A Wisconsin school district has lodged a Title IX complaint against three middle school students for allegedly using the wrong pronouns while addressing another student.
Three Kiel Middle School students are being investigated for sexual assault in connection to the incident. “I received a phone call from the principal over at the elementary school, forewarning me; letting me know that I was going to be receiving an email with sexual harassment allegations against my son,” Rosemary Rabidoux, one of the parents of the students being accused, told Fox 11.
“I immediately went into shock! I’m thinking sexual harassment? That’s rape, that’s inappropriate touching, that’s incest,” Rabidoux added. “What has my son done?” Rabidoux’s 13-year-old son, Braden, is one of the three eighth-grade Kiel Middle School students accused of sexual harassment, something she disputes.
“(The investigating principal) said he’s being allegedly charged with sexual harassment for not using proper pronouns,” said Rabidoux. “I thought it wasn’t real. I thought this has got to be a gag, a joke — one has nothing to do with the other.”
According to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, now defending the accused students, in March, one of their peers announced the pronouns they’d prefer to be addressed as they/them. One of the alleged incidents Braden and the others were supposedly involved in happened in late April.
“She had been screaming at one of Braden’s friends to use proper pronouns, calling him profanity, and this friend is very soft-spoken, and kind of just sunk down into his chair,” Rabidoux explained. “Braden finally came up, defending him, saying ‘He doesn’t have to use proper pronouns, it’s his constitutional right to not use, you can’t make him say things.’”
Some say this could show Rabidoux and her son are against the LGBTQ+ community. “Not at all. Not at all!” said Rabidoux. “My children have been raised to love everybody equally.”
