Evan Urquhart

Anyone who has ever called a stuffed animal or cartoon "he" or "she" hasn't been hewing to a strict biologically based definition of sex before using these pronouns.https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1071130864212414464 …

The point is that it's not MANDATORY to refer to a cartoon character as "he" or "she." Anyone who wants to refer to a cartoon as "it" and point out that it isn't really "he" or "she" is free to do so. It's not really about you, despite what you think. It's about the 1st Amendment

It's mandatory for a teacher not to call a child an idiot or a freak or a loser or stupid in a classroom either. Why is this different? A child may be a stupid idiot loser- that may be the truth- but it's not an appropriate true for a teacher to speak in class.

It's different because this arrangement does more than prevent a teacher from saying certain things. It compels speech that the teacher reasonably believes to be false.

Teaching by definition includes compelled speech. If a teacher believes the moon landing was faked they’ll still be expected to teach a science and history curriculum that includes the development of rockets and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.

4/ Also, an interesting First Amendment case would be whether a teacher CAN be compelled to state things that are extremely doubtful. Suppose that the school curriculum stated that the settler invasion of North America was an unalloyed blessing and the teacher knew better?