RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pronoun-police-middle-schoolers-sexual-harassment-title-ix-nine-mispronouning-transgender-lgbtqia-free-speech-pronoun-11653337766?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

For most people, the term “Title IX investigation” calls to mind allegations of rape, groping, unwanted sexual advances or a pervasive pattern of verbal abuse. Think again. Wisconsin’s Kiel Area School District, in deep red Manitowoc and Calumet counties along the western shore of Lake Michigan, has uncovered a new form of harassment. On April 25 they accused three eighth-grade boys of sexual harassment—and launched a Title IX investigation—for something called “mispronouning.” These children used “her” to refer to a classmate who wants to be called “them.”

It’s easy to dismiss this as bizarre. You won’t find mispronouning in the Wisconsin statutes or U.S. code. It hardly resembles the egregious aggression that we associate with harassment. It doesn’t, in and of itself, constitute conduct “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to education” as Title IX law on harassment requires. But the stain that such a charge could leave on these boys’ reputations and the harm inflicted upon their futures is real.

The boys’ parents first heard about the charges when they received a call from the district that their sons were about to be charged with sexual harassment under Title IX. There had been no prior warning or discussions with the families about pronoun use at school, nor did the district initially explain what the boys had done to warrant being investigated for a violation of federal law. When the families were finally informed that the alleged sexual harassment—the boys’ potential federal offense—was “using incorrect pronouns,” terror quickly turned to bewilderment. “Is this real? This has to be a joke,” thought Rose Rabidoux, one of the parents.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joshua-katz-princeton-campus-cancel-culture-woke-mob-11653350161?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Nearly two years ago, I wrote in these pages, “I survived cancellation at Princeton.” I was wrong. The university where I taught for nearly a quarter of a century and which promoted me to the tenured ranks in 2006, has revoked my tenure and dismissed me. Whoever you are and whatever your beliefs, this should terrify you.

The issues around my termination aren’t easy to summarize. What is nearly impossible to deny (though Princeton does deny it) is that I have been subjected to “cultural double jeopardy,” with the university relitigating a long-past offense—I had a consensual relationship with a 21-year-old student—for which I was already suspended for a year without pay well over a decade after my offense. This was, I emphasize, a violation of an internal university rule, not a Title IX matter or any other crime.

Why would one of the country’s leading educational institutions do this to a successful faculty member who once made a grave mistake, admitted to this mistake as soon as he was investigated for it and served his time without complaint? Unfortunately, the current environment makes the question all too easy to answer: In the summer of George Floyd, certain opinions about the state of America that would have been considered normal only a few months earlier suddenly became anathema. For better or worse, I was the first on campus to articulate some of these opinions, publicly criticizing a number of “antiracist” demands, some of them clearly racist and illegal, that hundreds of my colleagues had signed on to in an open letter to the administration in early July 2020.

While I stand by my words to this day, even in the immediate aftermath of the faculty letter, few of my colleagues gave signs of standing by theirs. But as they go about their merry destructive way, I live with the tremendous backlash against me, which has never ceased. It was during a fleeting and illusory lull in late July 2020—after Princeton’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, who had initially condemned me, stated that what I had written was protected speech after all—that I rashly suggested all was well.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-farm-abandons-lgbtq-childrens-book-program-after-whistleblower-email-leak/?utm_

State Farm, the household-name insurance company, has abandoned its program to distribute LGBTQ-themed books to teachers, community centers, and libraries, explicitly targeting children as young as kindergartners, after a media exposé based on a whistleblower email caught the company by surprise on Monday.

In an email to all State Farm agents and staff members sent just hours after multiple news outlets revealed the book initiative, Victor Terry, chief diversity officer and vice president of public affairs, announced the cancellation of its collaboration with GenderCool, an organization that promotes LGBTQ teaching via speaking events, mentorship programs, DEI/HR consulting, and advising for parents of transgender children.

“State Farm’s support of a philanthropic program, GenderCool, has been the subject of news and customer inquiries. This program that included books about gender identity was intended to promote inclusivity,” the email, obtained by Libs of TikTok, read. “We will no longer support that program.

“Conversations about gender and identity should happen at home with parents. We don’t support required curriculum in schools on this topic. We support organizations providing resources for parents to have these conversations,” Terry wrote.

The original program was supposed to recruit hundreds of agents and staff volunteers to “help diversify classroom, community center and library bookshelves with a collection of books to help bring clarity and understanding to the national conversation about Being Transgender, Inclusive and Non-Binary,” according to the January 2022 email, obtained by Consumers’ Research, which surfaced Monday.