The left is determined to control the lives of others. Their current obsession is with language. They support punishing people for not using particular words.

Just recently, a transgender teacher was awarded thousands in damages because her co-workers wouldn’t refer to her by her desired pronoun. She claimed that by not doing this, they were harassing her.

According to reports, the Gresham-Barlow School District agreed to was made to pay $60,000 to Leo Soell, a transgender 5th-grade teacher in Oregon, for what she called harassment. Soell, who identifies as neither male nor female, recently came out to her colleagues last year and immediately began demanding they use “they” when addressing her.

However, gender is not a self-identity. Gender is something that is imposed on others by the society that they’re living in and is based on a person’s biological sex. Biological males are the “male” gender because they exhibit personality traits consistent with one particular stereotype and biological females are the “female” gender because they exhibit personality traits consistent with another stereotype. While there are some exceptions, this is generally the case.

Despite her bullying, many of her coworkers continued to correctly refer to her as “her” and “she,” causing her to file a complaint. She claimed that after coming out, the school district, worried about “age appropriateness,” told her to tell kids who ask if she’s a boy or a girl, “we all have private lives, and it would not be appropriate to talk about our private lives during the school day.” She thought this request was completely unacceptable.

She also accused a teacher of verbally attacking her. “Another teacher yelled at me openly in the school hallway, saying that my gender is a ‘belief system’ that I do not have the right to make other people follow and that God is on her side,” she told reporters. With stories like this, she went to her union representatives and managed to get them to convince the school to officially recognize her pronoun as “they” and got them to implement mandatory transgender sensitivity training led by TransActive Gender Center.

However, she claimed the harassment did not stop, which led to another complaint. In her new complaint, she said that her colleagues still continued to intentionally refer to her as “she” and “her” and yelled at those who tried to get them to do otherwise. For example, when a student told a school official to refer to Soell as “they,” the staff member in question allegedly “berated” the student.

She is also upset that other people are using the same restroom as her. When she first started working at the school, she claimed that hardly anyone used the single gender-neutral restroom on campus. Because of this, her expectation was that she’d be the only person using the restroom. Despite this, since coming out, she complained that other staff members have been using the same restroom as her. She’s mad that she has to wait, sometimes up to 30 minutes, to use the restroom. She argued that by having to wait, others are essentially “blocking” her from using the facility. However, as a biological woman, she could always use the women’s restroom if it’s really an emergency.

Upon receiving Soell’s complaint, the school launched an investigation but concluded that there was no proof of harassment. Instead of ending it there, she filed a lawsuit. Worried that they may be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars if brought to trial, the school agreed to settle the case. Not only did they pay her $60,000, they also agreed to add more gender neutral bathrooms to all schools. “The provisions of this agreement resolve concerns, enable us to put this issue to rest and allow the district to move forward,” the district officials stated.

Unsurprisingly, Soell was very happy with the settlement. “I actually feel safe now,” she told reporters. “There will always be people who push the boundaries, but I’m not worried about them anymore because I know that my district supports me,” she added.

Conservatives must stand up to the left’s attempt to control language. Republican lawmakers need to pass laws protecting people who refuse to play the left’s word games. Referring to people by the pronouns they demand is the first step towards totalitarianism.