Bad Parents Tell Stupid Lies, File Stupid Lawsuits To Defend The 'Right' To Hurt Their Own Trans Kids
Mother of the year, up in here. Or, the opposite of that.
There's always so much less to these tales of woe from parents allegedly victimized by the transgender-industrial complex than meets the eye.
Just yesterday we stumbled on a National Review story about "A Mom’s Fight to Save Her Daughter from Trans Orthodoxy at School." This sounds like the poor kid was baptized into the High Church of Transgenderism during fourth period Latin at her Wisconsin middle school, when the reality is that the trans child was suicidal, and teachers heeded the therapists' advice to use the student's appropriate pronouns.
Theresa said her husband was willing to call his daughter whatever she wanted if that meant keeping her alive. Theresa put her foot down. Her daughter is a girl, “and until somebody is going to take some time to find out what the hell is going on in her mind, it’s going to stay that way,” she said. “I’m not going to appease her for short-term gain when I feel like there are long-term problems that need to be worked out.”
Naturally, this woman sued the school . Send money! (Do not sent money.)
In fact, almost every one of these accounts of supposed usurpations of parental rights involves the absolute worst parents in the world feeding a completely garbled version of reality to a credulous press, which happily runs with it. Case in point, January Littlejohn, a Tallahassee mother whose story was cited repeatedly by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to justify his state's filthy "Don't Say Gay" law.
"We had a mother from Leon County, and her daughter was going to school and some people in the school had decided that the daughter was really a boy and not a girl. So they changed the girl's name to a boy's name, had her dress like a boy and on [ sic ] doing all this stuff, without telling the mother or getting consent from the mother," he said just this week.
Last week Politico covered Littlejohn's claims, treating these two passages from her lawsuit as a true and accurate statement of facts:
On August 27, 2020, Mrs. Littlejohn emailed A.G.’s new math teacher, Rima Kelley. Mrs. Littlejohn told Mrs. Kelley that A.G. had expressed confusion about her gender last spring, that the family was working on the issue including seeing a private counselor, that Plaintiffs did not consent to A.G.’s request to change her name and pronouns, but that A.G. could use J. as a “nickname” with classmates and teachers if she desired. Mrs. Littlejohn also told Mrs. Kelley she thought A.G.’s gender confusion was a direct result of her friend group.
Mr. and Mrs. Littlejohn would never have known what was transpiring between LCS staff and her daughter but for an offhand comment A.G. made on September 14, 2020 as she was getting into the car. A.G. told her mother that she had a meeting with several school officials, and she thought it was funny that they asked her what restroom she preferred to use as a result of changing her name.
In fact, as the Tallahassee Democrat pointed out last November, and CNN reported this morning, Littlejohn was well aware of what the school was doing, and consented to it.
In an email to the school on August 27, 2020, Littlejohn wrote, "This has been an incredibly difficult situation for our family and her father and I are trying to be as supportive as we can. She is currently identifying as non-binary. She would like to go by the new name [redacted] and prefers the pronouns they/them. We have not changed her name at home yet, but I told her if she wants to go by the name [redacted] with her teachers, I won't stop her."
“Would you like me to share this with (redacted) other teachers? Or are you telling them? Thanks again," replied the teacher.
“I honestly hadn’t gotten that far ... Whatever you think is best or [the child] can handle it [themselves],” Littlejohn responded.
Well, so much for her saying she told the school "no," and then they went ahead and did it behind her back. And while Littlejohn claims in her lawsuit that the school refused to speak to her or amend the policies around students with non-conforming gender identities, the school has a different story.
"From the moment Mrs. Littlejohn first emailed her child's teacher to inform our staff of the situation, this has been handled together in partnership with clear communication. We understand that outside entities have now become involved, but the family clearly instructed the school staff via email to allow their child to 'take the lead on this' and to do 'whatever you think is the best,' " Chris Petley, Leon County Schools communications coordinator, told CNN. "Additionally, our superintendent met with the family and committed to amend any vague or unclear policy language--of which we have created a committee and are working on currently. We truly hope for a swift outcome in this case in order to allow the student to continue to succeed in school."
Gosh, it kind of sounds like this mother decided it would be more fun to be the poster child for the trans-panic bill and appear on stage with the governor than to be a supportive parent for her child! This is shocking, by which we mean, not shocking at all .
God bless the teachers, man. And hang tight, kids, it'll get better when you're 18.
[ NRO / Tallahassee Democrat / CNN ]
Follow Liz Dye on Twitter!
Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty. And if you're ordering from Amazon, use this link, because reasons .
My wife has always gone by her middle name, but when we moved to the US and she started work her supervisor called her by her first name. Being very unsure of herself in a new country she let it ride. After a time she got used to it and she liked having one name to use at work and another at home. It gave her a nice separation.
Many have gone to jail.