Wisconsin Middle Schoolers Charged With Sexual Harassment For Failing To Use Preferred Pronouns
Lawyer for students: “The mere use of biologically correct pronouns not only does not constitute sexual harassment under Title IX or the District’s own policy, it is also speech protected by the First Amendment.”
If you want a good example of how education has gone off the rails in this country under the weight of what euphemistically is called “wokeness,” what just happened at the Kiel Middle School in Wisconsin is a good place to start.
Three 8th grade boys have been charged by the school with sexual harassment under federal Title IX for failing to use the preferred pronoun “they” of a classmate.
Fox 11 reported:
An investigation into three Kiel Middle School students has been launched.
The school district has filed a Title IX complaint against the students, accusing them of sexual harassment for using incorrect pronouns when addressing another student.
“I received a phone call from the principal over at the elementary school, forewarning me; letting me know that I was going to be receiving an email with sexual harassment allegations against my son,” Rosemary Rabidoux, one of the parents of the students being accused said.
“I immediately went into shock. I’m thinking, sexual harassment? That’s rape, that’s inappropriate touching, that’s incest” Rabidoux said. “What has my son done?”
Rabidoux’s 13-year-old son, Braden, is one of the three eighth-grade Kiel Middle School students accused of sexual harassment, something she disputes.
“(The investigating principal) said he’s being allegedly charged with sexual harassment for not using proper pronouns,” said Rabidoux. “I thought it wasn’t real. I thought this has got to be a gag, a joke — one has nothing to do with the other.”
That report also contained information on one of the incidents:
According to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, now defending the accused students, in March, one of their peers announced the pronouns they’d prefer to be addressed as: they/them.
One of the alleged incidents Braden and the others were supposedly involved in happened in late April.
“She had been screaming at one of Braden’s friends to use proper pronouns, calling him profanity, and this friend is very soft-spoken, and kind of just sunk down into his chair,” Rabidoux explained. “Braden finally came up, defending him, saying ‘He doesn’t have to use proper pronouns, it’s his constitutional right to not use, you can’t make him say things.’”
Some say, this could show Rabidoux and her son are against the LGBTQ+ community.
This is unreal. A Wisconsin school district filed a Title IX complaint against 3 middle school students, accusing them of sexual harassment for using incorrect pronouns when addressing another student. pic.twitter.com/GEEjXoEnxW
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 13, 2022
ABC2 further reports that the school district is pushing forward:
The Kiel Area School District doesn’t comment on student matters but provided this statement from Superintendent Brad Ebert to Action 2 News:
“The KASD prohibits all forms of bullying and harassment in accordance with all laws, including Title IX, and will continue to support ALL students regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, creed, pregnancy, marital status, parental status, sexual orientation, sex (including transgender status, change of sex or gender identity), or physical, mental, emotional or learning disability (“Protected Classes”) in any of its student programs and activities; this is consistent with school board policy. We do not comment on any student matters.”
– Brad Ebert, Kiel Superintendent
The boys’ families have asked for a response from the district by next Friday. Their attorney tells us if the boys’ records aren’t cleared and they are punished, there is a strong possibility they’ll pursue legal action against the district.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, representing the charged students, has sent a letter contesting the legality of the school district’s conduct:
The complaint against these boys, and the District’s ongoing investigation, are wholly inappropriate and should be immediately dismissed. The mere use of biologically correct pronouns not only does not constitute sexual harassment under Title IX or the District’s own policy, it is also speech protected by the First Amendment. The District has also violated Title IX procedures and its own policy in its handling of the complaint. The District should promptly end the investigation, dismiss the complaints, and remove them from each of the boys’ records.
* * *
“Mispronouning” is also not sexual harassment under Title IX because gender identity is not included within the definition of sex within Title IX. In fact, the Department of Education is currently attempting to amend Title IX to add it.
