FAIR News: Defending Against Compelled Pronoun Usage
Newsletter
FAIR Sends A Letter to Youth Development Organization 4-H Over Compelled Pronoun Usage
On July 27th, FAIR’s legal team sent a letter to Dr. Fe Moncloa, Youth Development Advisor at UCCE Santa Clara County in California, and Dr. Nia Imani Fields, Youth Development Specialist at the University of Maryland, regarding a policy implemented by 4-H, a subdivision of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Nation's largest youth development organization.
The policy, "Practices for Inclusion of Individuals of all Genders and Sexual Orientations," which is laudably aimed at mitigating bullying and harassment, is unfortunately fraught with misguided directives that are likely to result in free speech and parental rights violations.
The policy states, “[F]ailing to treat individuals in a way that is consistent with their gender identity, including using their expressed names and pronouns, may constitute harassment.” If harassment is identified, the program must “engage in appropriate corrective action.” Additionally, the policy states that “4-H will treat all participants according to their gender identity, even if a youth member’s own guardian raises objections.”
FAIR’s letter notes that “Requiring 4-H participants to use the preferred pronouns of others, under threat of ‘corrective action,’ violates their First Amendment rights. As a subsidiary of the United States Department of Agriculture, 4-H is bound by the First Amendment.” Moreover, the letter notes a “further concern that, by disregarding parents’ wishes regarding their child’s gender, 4-H is infringing upon the Constitutional rights of those parents.”
FAIR Welcomes New Advisors
FAIR is thrilled to welcome six new additions to its Board of Advisors:
Lisa Bildy is a lawyer, civil liberties advocate, and campaigner for Stop SOP, a group of Law Society of Ontario benchers who ran on a platform to stop the compelled Statement of Principles.
Lee Fang is a writer, journalist, and co-founder of RepublicReport.org, a blog that covers political corruption and syndicates content with TheNation.com, Salon, National Memo, BillMoyers.com, TruthOut, and other media outlets.
Shadi Hamid is an author, professor of Islamic studies, and co-founder of The Wisdom of Crowds, a newsletter, podcast, and debate platform with the goal of understanding why people—even “bad” people—believe what they believe.
James Kirchick is the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, as well as a writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Spectator.
Monica Harris is an activist, author, lawyer, and founder of Let's Get Unplugged, a blog detailing Monica’s journey from corporate America to living in the Montana woods.
Greg Thomas is a writer, entrepreneur, cultural critic, and CEO of the Jazz Leadership Project, a private company that uses the principles and practices of jazz music to enhance leadership success and team excellence.
FAIR in Medicine Fellowship for Graduate Students in Healthcare
FAIR in Medicine, the official network of healthcare professionals advancing FAIR’s mission in medicine and science, is hosting a Fellowship for Graduate Students in Healthcare. This is an opportunity for medical students and graduate students in healthcare-related fields to learn about FAIR’s tools, strategies, and principles of peaceful change, and to spread FAIR’s message on campus or in healthcare settings.
Fellows will help promote FAIR’s message by participating in a FAIR project, which they will share through their networks at their school or workplace. Projects may include working on webinars, podcasts, writing, research, and planning virtual or in-person events.
Applications are open July 1st – August 31st.
FAIR Book Club: Mark Mathabane’s Kafir Boy
Calling all FAIR book lovers! The FAIR Fellows in Education invite you to our new FAIR Book Club, where all FAIR-minded readers can explore books that challenge and deepen our understanding of what it means to be pro-human.
We kicked off the club with our first book—Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane—with a Zoom session on July 27th, and will host a second conversation on August 17th at 7 p.m. ET.
We hope you’ll join us as we dive into this powerful memoir about the author’s coming of age under apartheid in South Africa.
Do You Have a Pro-Human Perspective to Share? Write for our Substack!
We want the FAIR Substack to be the go-to publication for diverse perspectives on culture and civil rights. Whether you’re a seasoned author or an amateur writer with a story that can contribute to our mission of promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding, and humanity, we would love to receive your stories, opinions, investigations, reviews, interviews, and more!
