A decision to fire an elementary school teacher from Georgia has been upheld, after she read a children’s book on gender identity to her fifth-grade class earlier this year.
The Cobb County School Board of Education voted 4-3 along party lines to uphold Katie Rinderle’s termination, overruling a tribunal that had said she should not be fired. “The district is pleased that this difficult issue has concluded; we are very serious about keeping our classrooms focused on teaching, learning, and opportunities for success for students,” the board of education said in a statement Friday.
Rinderle worked at Due West Elementary School, in Marietta, Ga., and read the storybook “My Shadow Is Purple” by Australian author Scott Stuart to her class in March.
The picture-book is about a child who reflects on his mother’s shadow being “as pink as a blossoming cherry” and his father’s shadow that’s “blue as a berry,” and says their shadow is purple. Some parents complained, although Rinderle said others had also expressed their support for the lesson.
Rinderle, a teacher with 10 years’ experience, was removed from her classroom and the Cobb County School District accused her of violating the district’s policies on teaching controversial issues, and urged her to resign or face termination of employment. She was issued an official notice of termination on June 6.
Rinderle sought to overturn her firing, and a tribunal of retired educators, appointed by the Cobb County Board of Education, determined following a hearing that although she had violated district policies, she should not be fired.
However, on Thursday the Cobb County School Board of Education voted along partisan lines to reject the tribunal’s decision, with three Democrats opposing the decision to fire her and four Republican lawmakers upholding it.
School district lawyer Sherry Culves, speaking earlier this month at the hearing, argued that “the Cobb County School District is very serious about the classroom being a neutral place for students to learn. A one-sided viewpoint on political, religious or social beliefs does not belong in our classrooms.”
So what if they aren’t a manly man or a girly girl? That doesn’t mean you need to change gender. You can teach kids to be themselves without bringing self-harm into it.
And guess what? This book isn’t “bringing self harm” into anything!
Take your straw man back to whatever garden you stole it from.
Removing body parts that cause distress to a person is normal medical practice. If your appendix is causing you harm, what do they do? Remove it. If your tonsils are causing you harm, they remove them.
For people with gender dysphoria, certain body parts will cause them psychological harm. Removal or modification of those parts has been shown to provide significant, marked relief for patients who opt for those procedures.
“Self harm” refers to a mutilating practice that serves no functional purpose. There is a functional practice to gender-affirming surgeries. Quit trying to make up your own definitions for words and phrases and pretending that your version is reality. Literally thousands of professionals in this field disagree wholeheartedly with your uneducated, uninformed, baseless assessment.
Read a fucking book. But not My Shadow Is Purple; that seems to be a bit too advanced for you just yet. Have you heard of The Very Hungry Caterpillar? That might be a good starting point.
EDIT: Wait, no, I forgot the main character in that book transitions into a butterfly. I’ll ship you a copy of Goodnight Moon, maybe.
Can you not tell the difference between “self-acceptance of not following gender norms” and “electing for sex reassignment surgery” because your comments sound like you’re oblivious to the SEVERAL steps between those things.
Imagine insinuating that informing kids about non-gender conformity has literally anything to do with pushing surgery on them.
You’re absolutely correct that a person doesn’t need to be a “manly man” or a “girly girl”. But you’re confusing gender expression for gender identity. Neither my sister or I are particularily feminine, at least not in most stereotypical ways. She’s cis. I’m trans. I sure as hell haven’t gone through the journey of transition just because I wanted to enjoy a certain activity or wear a certain type of clothes. I could’ve done that before and still gotten less hate. Sure as hell getting sick of people telling me I’m confused (first in my life for being bi, later for being trans - same chapter in the bigots’ playbook really) when they can’t even grasp simple concepts because they don’t apply to them. Is it lack of empathy? Inability to trust that other people understand themselves even if you don’t understand them? Or is it just being fucking stupid?