* * *
More troubling, the District appears to believe that any so-called “mispronouning” is punishable speech under Title IX. We have been in touch with another family whose daughter was recently given an in-school suspension for “sexual harassment” based on a single statement using an allegedly “wrong” pronoun—and the statement was said to a third party, not even to the allegedly “misgendered” student. To the extent this is the District’s view, the District is wrong as a matter of law and is engaged in a clear First Amendment violation.
* * *
To summarize, because what the District calls “mispronouning” does not amount to sexual harassment under Title IX as a matter of law, and because the District’s conduct infringes our clients’ First Amendment and Due Process rights, the District should immediately end its investigation, dismiss the complaints, and remove them from the students’ records. We request and expect a response from the District within 8 days, by Friday, May 20, 2022.
Thanks to multiple readers for sending the tip on this story.
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Comments
First. pronouns are a closed class, like prepositions. New ones are not discovered and added to the language.
Second, your speech is about how things seem to you, including what pronoun you use.
True, though in this case the “preferred” pronouns are members of the class.
Words are added to the language all the time, as it evolves. I don’t see why pronouns are not included in this. Who knows? Maybe in 50 years “ze” or “hir” will be accepted English pronouns, found in every dictionary. But they’re not now.
If you don’t see why this is a bad idea, it’s because you’re not thinking. Vanity pronouns are entirely subjective and not based on any observable objective reality. They are a means of controlling other people, nothing more.
Once you accept this madness as a simple evolution of language (it’s not), then you no longer have a meaningful language or a standard that can stop you from insanity like this:
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1524144958315266048
What the actual **** are you on about? Who said anything about anything being a good idea or a bad idea? This is about rhhardin’s assertion that “pronouns are a closed class, like prepositions. New ones are not discovered and added to the language”, and that assertion is just not true. That is a matter of fact, not of values.
In fact, a person with multiple personalities can often switch personalities on dime. MPD is also know as dissociative identity disorder. So the video showing a monthly change of pronouns is actually rather restrained of the speaker. In my experiences people with multiple personalities have suffered severe abuse or trauma. They are seriously mentally injured usually from some early childhood event, such as being molested, beaten, sodomized, raped or tortured. Yes, torture of children happens.
If you or someone you love suffers from the injuries of childhood or adult sexual abuse, http://www.MaleSurvivor.org has resources to help. It wasn’t you fault and you can improve.
Again. what the hell has this got to do with the topic? Rhhardin made the false assertion that the set of pronouns in the English language is fixed for all times. I see that 17 people claim to disagree with me on this, and yet not one has even attempted to advance an argument against it. Instead we have stupid attempts to change the topic.
Milhouse, I suspect you could have avoided the attacks if you had finished your comment with one more sentence saying that you found the pronoun demands of the “woke” to be stupid and pernicious.
That’s irrelevant. The question is whether Rhhardin’s assertion is true or false, and it’s obviously false. Nobody has yet even tried to defend it.
Is English your second language? *I* said it was a bad idea. How on Earth that escaped you is probably why you see no harm in warping the language to accept nonsensical vanity pronouns. Your emotional incontinence gives it away. You have no problem with actively and tendentiously warping the language. Own it, don’t hide behind the cop out that this is some sort of natural linguistic evolution. It’s not.
It isn’t “acceptance” that is issue. It’s forced compliance. Words can go 180 degrees and then flip again in normal parlance… I give you “hoi polloi”. Should someone be comfortable with Newspeak?
No, it is precisely acceptance that is at issue. That’s how languages change. People start using it in different ways, and those changes become accepted and part of the language. English pronouns are not a closed class. They have changed in the past, and there is no reason to suppose they will not change in the future. Therefore rhhardin’s assertion is not true.
Millhouse, PEOPLE aren’t changing pronouns. The Power That Be are forcing people to comply with their diktats. There’s a huge difference between the two. If PEOPLE were changing pronouns from previous usage or inventing new ones that everyone agreed with- TPTB wouldn’t need to enforce their use with threats of and actual punishment for failing to use them. Which is what is happening. Mislabeling? Bullying? Because a child calls the emperor naked? That’s what is going on.
