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A member of a Rhode Island school board is defending herself after posting on Facebook that deliberately misgendering a student amounted to “an act of violence” and should be dealt with “accordingly.”
Jennifer Lima, a member of the North Kingstown school committee in Rhode Island made the post earlier this month, saying she recognized that some people would view her comments as “extreme.”
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“Purposefully misgendering students is an act of violence. Respond accordingly,” Lima wrote.
“Any act of violence in our schools which creates an unsafe environment (physically or emotionally by or for any member of the school community) needs to be dealt with accordingly,” she added.
In an interview with Fox News, Lima attempted to walk back her initial post, saying she believes “in First Amendment protections,” and that she does “not believe that post suggests that using incorrect pronouns should be met with violence.” Instead, possible measures could include “investigating and disciplining such occurrences in the same way as any other biased-based assault.”
Lima’s post also included the World Health Organization’s definition of violence, which describes it as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”
The school board member faced a recall attempt last year over her support for critical race theory and anti-racism. The effort ultimately fell short.
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Lima’s Facebook activity drew a harsh response from a Rhode Island parent activist.
“If you believe you’re under threat of violence then to ‘respond accordingly’ means you act in self-defense, which is a physical and often violent action taken to protect yourself,” Nicole Solas, a Rhode Island native and a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, told Fox News. “Her public call for students to ‘respond accordingly’ to non-existent violence is her own tacit call to violence against those who oppose her radical ideology.”
