Should we call children who are transgender, or who consider themselves neither boys nor girls, with a particular pronoun? Sweden has just decided by condemning a teacher who did not want to comply with the request of one of his students and his parents. The decision drew widespread comment in the Norse kingdom.
With our correspondent in Stockholm, Frederic False
Saga won the case. This young transgender along with his parents and classmates had been asking one of his teachers for eight months to name him using ” hey »a new pronoun neither masculine nor feminine, which entered the dictionary of the Swedish Academy in 2015.
Hen is not widely used in Sweden, but for Saga, being called this is a psychological help when you feel unsure of yourself and have problems with your body.
The teacher, for her part, justified her refusal by highlighting her Christian faith and claiming to defend ” a language without ideology ” at school.
Seized of this case, the Swedish ombudsman for the fight against discrimination judged that it was a serious form of harassment.
The school, which did not act quickly enough, will have to pay compensation of 15,000 euros to the teenager, which is a first in Sweden. The teacher, for her part, was fired.