Teacher was fired for refusing to call children by their preferred pronouns

[AnAlternateOpinion]

What follows is my position, hopefully less abrasively.

I didn’t find your comments particularly or overly abrasive but I appreciate your willingness to try to improve. Along those lines I might suggest using phrases like “a student's whining about their sexualized identity-fantasy” and “wallow in their sexuality obsessed perceptions” falls somewhat short of the mark of being less abrasive and demonstrates a general but common misunderstanding of gender atypical and transgender youth due to lack of actual or practical experience in dealing with these scenarios or individuals beyond what is presented in the media.

And the teachers never were to be cheerleaders for confrontation, or grandstanding, as many seem to be reflected in the media now.

Having reviewed the linked article in the OP, this is indeed a case with this teacher. Would it really have been so hard or earth shattering to simply respect these student’s request and get on with the lessons without turning the whole thing into a political battleground?

To address the suggestion that if a student wants to be called a different name, it should be changed legally and reregistered as such with the school I would like to offer the following:

As today’s youth are more flexible and less rigid in matters of gender and sexuality, the possibility exists a young person might just be experimenting or trying on different identities to figure out what fits them and the timing for a legal name change might not be appropriate or even desired as they might not be ready for a full social transition. There are also costs involved that some families simply can’t afford as the rules and procedures for changing names (and gender) vary from state-to-state.

Even in cases where a child has gone through legal recognition of a gender change there are still those who refuse to use proper names and pronouns which can be pretty emotionally and psychologically devastating to the person involved but who cares about the kid when (conservative) ideology and the right to be an ass (free speech) matters more. To me that’s pretty heartless and certainly not conducive to a student excelling in their studies.

From the outside I’m sure these matters seem pretty cut and dried and black or white but these attitudes lack nuance and ignore the differences between individuals within a widely diverse group.

I suspect that 'activist journalism' in in part responsible for the growing perception that teachers are championing this social behavior...

Championing what social behavior? Refusing to use a trans kid’s name and pronouns? That’s just asshattery and if your point was the inverse – that some teachers are promoting this “nonsense”, I would like to point out that they have every major medical association in the country backing their position.