Libs of TikTok & the right wing media targeted a WI school for trying to protect a trans student

[Nevilledog]

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Ari Drennen 🏳️?🌈
@AriDrennen
Libs of TikTok & the right wing media targeted a WI school for attempting to protect a trans student under Title IX

The school received so many bomb threats that they *canceled the remainder of their in-person school year*

@lawton_sophie has the story:

mediamatters.org
Right-wing media pushed alarmist claims that Title IX protections for LGBTQ students will mean the...
3:26 PM · Jun 15, 2022

https://www.mediamatters.org/right-wing-media-furious-over-biden-administration-effort-to-protect-lgbtq-students

Right-wing media are fearmongering about Title IX protections for LGBTQ students that have been fortified under the Biden administration, claiming providing a safe environment for transgender children will mean the end of “traditional Christian values.” The latest outrage cycle has extended to every corner of the echo chamber, including viral anti-LGBTQ Twitter account “Libs of TikTok,” Fox News, the anti-abortion movement, and others. The right-wing fury toward Title IX protections has led to threats of violence, including a bomb threat that shut down a Wisconsin middle school forcing students to complete the year virtually.

These anti-LGBTQ smears are in response to changes the Biden administration has implemented to strengthen Title IX regulations.

In June 2021, the Biden administration reversed Trump-era Title IX changes that had removed prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Since then, the Department of Education has announced plans to codify safeguards for transgender students by revising the language in Title IX. The final rule isn’t expected to be in place until 2023, though conservative attorneys general have already protested the changes and are expected to sue the administration when the codification takes place. Additionally, in May, the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service announced it would be interpreting student protections “to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity” in both Title IX and the Food and Nutrition Act “to help ensure its programs are open, accessible and help promote food and nutrition security, regardless of demographics.”

In two instances over the past two months, right-wing media have attacked protections for LGBTQ students in schools by connecting the proposed Title IX revisions to the left’s “grooming project.”

The first, in March, was a Title IX complaint at Kiel Middle School in Wisconsin where the school district filed a harassment complaint against three students for using incorrect pronouns when addressing a nonbinary student. The complaint was first made public in May when conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty — which previously investigated false claims of voter fraud in 2020 — went on a tour of right-wing media to sensationalize the investigation, setting off a full-blown outrage cycle. The national attention resulted in multiple bomb threats against the school and surrounding establishments, and Kiel Middle School eventually went virtual for the remainder of the year and dropped the investigation into the three boys. WILL celebrated the win and claimed, “The District may not be willing to admit it publicly, but it has recognized that it has no legal basis to demand that our clients refrain from ‘mispronouning’ other students.”

*snip*