Apparently the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education launched a civil rights investigation at Taft College due to “misgendering”. What horrific events spurred the investigation?
The student’s professors tried to use the plural pronouns but didn’t always succeed. It is understandably difficult for someone delivering collegiate-level instruction to remember to refer to a man as “they” or “them.”
One professor, seemingly realizing her “mistake,” caught herself mid-word and ended up uttering “he-she.” That’s not quite “they,” so the OCR considered that a civil rights violation. The student then told another female professor that he was upset by the failure to address him as he desired. That professor apologized and met with the dean of students to discuss strategies for remembering to use the student’s “proper pronouns.” She seems mostly to have managed to do so, but occasionally she slipped up, too, again contributing to the OCR’s finding. A third female professor referred to the student by male pronouns, realized her “mistake,” and apologized, explaining that when she looked at the student, she saw his physical appearance and referred to him accordingly. Depending on OCR’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling, this could be a double civil rights violation—on both gender-identity and sex-stereotype grounds.
The funny or horrifying thing, depending on your point of view, is the faculty’s concern and exasperation in response to the student’s protestations. One professor, after meeting with the dean, had the school’s mental-health services contact the student. Another threw up his hands and exclaimed that he was “too old” to use preferred pronouns. A third asked the student if he had ever tried not thinking about his pronouns so much. A fourth suggested that if the student was so upset about inadvertent misgendering, maybe college wasn’t right for him and he should become an activist instead. The supposed civil rights violators here were mostly female, Californian professors, disproportionately a conscientious and progressive lot. Even they couldn’t quite manage to use preferred pronouns every time and seem to have found the demand annoying.
