Teacher: Demi Lovato’s Pronoun Reversal Isn’t Uncommon

BUCK: Want to take this call from Katrina in Colorado. You gotta hear about this one. Katrina, thanks for giving us a ring.

CALLER: Well, thank you for listening to me. I’m a 19-year conservative middle school teacher, and there’s more conservative teachers than I think people realize, but we need more support from parents still going to board meetings and just supporting what their beliefs are. Kids are changing their pronouns in middle school a lot, and I have 250 kids, and it’s really hard to keep track of weekly what their pronoun is or what their name is, you know, nonbinary name.

BUCK: This is fascinating to me, Katrina. How many…? Just estimate. How many pronoun changes among the children you teach have happened in the last year, roughly?

CALLER: Oh, it depends on the student. (laughing) Sometimes it’s weekly. Sometimes it’s —

BUCK: So what does…? How does that happen? Like, take me through this process. I mean, I obviously haven’t been in a middle school in, you know, 30 years. So does a student come up to you, does like Little Bob come up to you, Little Bobby and say, “Teacher, I now want you to call me she,” and do they change the name or do they have alternative pronouns too like zhe or they, things like that?

CALLER: It really depends on the student. Sometimes you get an email from the student ’cause they’re kind of shy about it or you get a counselor telling you. I’ve never had a parent tell me. It’s either been a student or a counselor or we hear it, you know?

BUCK: Is it all he/she or she/he switches or are there some more creative pronouns that occasionally you are supposed to use? And also, do you have concerns that if you “misgender” as a teacher are you gonna get reprimanded?

CALLER: It’s usually he/she, sometimes it’s they, and yes I actually went to my principal and said because of how I believe that I wasn’t comfortable calling a girl a boy and a boy a girl, and she gave me a gender discrimination sheet. So I keep that was kind of a subtle (laughing) — a subtle hint that I was supposed to play along. But some of my teacher friends and I that feel the same we just decided to call them by their last name.

BUCK: Wow.

CALLER: Because it’s hard to keep track of kids’ nicknames and if there’s changing names and changing pronouns, it’s —

BUCK: I had a teacher who refused to call me “Buck” in middle school because it was my middle name and not my first name. So things have changed quite a bit, I can tell you. First names only! That was quite a different time. Katrina, thanks for calling in from Colorado and share that one. Here’s Demi Lovato as I was saying before, formerly on the Disney Channel as an actor has decided that, um, she…

“She” was using “they,” not “he” pronouns. But you see, this is what… Well, once you start to play this game and it’s not objective reality, it’s whatever somebody feels, then you’re gonna have to keep changing it with whatever they feel. And also, there’s a power it could here because you are expected to comply. If you don’t comply, you’re a bigot. This is what they tell you. So now it’s they tell to jump; you gotta say, “How high?”

Now it’s they tell you to dance; you gotta say, “To what tune?” This is true of kids now. We just had a teacher call in from Colorado saying the kids change their pronouns all the time and she’s expected to comply with this. Somebody should ask Joe Biden about this. Somebody should ask prominent Democrats in office, “Do you think this is normal?” They will evade. They will evade right now because no person thinks this is reasonable or normal.