School fail

[drwex]

Can I tell you how angry I am at the school front desk person who persistently mispronounced my son's name, after hearing me say it and having her pronunciation corrected AND continued to use the wrong pronouns after both Thing 2 and I corrected her?

Fiery hate.

Comments

[mizarchivist]

Not. cool.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Dude, WTF. It can't be that bloody difficult.

[ron_newman]

The next time you have to go there, maybe you can hand her a piece of paper with the pronunciation on it?

[drwex]

That's sort of hilarious. I'll see what Thing 2 thinks of that idea.

[ron_newman]

I have no idea what the name is, but if it's something unusual or foreign, this is the best approach. I've seen press releases that do this so that TV and radio announcers pronounce the name correctly when reading them.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

That's unacceptable. How does the school expect a student will respect them if they don't offer the student respect? How nicely do you have to play with these people, can you complain loudly/up the chain?

[drwex]

As you may recall from my earlier entry I'm already enmeshed in a long-running battle with this school. That, and Thing2 being in terrible academic status, don't make this an easy fight.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

*nods* yeah, that's where I'm just ... there's no point in fighting it. If the school can't manage to treat its students with respect, and can't even pretend respect when there are parents observing, there's no way to get them engaged in figuring out how to *really* help a non-standard-issue kid. They're robots. It's awful.

[drwex]

Thanks. I do appreciate the sympathy. We've offered to try and move Thing2 to another school but he's change-averse and doesn't want to lose what friends he has left in this place. So he's opposed.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

No, offering students respect only comes when the students aren't looking to be equals and understand their position in the hierarchy. They are respected for being good students who meet the roles of what good students should look like.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

That's not respect for the person. That's "you're not making me stretch myself at all so I'll nod and smile politely at you while not actually seeing you."

It's like blood in the water to a kid who sees it for what it is, in my experience. I'm so sorry the environment is so crummy for Thing2. :(

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

That's up there with "Diego" and "Laverne"
WTF?!

[c1.livejournal.com]

Welcome to my world. To say I feel your pain is the understatement of the century.

[drwex]

What has happened to cause you this pain?

[c1.livejournal.com]

You and your clan got my name right pretty quickly. But a little imagination and you can think of every possible iteration (and include female names, too) of what people have called me. It's to the point that anyone who gets my name right earns a lifetime membership to that special place in my heart. The ones that always make me wonder are those who are reading it out loud: it's as phonetic as you could want. Why so hard?

[gothtique.livejournal.com]

I chose simple names for my kids. 5 letters long, no unusual spellings, pronounced just like they are spelled.
No.
Their names are butchered on a daily basis at the HS.
Sympathize completely with your ire!

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry.

[dpolicar]

I'm sorry.
What are Thing 2's preferred pronouns?

[drwex]

he/him/his

Due to having long hair (which he wears down) people will often use she/her/hers, as happened in this case.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

What is this, the 1950s?? They can't handle the idea that a boy has long hair? GAAAAH.

[minkrose]

Since you've stated this here (which I wasn't sure if you were OK stating/bringing up), I am going to say that my first interpretation of this situation was transphobia (i.e. possibly this person has decided Thing 2 is trans *AND* wants to be an asshole about it).

Even if not, this is really really awful -- and if you DO think that's what's going on, there might be some trans advocacy groups that might be helpful.... might help out the next kid that this authority figure is being shitty to. Just a thought.

[drwex]

That's interesting. I'm not sure what this secretary would do if she met an actual trans person. I think it's more a case of simple stereotyping of the form "IF has(long_hair) THEN isgirl"

Thing2 seems reasonable comfortable right now both with his gender presentation (including long hair) and in telling people "I'm a boy." He has at least one same-age friend who is in the process of transitioning to her correct gender from birth gender so he's got more than the usual familiarity with the topic.

(I caveat this with 'right now' because things may change; we've tried to let him know we're open to such changes, but these are his choices at the moment.)

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

At Arisia Thing2 made a pronoun badge that said "He/They/It" and when I asked he said it was because he didn't really care what pronouns people use. He's stopped correcting people as he said it's not worth his headache to keep correcting people. He will still correct for name pronunciation (I think).

He did not want me correcting the woman at the bank. But he doesn't understand identity things where it's important that they get these things correct.

As for friends he has 3-4 of them somewhere in the process, interestingly he's known all of them through Guard Up.

[grum]

Reminds me of the poor girl at my high school who had her name read as Hei-may at graduation instead of Jaymee. Name was spelled Jaime, Hispanic pronucniation would be the former for a male, but the godforsaken administrator who read it HAD A PRONUNCIATION CARD IN FRONT OF HIM and did it anyways.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I can't even. WTF. I would hope for better in this day and age, especially in Massachusetts. At least you got some possible suggestions on this thread. Sorry.