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Joe King's avatar

Ms Zelaya: "You are bigoted assholes, I quit."

Houghton University: "You can't quit. You're fired for calling us what we are."

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

This is a great illustration of how the right is latching onto some outlier thing to actively hurt a vulnerable minority while repercussions affect a larger portion of the population (generally women, especially women of color) and they don't seem to care but rather find it an added benefit to the harm they are actively causing.

This is about the transgender community and they are the intended victims and we should address it simply for that reason. The professional purpose of the pronouns is for those folks with unusual or gender neutral names, and the school was happy to other these folks over that even if they do fit in the school’s mistaken idea of a gender binary. Recently in women’s sports, the right has attacked transgender women for wanting to participate, but they have been actively attacking women who succeed in the sports anyway because they do not conform to the “ideal feminine standard” mainly because the athletes build muscle. Look at the Williams sisters, they are accused of being transgender, or just men who are pretending to be women without seeking transgender medical care, because they are muscular and super successful. Michelle Obama got it too. Women have been accosted in bathrooms for being men in disguise because they don’t conform, it has happened in my presence. The right is fine with these “mistakes” because they are part of the purpose. There’s a lot of bigotry involved in this type of attacks. Many facets of misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia. All of this is intended consequences.

This school takes issue with any perceived support of transgender people, these two professors have names (and skin in Ms. Zelaya’s case) that don’t conform to the school’s white supremacy, she pointed out the bigotry the school is trying to cover up and they found a way to prove her right while causing her and their target du jour harm. I think the other professor was just caught in the crossfire because the school thought enough about what they were doing to know that firing her for the pronouns and not anyone else who uses them, they would not win a lawsuit. So they picked someone who also had a foreign sounding name, was male (avoid the sexism accusation) and was known for advocacy, perhaps he had done something in the past or was not liked by some administrator for some reason to even be on their radar. Not that I think the school would even face a lawsuit since Christian schools get special treatment for firing folks for ridiculous reasons.

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