GOP bill would make it optional to respect trans teachers’ honorifics. Students call Maxwell Jasper Bearden “Teacher B.” ­Republicans have a problem with that.

The teacher and students seem to be able to navigate this fine (just like with sports) and the dickhead conservatives have to leverage the power of the state to interfere in that relationship, because they're shithead scumbag hypocrites.

I can’t imagine being such a miserable sack of shit that I’d sponsor a bill to harm a *special education teacher* that’s a constituent in my district. These people keep finding new lows.

>The bill would allow students to call a teacher “Miss,” for example, even if the teacher has made it clear they would prefer to be called “Mr.” instead. A law enacted in 2025 already allows students and colleagues to refer to a teacher by their dead name or sex assigned at birth without fear of discipline. >The bill’s House sponsor, state Rep. Aron Maberry (R), claimed the bill was inspired by a transgender teacher in his district – Maxwell Jasper Bearden, whose special education students call them the gender-neutral name, “Teacher B,” avoiding an honorific altogether. >“My students have never had a problem with that,” Bearden said. “I have a whole folder of art made by my students that all refer to me as Teacher B. It’s got my little crutches or my little cane in it, and it says ‘Teacher B’ or ‘Techer B,’ whatever their spelling. None of my students have ever had a problem with it. It’s only ever been the adults.” >Maberry’s bill is “targeted,” Bearden said, and adds “another level of disrespect to what it means to serve in this field.”  >Instead of worrying about the services Bearden’s kids need, or the progress they’re making, “I’m having to sit here and argue with a person who could never walk a mile in my shoes to begin with about my right to exist as a person.” >“I love my students. I love my job, and I love working in this field, and it’s so frustrating to me that a single person and this single bit of legislation can turn that all on its head,” Bearden said. “I just want to be with my students and watch them succeed — as me. I'm a special education teacher. Being a special education teacher is the hardest job of all in school, in my opinion. We special education teachers have to do yearly IEPs, Re-evaluations, MEEGS, report cards, documentation, tracking goal progress, behavior monitoring, managing caseloads in compliance. We have to do all that with limited resources. It's no wonder why special education is always the greatest shortage when it comes to education. Now, Republicans are trying to run off a special education teacher doing the hardest work in the state of Tennessee (which is to manage and improve the education levels of our students with the greatest needs), because Christian nationalists don't like Maxwell's gender identity? That's some f****** bullshit. You wonder why there's a teacher shortage? Exhibit A. Politicians again have shown they don't give a shit about education. They only want to make schools into Christian madrasas, where they force all the LGBTQIA+ kids into death camps to be tortured by conversion pseudoscience. Briggs Initiative 2.0. That's what this new bill is about. Christian nationalists are trying to commit genocide against trans people, forcing them out of public life and into conversion therapy death camps. This is another step in that.

Since we don’t have to respect honorifics, representative Miss Aron Maberry should have no issue with how I chose to address her.

The Republican obsession with transgender people is so f****** weird.

Anti-trans legislation seems to be a laser pointer dot that billionaires and corporations use to distract independents or fire up conservatives. There are the oil companies with an agenda to distract from environmental regulation and Epstein connections. Billionaires like Dan and Farris Wilks (fracking) and the Koch network have provided millions in funding to the Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council and the American Legislative Exchange Council involved in model legislation for bathroom bans, sports bans, banning transgender care, and petty things like this. Several corporations (AT&T, Comcast NBCUniversal, Home Depot to name a few) donate extensively to anti transgender politicians and the above mentioned groups. We're either hated by billionaires and oil corporations for some strange reason or more likely we're just being used as a scapegoat and a distraction. Either way, trans people are considered expendable by the wealthy as a tiny minority. We're the wrong 1 percent that deserves this kind of attention.

The party of small government wants to codify what you're allowed to call teachers?

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Watch dems fall for this once again, signal “we support kids being punished for misgendering their teacher” (which is what this nonsense bill is trying to “prevent”), have that message resonate with absolutely no normal people, and let the maniac in charge maintain his support.

I have no idea wtf this is even about. wtf is that title. wtf is "teacher b". what is this.

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