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Florida teacher fired for using gender-neutral honorific ‘Mx.’ (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I am glad someone is calling the Florida school system on their bullshit. Being non-binary hard and being treated like the coping mechanisms you use for avoiding hating the experience of dealing with people and existing in your body are somehow a delusion, some sort of sexual kink or deliberately confusing is like trying to go about your day with weights strapped to you. It makes dealing with every social interaction so tiring. It really feels like everybody else in the room is obsessed with your sex organs and characteristics like complete perverts that they don't see the question is about how happy you are and how you feel about all the people in your life and whether you feel anxious and isolated being around them or just comfortable and able to express your full range of personhood.

This teacher is standing up because they know there's others much worse off who aren't secure enough to do it. Pretty admirable I think.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for sharing how thus affects you. It’s important for people to see that this is affecting actual people and not some strawman concept they don’t understand.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's something even a lot of my friends don't even really get. I ended up going to a Birthday party where across the street from the restaurant there was a 250 plus rally of anti-trans protesters with zero counter protesters. We didn't realize the thing would be there. I ended up not being able to eat because the stress from proximity made me throw up everything.

I know we get called sensitive snowflakes but having that level of outright hate shoved in your face can easily make anyone feel very small and very vulnerable and at some level it's visceral.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

deleted by creator

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

It's harder to feel like a capable badass when you've borrowed a friend's hat to cover your rainbow colored hair and are ralphing korean food into a strip mall garbage can.

At some level we as a demographic are sensitive, I can't really control the way I feel about my body and my place in society. Being out does mean exposing that vulnerability where other people can see. Sensitivity isn't cowardice but it does mean having to realize where your limits are and how you work. A lot of us learn to put on a tough as nails affect over time so we can get through a regular ass day. Realistically I know I am not a coward any more than I am Superman. I am just doing my best

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not only that, but then have the hate be called "reasonable debate"

As if we aren't actual real people that just want to exist in the world. It's like you have to fight against the fucking river in making anyone even believe you that what they are seeing is hate, transphobia.

We're simply not treated like real people in these debates, and it's frustrating and exhausting. If they faced the same treatment you would bet they would protest severely.

But I guess that is also the case for cis women in the abortion debate. I guess the debate being about half of the population still isn't enough for empathy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Pretty real stuff. A feels like lot of people just want to punch through us to hit somebody on the other side. I can't say I like the way they frame things about parents rights either. It's like they want to own their children like property not just be a major influence in their lives. The lack of empathy doesn't even really extend to their own flesh and blood much less us.

My hometown's council is like a microcosm of the whole thing. A vocal group storms the trustee meetings to rail on and on about how we need to Protect children from gender ideology, they run over their alloted time so nobody can get any regular business done and the board turns their mic off so they can just function as a government. The "spurned Conservatives" then go to the local paper and tell everyone that their freedom of speech was unjustly curtailed because a hypocritical progressive turned their mic off. The paper prints the story uncritically and all of a sudden we're a threat to freedom of speech and democracy... They then turn around and say "I'm not transphobic" as though they didn't just paint us as bogeyman who are dangerous to be around women, kids, polling stations, government, pens and paper etc. etc. etc.

Some days it's just a lot.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (3 children)

This isn't calling out Florida schools, this only calls out Florida employers. A teacher can be directed not to talk about gay in matters of education, and can be fired for not following such direction, but they cannot be discriminated against for their own sexual identity as a matter of their employment.

US law is shite.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

A lot of people do not draw the distinction between talking about things in an educational context versus it being a way they express themselves for their own needs. Laws like this make people afraid to do so until it is contested because the act of contesting it is itself punitive. The cooling effect is implicit in the design of the law because it recognizes law removes people's ability to support themselves in a society before it has a chance to be tested meaning only the secure of a minority under extreme fire can contest it and that means becoming very visible in circumstances where one's safety often relies on being invisible.