Please send your piece to submissions@fairforall.org along with a short personal introduction and a brief, one-paragraph summary of your piece.
Submission guidelines:
Complete articles only (i.e., no “works in progress”).
No previously published submissions—this includes personal blogs as well as online or print publications.
We have no hard word count limits, but prefer submissions between 1,000 and 2,500 words.
We hope to hear from you!
FAIR in the Arts Virtual Meetups
Join our FAIR in the Arts team and FAIR in the Arts Fellows to meet other artists and creatives who share pro-human values and want to make a difference in their own communities.
Arts practitioners, advocates, and media professionals—anyone who wants to create a culture where artists and others are free to express themselves, and where we model pro-human values in arts and media institutions—are welcome.
Meetings will include updates on ongoing FAIR in the Arts initiatives, as well as facilitated discussion group sessions. Join us on the following dates:
July 28th:
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. ET
August 17th:
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. ET
September 20th:
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. ET
Resolving the Race(ism) Dilemma Conference
On September 24th in Lexington, Massachusetts, join FAIR Advisors Dr. Sheena Mason and Greg Thomas, along with Dr. Carlos Hoyt, for a day-long conference designed for everyone interested in overcoming racism—teachers, parents, scientists, scholars, social justice leaders, mental health professionals, journalists, and political leaders.
Learn how racialization produces the illusion of “race” and racism, how to deracialize your worldview, practice antiracialization, and recognize the racelessness of the human species. Explore methods of translating the misleading language of “race” into the actual issues that drive discrimination and oppression. Build connections with others who are eager to not only understand how to move beyond racism but take meaningful action, and consider joining an effort to improve our government's approach to addressing race-based discrimination—one that does not require perpetuating self-racialization.
FAIR Perspectives Episode 24: Is Conversation Impossible? with Peter Boghossian
This week on FAIR Perspectives, we speak with FAIR Advisor Peter Boghossian. Peter is an American author and philosopher. He was an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for 10 years, and his areas of academic interest include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. His main focus is bringing the tools of professional philosophers to people in a wide variety of contexts and teaching people how to think through what often seem to be intractable problems.
In this episode, we discuss why Peter left PSU, the grievance studies hoax, the coming realignment in our culture war to rebuild our reform institutions, his work as a founding faculty member at the University of Austin, Street Epistemology, the problems at NPR, and how to have impossible conversations.
Tune in on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
Submit Questions for an Upcoming FAIR Perspectives Q&A Episode!
Do you have a burning question you’d like to ask FAIR Perspectives hosts Melissa Chen and Angel Eduardo? Submit it for an upcoming Q&A episode of FAIR Perspectives!
We want to give you the opportunity to ask questions about FAIR, the pro-human movement, the podcast, and more.
Send us a question via comment on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, FAIR Community, or in a reply to this email!
FAIR News Podcast
For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to FAIR News Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or via RSS feed.
Zander Keig: The Genderbread Person is Not the Way
For FAIR’s YouTube channel, FAIR Advisor Zander Keig discusses his experience being educated about gender roles, and the major shift in the lessons being taught to kids regarding sex, gender, and gender identity. Keig notes that, while the idea that gender is a “spectrum” sounds freeing and flexible, but it isn’t.
“To create these spectrums, we have to first accept stereotypes about gender. The first spectrum of “Gender Identity” asks “how you, in your head, define your gender based on how much you align (or don’t align) with what you understand to be the options for that gender.” But how are children to understand those options? Far from freeing, this model asks us to see the options that are available within our gender as traits that are fixed, immutable, and stereotypical. If we don’t identify with those traits, then we must be a different gender.”
FAIR Chapter Events
Chapter Events
No events coming up this week, but stay tuned for more!
Join the FAIR Community
Become a FAIR volunteer or join a FAIR chapter:
Join a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission, or watch a previously recorded session in the Members section of www.fairforall.org.
Sign the FAIR Pledge for a common culture of fairness, understanding and humanity.
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Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.
Can you give us the facts about the painting, please? Thank you in advance.
I did a double take when I saw 4H. Then I saw and learned 4H is essentially run by the feds.