're a Mr. Or a sir. Good day, sir.
Intent goes a long way. I’ve forgotten a student’s pronouns before. You apologize for it and try not to do it again. No one is getting negative consequences for slip ups. They are getting negative consequences because they are either actively trying to refer to people by the wrong gender or, when they do slip up, they throw a hissy fit and act like it’s too hard to have empathy and just say “sorry, my bad.”
How is the situation described here, better than when I was in school, or even my children were in school, when nobody ever changed their pronouns so nobody could “mess them up”? At some point we have to recognize that there’s something fishy about the schools being full of they/them kids or sex-gender mismatch all of a sudden. Is this progress? Doubt it. Is this mostly a hot trend that will fade soon? More likely.
As to the actual point of the thread, “sexual harassment” still has to mean something. Misgendering someone, even if done to be a bully, isn’t sexual harassment, and calling this that is an absurdity. Having a Title IX investigation is over-policing, and that’s before you look into modern Title IX investigations and see they’re about as interested in the truth as the lady at the county fair who tells your fortune out of a crystal ball. Just reprimand the misgendering kid and be on your way.