Sigh. Still changing the topic or missing the point. Rhhardin claims that the class of pronouns is closed. That there cannot be any new ones, by definition. And this is just wrong. The pronouns we use are not the same as the ones in use in the 17th century, And there is no way to predict what ones will be in use 50 years from now.
You just can’t help yourself, can you? I don’t get you at all, Milhouse. What are you accomplishing with this pedantic nonsense that completely misses the point? As usual, you are looking at some random and unrelated thing and then bashing people over the head with it . . . as if what you are saying is even related to the actual point.
The point here is coercing speech, a violation of the Constitution. If all these stupid pronouns are eventually adopted, that changes what about the basic complaint, being coerced to call someone by whatever “pronoun” they pull out of their butt that day?
You cannot make me call you “him,” “her,” “ze,” whatever the hell crazy. That is coerced speech.
As an aside, and a tick in my own anal retentive column, I can’t stand the use of the plural pronoun “they” to describe a single person. I find that offensive and off-putting not only as a violation of my right to free speech but as a violation of basic grammatical principles. And no, I don’t give a flying rat’s patootie if “they” is “deemed” by future ill-educated activist “graduates” as a singular pronoun. It’s just not. Period.
You are fucking insufferable.
No, Fuzzy, you are missing the point. The point on this sub-thread is not coercing speech. This whole sub-thread is a response to Rhhardin’s comment, which was not at all about coercing speech but a general statement about linguistics. I replied to that comment, taking issue with the statement because I think it’s nonsense. All replies to that reply, and the entire thread that follows, are all on the topic of that statement, not on the original post. And they are all completely off that topic. Not one of the people abusing me has come even close to addressing it. They’re just dragging in red herrings, just as you are, and calling me names. Surely none of you are so stupid as not to understand how discussion threads work.
As for the use of “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun, it may grate on you but it is correct English. It is not a politically correct product of the recent era; it’s a long-standing feature of the English language, going back to the 14th century. Complaining about it is very like complaining about using “you” as a singular, which everyone now does.
No, Millhouse, you’re still not getting it. This is not a natural linguistic evolution. It is a form of pidgin English adopted by activist and forced upon people by government diktat. Hiding behind a linguistic principle you clearly don’t understand is not just a poor argument, it’s a poor reflection upon you.
Whether you’re a man or a woman almost always matters. Hence two genders. That cuts the ambiguity of a pronoun in half, as to what it stands in for. Efficiency.
Modern additions are backed by no ambiguity-reducing reward. Quite the contrary they’re barriers and stumbling blocks.
Since pronouns only refer back (or forward) to something else, they add nothing else but efficiency.
They indeed change (you, thou) but only by replacement, one goes when the other goes out.
That isn’t true at all. There is plenty of room in English for more pronouns, both those that reduce ambiguity and those that increase it. For instance when the distinction between “thou” and “you” was lost, a gap was created that has been informally filled by such pronouns as “youse” and “y’all”, but we have no formal replacement. Such proposed pronouns as “ze” and “hir” are so-far unsuccessful attempts to fill the need for a gender-neutral pronoun other than “it” or “they”. We might also one day find a use for pronouns that indicate more than two people, or we might want gendered plurals, as many languages have. There are all sorts of other possibilities. So the class is far from closed. The fact remains, however, that none of the modern proposed pronouns have yet gained any significant currency. Maybe in 50 years they will. Or not.
There is a gender-neutral pronoun, “he.” It’s called being unmarked, the default when neither is meant. Feminists made it dangerous in the 80s and there was no sadder sight than a young lecturer filling his talks with “he or she” to please women ready to pounce on him. Call it the start of the academic matriarchy.
That’s one small step for man or woman, but one giant step for man or woman kind.
The closed class did in fact fill that felt gap; the reason feminism is funny is partly their fight against the inclinations of natural language evolution. Connotations do not disappear but remain to make serious people laughable. See Empson’s _The Structure of Complex Words_ for the existing mechanisms.
“They” in fact has begun to work naturally as a singular, under the banner of notional singular.
