Sie fragte die Schüler nach ihren Pronomen. Die Einheimischen nannten sie „Groomerin“. Jetzt klagt sie. Sie wurde zu ihrer eigenen Sicherheit beurlaubt, nachdem lokale Konservative sie mit zunehmend gewalttätiger Rhetorik angeprangert hatten.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/09/she-asked-students-their-pronouns-locals-called-her-a-groomer-now-shes-suing/
41 Comments
I hope she wins the case. Frankly people should sue more for defamation like this. Throw a hate crime on top of it.
People born and speak English, but do not understand English…. what a time to be alive. /s
Republicans keep them dumb to keep their vote.
If you are a grown adult mad at pronouns you likely use every day, either you either have been hammered hard by propaganda and believe it or you had a genuinely bad education.
>Mardy A. Burleson is a computer sciences teacher at Hilton Head Island Middle School (HHIMS), located in a South Carolina coastal community of 38,069 that is predominantly white, Christian, and over the age of 45. Burleson has a transgender son whose friend died by suicide years ago because they couldn’t come out to their family. So, to help support her own students, Burelson began giving them a beginning-of-term survey entitled, “Who is behind those eyes?”
>Around January 9, 2023, an HHIMS student showed the survey to her father, David Cook, a local self-described “Dad-vocate who has supported recent efforts to ban “pornographic” books from school libraries.
>On his podcast and social media posts, Whittington accused Burleson of being a “predatory” teacher “indoctrinating 8th graders” by giving “secret surveys about sex to literal pre-teens and children” and then telling them to “keep [it a] secret from administrators and parents.”
>During the last week of school on Facebook, Cook posted, “If you’re in support of giving sexually explicit material to children, it’s important to remember……Dead Pedophiles Don’t Re-Offend.”
>Other teachers began warning Harper about Cook’s presence on campus. Escorts would accompany her to her car. School officials compiled Cook’s harassing social media posts and filed a harassment report with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office .
>“[School officials] told me to watch my back in public,” Harper told the *Packet*. “They told me he is dangerous and they’re concerned for me. They encouraged me to file a police report, which I did that day.”
The mental gymnastics conservatives do to believe what they believe are astoundingly weird to me. They think somehow that pronouns means “grooming” children to becoming LGBTQIA+, as if cisgender people don’t have pronouns, somehow. That is just bizarre. And the teacher facing that kind of death threat for wanting every kid to be happy and accepted at school is so bizarre.
The Christian nationalists should be the ones ashamed of themselves for trying to bully everyone into their hateful cult.
I hope Mandy wins, and it sets a precedent in the process. The “groomer libel” is sick and wrong on all levels. These Anita Bryant wannabes belong to the Crusades, not to a free society.
I wonder if she’s Jewish, too? It’d just be another ignorant reason for MAGA Trumpers and RW voters to want to cause harm to this woman.
Legend had it that Danes wore yellow stars to defend Jews in Nazi occupation. My internet profile is genderless for the same reason. I am they.
Pronouns are said in every day life. No issue with it
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“Democrats need to tone down the violent rhetoric that they keep making us use”
Accusing someone of grooming who isn’t actually grooming should be considered defamation. It’s crazy the GOP has gotten away with this shit as much as they have.
Standard maga behavior
I hope she continually refers to Cook as “ma’am” during the hearings since clearly he doesn’t think people should be using pronouns anymore. I’m sure it’ll be fine with it.
Imagine being in a world where being polite and considerate is considered a reason to threaten violence. Unreal.
These people have groomers (cough cough Matt Gaetz) on their own party to worry about. Leave the teacher who wants to respect her students alone and go after the grown ass man who is one capable of dating children
Dad-vocate is a red flag. Kindly sir, fuck right off
Hilton Head Island, terribly rich and richly terrible.
This very brave woman has done the exact right thing – turn the lawyers loose on these despicable bigots. Make them pay for their hypocritical discrimination. And march the case up through any appellate route the bastards want to follow.
A teacher is trying to learn about her students and the local bigots go off on their tyrannical hate trips, spreading lies and false statements. She has them by the balls and she needs to squeeze hard.
More power to her.
