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Saturday, August 24, 2024

Call Them By Their Name

Names have power, so it makes sense that young humans, who are generally in search of both identity and some amount of power over their own lives, will often try to exert some control over their own names.

As a teacher, it's not a fight worth picking. I taught so many students--soooooo many-- who wanted to be called by another name. Sometimes it was perfectly understandable-- a common nickname for their full name, or going by a middle name. Sometimes it was a leap-- "Albert" would prefer to go by "Butch." I had some unusual cases, like the girl who had the same name as three other students in class, so told me she'd rather go by Andrea (pronounced Ahn-dray-uh). And a few times, I had a trans student who wanted to use a different name.

Did I agree with all of them? No more than I agreed with some of my students' questionable fashion choices. But it cost me nothing to honor these preferences, to give students that small measure of control over their own identities. It was a small thing for me, but a thing that helped make my classroom a safe, welcoming space where we could get on with the work of learning to be better at reading, writing, speaking and listening.

So I don't get teachers like Vivian Geraghty, the middle school language arts teacher who found herself with two transgender students and a) refused to call them by their chosen names and b) asked to have them removed from their classrooms.

Geraghty is going to matter because she was told to resign, maybe, and then sued the district. Based on a U.S. District judge decision, this matter is going to trial (at least partly because there seems to be dispute about what actually happened). According to court documents, the students made their request on Day One and Geraghty knew these requests were “part of the student’s social transition” but disagreed because of her religious beliefs and “wanted those students out of her classroom."

Geraghty cites her religious convictions as the reason she would not honor the student request, and though this is a fashionable hill for christianists to die on these days, I don't really get it. Why is transgenderism the such a heinous crime against religion and conscience that they cannot even acknowledge such people exist is beyond me. 

Part of the dispute is over whether Geraghty jumped or was pushed. Her defense is from the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative culture panic law group that has made several trips before SCOTUS, including Dobbs. They say Geraghty could not put aside her beliefs to "affirm untruths that harm children."

And yet she was okay with treating two actual children like this.

I do not and probably never will grasp the current argument that one cannot practice one's faith unless one is fully free to discriminate against people of whom you disapprove, and yet that argument surfaces again and again. 

But I do believe this-- it is not a teacher's job (nor, really, that of any adult) to tell a student who he or she is. We can nudge, offer encouragement and support, and create a safe place for them to try to figure it out. But the most basic part of treating a human being like a human being is to call them by the name they have for themselves. If you can't do that and if you insist that you must have the God-given right to make your disapproval of their identities clear to them in every interaction, then you do not belong in front of a classroom. 

5 comments:

  1. When I was a child, I met a fellow 7 year old who wanted to be called Zero because she felt like zero. She insisted on being called Zero. It was difficult for me to hear her talk like that. Everything isn't so simple.

    Some teachers deal with students changing their names periodically.

    I was called by my last name by some teachers, not by my request.

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  2. Totally agree, Peter. These people do not belong in charge of a classroom. Identity is very important to kids, and what name they want to be called is key, and this has always been true. Teachers with prejudices can do so much damage to kids.
    Rebecca deCoca

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  3. If I convert to one of the Aztec religions, is it an infringement of my right to practice my religion if the police stop me from carving out my enemies hearts with an obsidian knife?

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  4. Too many people use their religion as a club, a weapon against others.
    From my point of view, religion is not much more than a superstition to cope with life. i.e., "Don't step on a crack, you will break your mothers back".
    Not only that, but the ancient books their religion is based on often says the opposite of what they practice. In other words, religion is over all, a scourge on all humanity, holding back civilization.

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  5. I had one teacher (7th grade history) who simply could not abide having two students in any class that had the same first name. Every one had to be different. I was the other 'Bruce' in her class.

    She suggested that one of us consent to being called 'Brucie' because that would be completely fine with the average 7th grade boy.

    I am very much of the Diderot school: "Humankind will never be truly free until the last priest is strangled with the entrails of the last king" Religion has always been used as a club to oppress people.

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