It has been five days since we reported on Peter Vlaming. The Virginia teacher irked the social justice beast by choosing not to use a transgender students pronoun of choice. He didn’t use the wrong one. He didn’t use one at all. The school suspended and then fired him.
Related: Christian Teacher Refuses to Use Transgender Students Pronoun – Gets Fired
Vlaming attempted to accommodate the student by using her preferred name instead of any pronoun; an accommodation the school board found insufficient. “Mr. Vlaming was recommended for termination due to this insubordination and repeated refusal to comply with directives made to him by multiple WPPS administrators,” said Superintendent Laura Abel.
The student-directed walkout took place within 24-hours of the School board terminating the French teacher.
Forrest Rohde, the West Point High School junior who organized the walkout, emphasized that the protest was not about the transgender student. Rather, he said students took issue with the school board “trying to force the teacher to conform to their ideologies with the threat of removal from the school.”
“The child is going through a lot,” Rohde said. “We shouldn’t be directing this towards her, we should be directing this towards the school board.
School boards and administrations have a habit of ignoring what parents and students and even teachers think. They are more focused on whether or not they believe they might be sued. I get that. And while we did report previously that the absence of the pronoun was making the student uncomfortable, that can’t be the driver of all policy. Lots of people feel uncomfortable. It’s part of the experience for everyone, even adults.
If you don’t learn to work around and through it, you’ll never be able to function.
Some would argue that’s the point.
Image Credit: The American Conservative