“Burleson is being represented by Meg Phelan of the[Equality Legal Action Fund](https://equalityactionfund.org), a pro-bono legal group dedicated to protecting members of the LGBTQ+ community, educators, and allied elected officials from defamation and harassment”
My favourite thing is there are cis people who use “non-standard pronouns” too, you can be perfectly happy in your assigned gender, match up with the expected appearance/expression for it, and still request other pronouns because you like them better.
Prefer they/them even though you aren’t non-binary? Cool, that’s easy enough to do. You rather be called he/him as a woman? I don’t really get that, but I also don’t get astrophysics and that doesn’t suddenly make it fake.
The call from the terrorists always comes from inside the house.
If she gave surveys that were secret and told not to tell parents or administrators because they were sexual in nature she deserves the boot. I guess we wait for the truth to come out first.
I hope she wins.
Best practices: do not ask students their pronouns unless THEY bring it up.
You don’t want to put kids in uncomfortable situations that might out them before the are ready.
I know she is coming from a place of compassion.
Source: GSA facilitator with two trans children
Me, lesbian with one trans stepdaughter
Very, very cool! I hope she destroys him!
Stuff like this makes me wonder if I should still utilize the statute of limitations in my state after last year when I had right-wing news and entertainment outlets reporting that I was allegedly grooming my students after it was found out by the community I was gay and a drag queen. Not once did I ever even mention any of this to my class and the school district literally made a public announcement stating that none of the allegations were true and in fact, were harmful to myself and the community. That still didn’t stop outlets from “reporting” on my alleged misconduct. Every article uses the words “alleged” which makes me question if I have any standing, but damn, what I would give to shut down Libs of TikTok, local radio, and other platforms to pay quite literally for putting my students, coworkers, community, and I at risk for inciting the threats that my school faced last year.
MAGA fuckwads trying to make life miserable for anyone and everyone? No way.
Meanwhile they will let literal pedaphiles walk free so long as they are associated with a church. [https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/crime/article220477300.html](https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/crime/article220477300.html) — Now a real-estate agent (I think) [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hector-morales-a904b011a](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hector-morales-a904b011a)
[https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/crime/article217005905.html](https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/crime/article217005905.html)
[https://reachfm.ca/articles/church-fires-long-time-pastor-after-finding-out-he-was-convicted-sex-offender](https://reachfm.ca/articles/church-fires-long-time-pastor-after-finding-out-he-was-convicted-sex-offender)
You would think they would spend more time going after these institutions ….
What is wrong with people!? She was being respectful, and the consequence for her turns out to be the ultimate disrespect.
Oh wow. Conservatives being snowflakes who are violent? I’ve never heard of that before /s
>“Do you want me to use your pronouns in class and in messages home or is it private between you and me?”
Let’s not normalize secrets between teachers and their students.
How dare you treat our children as if you respected them as individuals! (/s in case anyone missed the dripping sarcasm).
Bullying, violence, threats of this nature–each one should be a *CRIME*.
Such a weird thing to throw a fit about
Good. Bankrupt the fuckers who made her and her families lives hell.
Republicans boutta shit they britches when they realize everyone uses pronouns
the district my kid goes to has altered theirs to say something along the lines of “is there a special nickname you go by? tell me how you got it and anything else you think I should know”
the kids who need to read between the lines are smart enough to do so and it isn’t explicit enough to cause outrage (yet)
I hate that this is how things are now and I hope this teacher wins for so many reasons
How is this not grooming?
I’ve had conservatives say they worry this trend of suing means everyone might be a target since humans make mistakes. I’ve had to make it really clear to them that it’s entirely normal to make mistakes when getting used to something new— a name you’re not familiar with, a term you’ve mispronounced for years, a person’s new surname after they get married, etc. what matters is that we make the effort to get it right, apologise if we mess up, and just do our best. Same with pronouns. Just do your best and be mindful, because we just want to be kind to one another.
Being belligerent or purposefully being mean is what gets you into trouble. Unfortunately a major symptom of lead exposure to the brain is stubbornness when wrong, and a refusal to do things differently.
Lmao, inb4 the locals are projecting and most of them are actual groomers. Conservatives are such snowflakes, getting upset at someone being more catering by asking for pronouns. Wut.
>located in a South Carolina coastal community of 38,069 that is predominantly white, Christian, and over the age of 45.
You can just predominantly bigots.
Can we stop calling these extremist monster bullies “conservatives”. Nothing conservative about them!
Bully as a kid, terrorist as an adult. The conservative way.