What you can’t get rid of is the interest in whether the subject is male or female. Here’s Wm. Kerrigan in the 90s
“We are men and women. It almost always matters which we are. Men and women are aggressive. Their regard for each other is clouded by grudges, suspicions, fears, needs, desires, and nacissistic postures. There’s no scrubbing them out. The best you can hope for is domestication, as in football, rock, humor, happy marriage, and a good prose style. Jokes trade on offensiveness; PC is not a funny dialect. The unconscious is a joker, a sexist and aggressive creature. Our sexuality has always been scandalous.”
Everything that’s today taken as offensive is in fact a domestication of something else. They’re stamping out the places that the something else can go.
I do not support the Democratic Party having authority to use its massive machine to do a top down change of the language and you are 100% into lemming territory of if you support that.
Top down changes in languages happen in totalitarian societies not ours.
“Thou” is singular. The plural form is, or was, “ye”, which was also the plural of “you”. We ought to bring it back; what say ye?
I wonder what gender-based languages, like Spanish, as in “senor” and “senora”, are doing with this general issue?
Absolutely nothing because this is wholly a stupid American phenomenon. Which makes Millhouse’s argument all the more stupid.
Same here. I pressed #2 for Spanish and said, “My preferred pronoun is, ‘senor'”.
It said, “Buenos días, mi nombre es Juan. ¿En que le puedo ayudar?”
By that time I was speaking Spanish like a native. I said, “¿Puedo hablar con su supervisor?”
I was transferred to Milhouse and he explained that pronouns change etc etc. And now I am very relieved and satisfied.
Which general issue? That of radicals wanting to introduce gender-neutral language? In that case the answer is that the radicals are making stupid proposals and everyone is ignoring them. But the general issue of pronouns being changeable, they are just as changeable in gendered languages as in any other.
Spanish changes just like any other language. It isn’t the same now as it was 50 or 100 years ago, and it won’t be the same 50 or 100 years from now. And that may well include some change to the set of pronouns in use. It’s impossible to predict what changes will catch on.
No, no, no, no. You don’t have to engage in stupidity to defend foolishness.
“ Words are added to the language all the time, as it evolves.”
“Added” here implies a conscious act. Evolution is hardly that.
Ever since grade school, I’ve been using prepositions to end sentences with. How am I not in prison? Shouldn’t I be on some kind of a list?
There’s nothing wrong with ending sentences with prepositions. The chief difference between fronted prepositions and final prepositions is called register, and it’s formal register or informal register respectively. The natural one in English is informal.
A good test case is “who” or “whom.” “Who” sounds acceptable for “whom” except in formal register. You can say “who the bell tolls for” but not “for who the bell tolls.”
This story seems like something out of Alice in Wonderland. Might it be possible to hit these people where it hurts, by retaining Sandmann’s lawyer and filing a very large defamation lawsuit?
You can delete “seems like”.
The school district can be sued, and likely will be, for violating the students’ constitutional rights. There was a Sixth Circuit case that came out just last month where a college had disciplined a professor for refusing to use some “transgender” student’s “preferred pronouns. The professor sued the school for violating his rights, and the trial court dismissed his claims. The professor appealed and the Sixth Circuit agreed with him and said that multiple Supreme Court precedents clearly hold that the First Amendment prohibits the government from compelling people to say things they don’t believe. Realizing that it would lose at trial, the school then settled the case and agreed to pay the professor $400,000 plus his attorney’s fees, and remove the disciplinary action from his file.
“Mispronouning”? Good Lord.
Mispronouncing is the least of your worries. If there are 30 people in your class and everyone of them uses different pronouns you will spend all your time memorizing so you won’t be arrested for sexual harassment.
In your class? How about the entire school? There is no limit to the idiocy of leftist orthodoxy.
And so we return to the realization that the purpose of political correctness is bullying.
Well duh.
Compelled speech is a violation of free speech. Forcing students to misuse pronouns as according to the whims of classmates is not acceptable or even justifiable.
Sue the school administrators personally (if possible) until they cry.
