© Eoneren/Getty Images’Misgendering’ now a punishable offense in schools

The Left has opened up a new front in the culture war over transgenderism: punishing children who do not adhere to the tenets of left-wing gender ideology.

In Virginia, the Fairfax County School Board has decided that suspension is the appropriate punishment for “malicious misgendering” and “malicious deadnaming.” In classrooms as early as the fourth grade, if students use the wrong pronoun or wrong name when referring to a classmate, they will be forced to miss valuable school days by a school board that thinks it has the right to control what students say.

This is not an issue limited to northern Virginia. In Kiel, Wisconsin, a school district opened up a sexual harassment investigation into three eighth graders who “misgendered” a classmate. Those students referred to a classmate as a girl rather than the grammatically incorrect “they/them” pronouns the student demanded to be referred to with. The school district sought to destroy those three students for not speaking the way the district demanded.

The district ended up backing down from its investigation but insisted that it was the real victim. “As we move forward, we want to acknowledge the strain on our administrators and staff who have been criticized for simply carrying out the functions of their job as set out in District policy,” the district said. NPR agreed, arguing that the backlash to accusing eighth graders of sexual harassment for “misgendering” is part of some pattern of abuse against transgender children.

With Fairfax’s decision to start suspending students over using the wrong pronouns, we are seeing a different pattern. School boards and administrators are pumping gender ideology into schools across the country. In many cases, teachers and administrators have encouraged children to begin socially transitioning to the opposite gender without their parents’ knowledge. President Joe Biden has promised to enforce transgender ideology in schools and has vowed to punish states that prevent doctors from physically and chemically altering children who claim to be transgender.

Now, students who do not humor these things and commit the grave offense of saying “she” instead of “they” are being targeted, as happened in Kiel and is now punishable in Fairfax County. This is the next step for a movement that demands total compliance, and it will continue to bleed into other school districts until parents put their foot down.