This teacher is likely under extreme fire right now by a mob of people telling them they are a pedophile, delusional, harmful and trying to exploit every shred of exposed weaknesses to gendered nonsense one naturally lets be known when one comes out as non-binary.

Where legal protections are shaky schools will fire teachers under concerns for that teacher's physical and mental safety if enough parents are valued at being a threat by feeling empowered by their interpretation of the law or the idea that a school is operating outside the law. Ultimately running a school is government money that needs to be paid so an employee going up against a school board for wrongful dismissal will not impact the individual school as much when the main currency for the school board employees is time and complexity of a bunch of individual parents suing because their little darling asked them what someone calling themselves Mx. means when they came home.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act explicitly prohibits discrimination because of sex in matters of employment. Florida is free to prevent teachers from teaching things, but they cannot fire people for their own sexual identity, per federal law.
Meanwhile, Title II of CRA covers interstate commerce and prohibits discrimination because of race, color, religion, or national origin - but not sex. Under Federal Law, if your business has a lot of out of state customers (primarily hospitality) or includes supply chains that cross state lines, you can't discriminate on race, etc but you can discriminate on sex.
The 14th Amendment states that the law must apply to everyone equally. However, this only applies to governments (and their contractors) - a black person cannot be refused to be heard in court and a gay person cannot be refused a marriage.

The way US law is supposed to work is that states can set their own laws where Federal Law doesn't cover it. However, they must do this within the bounds of Federal Law. This is why we have 1st Amendment challenges against state laws that fill in the gaps of federal law - a business can discriminate based on sex, or any other reason (so long as they don't fall under Title II), even if state law says otherwise.

US law is so shit. It's unnecessarily hard to read, distributed across multiple yet interwoven jurisdictions, and full of holes. But hey, at least it isn't financial regulations - reading those will cause a sane person to lose the will to live.

TL;DR This should be a slam dunk for the teacher, per Federal Law: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which overrules anything the states write. However, who knows how the current Supreme Court might try to spin it - if they even opt to hear it (they absolutely should).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

The teacher will make millions from the settlement, paid squarely out of the pocket of working Floridians. And despite that, half the state will continue voting for politicians and supporting police whose actions have no real consequences for them - the tax payers will foot the bill for their actions. Until we start hitting these people in their own pocket books and pensions, their behavior won't change.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This may not be the slam dunk you think it is. To the best of my understanding, the current coverage under title vii for gender and sexuality has only been extended so far as "would this behaviour be unacceptable for the opposite sex?"

Florida could argue (within the scope of existing supreme Court decisions) that the use of certain "new" titles are never acceptable, regardless of the person's sex.

As written, the rule is illegal, but it could possibly be upheld in the context of this specific case.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They would have to argue that sex and gender are not the same thing in court, under oath. It's been a longstanding argument for the GOP that they are the same. And if they argue biological sex and gender are not 1:1, then they're acknowledging that a different gender identity than one's birth sex is possible, and setting that precedent immediately takes the wind out of a lot of their arguments on transgender folk.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

They'll be happy to say one thing in public and argue another in court. For example, when Fox News argued that a reasonable person is not expected to believe anything Tucker Carlson is saying.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

However, regular guys from Florida succeeded in being waaaay worse than the memed Florida Man, good job guys

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

"Florida Man" is a representation of all the US. The only difference is that Florida allows the publication of personal information about people for merely being arrested, let alone accused or even actually convicted of a crime. This gives a disproportionate view of how bad Florida is - it isn't that much worse than most other US states.

But it is worse. The whole state is literally a swamp, and Ron DeSantis is a war criminal, alongside his criminal actions as Governor (eg using ringfenced state money to benefit other states and his friend who owns a chartered airline business).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Florida Mx if you want to lose your job.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

We call people what they want to be called. (Credit for this to Charlie Worroll from Crimelines and other podcasts)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I agree.

That being said, how do you pronounce this? Is it Mix? Mixter? Mizz(that sounds too close to ms)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Just like "mix"

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Repression has historically always won... right? !

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