If the school officials are using their power to violate the civil rights of these students by attempting to compel speech then they are likely liable. It isn’t just LEO who can exceed their lawful authority and violate someone’s civil rights.
And the key, then, is to sue them as individuals: Make them personally liable for damages.
Depends on the district insurance policy if their employees are covered for misconduct
Ah, yes, I forgot about that. In which case the remaining recourse is publicity: Make their names toxic. Paint them as sadistic child abusers.
Not only is it unconstitutional it is profoundly immoral. Not only are you forcing people to lie, but you are punishing people for telling the truth.
My pronoun would be the most obscene one I could imagine and I’d demand every administration idiot, teacher and all my classmates use it every time they even looked in my direction.
It would involve them giving me sexual pleasures.
My pronouns are ‘My Mistress/My Mistress’.
Of course referring to me as your mistress when we’re not in a relationship is sexual harassment, so everybody gets to choose whether to harass me by failing to use my preferred pronouns or harass me by falsely claiming a sexual relationship.
Good one!
Is the news or the school allowed to name these minors in public complaints? Seems like a violation of some sort to me.
Can I choose my own adjectives as well, like handsome, charming funny etc. If my pronouns are asked for the following will be my response:
He, Him, His, Mr. and Sir.
I’ve been doing that for a little while in dealing with small-minded people who demand that I use ‘their’ pronouns — I tell them that they in turn have to use my personal adjectives, which are handsome, brilliant, and humble (I particularly am fond of that last one). It sets off progressive people no end as they accuse me of mocking them. They are correct, of course.
That’s brilliant… Your Humbleness.
One of the accused students should announce he identifies as “Emperor of the Solar System” and his preferred pronouns are “Your Majesty/Your Grace”. Perhaps then there would be an end to this madness.
Personal pronouns are either singular or plural and masculine, feminine, or indeterminate (It is raining.).
I and WE might just agree with you if needed.
Me, Myself and Irene are in agreement with you.
If she identifies as a goddess we address her as ??
The Creatrix!?
A 13-year-old has a grasp on the law that these “adults” don’t.
“(The investigating principal) said he’s being allegedly charged with sexual harassment for not using proper pronouns,” said Rabidoux. “I thought it wasn’t real. I thought this has got to be a gag, a joke — one has nothing to do with the other.”
They didn’t use IMPROPER pronouns. And yes, the school is a joke.
“She had been screaming at one of Braden’s friends to use proper pronouns, calling him profanity, and this friend is very soft-spoken, and kind of just sunk down into his chair,” Rabidoux explained. “Braden finally came up, defending him, saying ‘He doesn’t have to use proper pronouns, it’s his constitutional right to not use, you can’t make him say things.’”
That seems to be the very essence of bullying, which is what the alphabet community, all 1% of them, are perpetrating.
They are just sad little creatures, desperately seeking attention, looking to expand their 15 minutes of fame into a lifestyle.
We don’t negotiate with terrorists, and we don’t coddle children.
The leftists act like both.
From what I’ve read by following J.K. Rowling and other gender critical thinkers on Twitter ( I know, I know!), not all LGB and even T agree with this agenda. They accept two genders; in fact, trans people are so accepting that they try to become the gender they’re not. These people aren’t the ones clamoring for the perversion of pronouns.
Fire all of the instructors and administrators involved and jail them for child abuse.
Council the prnoun-confused child to undo the damage these teachers have done, and appologise to the persecuted boys.
Aren’t all pronouns proper by definition?
I see four people disagree with me. Well, give me an example of a pronoun that isn’t proper.
No; nouns can be proper or common. Pronouns can be personal, indefinitie, interrogative, or demonstrative. etc.
By your answer you have shown that you are the goddess of the classroom—but these monsters have no business in the classroom, bathroom, staffroom, backroom or chatroom.
‘you never even called me by my name’.
Aren’t all of those specific to somebody or something? Doesn’t that make them proper by definition?
…
One of these things does not match the other.
Sue them, good and hard
So…….the woke student yelling and screaming profanities at this student is NOT harassment but calling him by his appropriate pronoun is. So we do live in clown world.
It’s going to get a lot worse – and really soon. We’re going to see things we couldn’t ever fathom would happen in this country before the election.
IF there is an election.
Sue them? Sue them? Nahhhhh
It’s time parents copy the left and protest outside these village idiots’ homes. It’s time parents become “ungovernable” – that is, in districts where LE isn’t’ the controlled by the left.
Enough civility to these tyrants. Civility is occasionally overrated.
Burn the Marxist Seminaries to the ground, they are destroying the country by indoctrination. Whatever the person “feels” they are they are and can be proven to be a biological male or female and that’s it.
Only my biologist knows for sure.
Snares and traps everywhere with the woke. The proper response to this is simple and effective. Pronouns stand in for nouns. Just don’t ever use them when dealing with these loons. Painstakingly and with awkward construction use the noun instead. Try it. It is jolly good fun and throws a spotlight on this freak show. I exhort people reading Howard’s advice to not use pronouns.
It used to be when a person said “we” you would ask if they had a mouse in their pocket.
Social progress.
Decades ago, you could hear the sound of children joyfully engaged in play, outside, from the time a school bell sounded, until it became dark, when they would reluctantly return home. They learned all social skills and gained confidence in that play. Today, their are now absorbed in homework and social media, learning to be repulsive social scolds, just like their teachers. The solution is to end homework (7 hours of school is enough) and turn them loose.
This door swings both ways.
To be smart, every one of the parents who disagrees with these kids should change their childs legal first name to “LordOurGod” or “a;jdfa;lkjfd;aljf;lajfa” and demand to be addressed by that name by all faculty and students. They should also be militant about the pronunciation and correct them 30 times and raise a similar lawsuit the other direction. When done on scale, this shit stops.
disagrees with these kids… I mean the ones demanding to be called “they”
Since we’re making our own pronouns, I’m going to think up one that’s unbelievably profane and vile.
You’ll have to use it or there’ll be hell to pay!
That would be an improper pronoun.
I need to get some buttons made that say “My preferred pronoun is Dr.” after some little %&$@ decided to wield her extremely little power over me. On a plus note, I was done with her in 15 seconds, while she has to spend the rest of her life around herself.
I’m from Wisconsin and had to look up where this podunkville school is. Small town Wisconsin is not in the mood for this sort of social engineering. They can be fairly tolerant, but don’t push this on them or it will not go well. School admins in this district will not be in their jobs for long after this.
Did the students ever even use a pronoun with regard to the complaining student? From the description of the conversation provided here, it appears the boys merely expressed what they might do.
Btw, is “it” a pronoun?
Yes, it is.
“It”, “that”, and “which” were my preferred pronouns on Twitter before I was banished.
Hail to the wokel — a narrow, provincial who is “woke”.
Our language and culture are now hostage to ignorant, provincial, and fanatical people–from the Left.
In high school, a lady teacher told me that a pronoun must agree in number with it’s antecedent: “If someone has trouble, help him; if people have trouble, help them,” She explained that in the singular, the he and him are used for neuter gender or ambiguous gender. I suppose my younger self should’ve rebelled at being made a eunuch, if only in grammatical usage (I am male); but I was a sucker for kindly and encouraging authority.
I went on to see how the masculine gender does a similar double duty in other Indo-European and Semitic languages. I then learned Chinese, in which spoken forms of the third person pronoun are not gendered at all, yet nobody can accuse traditional Chinese culture of being sexually egalitarian.
It is of a piece with Biden’s declaring the word “alien” for a non-citizen to be “dehumanizing”. Good grief, Mr. President, you supposedly went to a respectable law school and don’t know that an “alien” is an outsider or non-citizen, and nothing more nor less? Do you really think that we lesser folk think non-citizens are space invaders? Hail to the chief, who gets his vocab from Marvel Comics!
When asked my preferred mode of address I replied, “‘Your Excellency’ and when referring to me, that would be ‘His Excellency’.”
Some people have no sense of humor.