University of Southern Maine Professor Christy Hammer did not engage in illegal discrimination when she stated that there are only two sexes, the Maine Human Rights Commission ruled recently.
The MHRC issued findings that neither the university nor Hammer violated Maine’s anti-discrimination laws, in response to an administrative complaint filed by Elizabeth Leibiger, a transgender student who identifies as non-binary, reports the Maine Wire.
The findings were issued in August, but it was not reported on by the media until this week, when the Maine Wire covered it.
Leibiger alleged that Professor Hammer created a hostile environment in the classroom through her “affirmation of binary biological sex,” and by accidentally referring to Leibiger as “she” instead of “he.”
“There are No Reasonable Grounds to believe that the University of Southern Maine discriminated against Elizabeth Leibiger on the basis of gender identity,” MHRC investigator Colin Hurd concluded in his findings. Moreover, “There are No Reasonable Grounds to believe that Christy Hammer interfered with Elizabeth Leibiger’s right to be free of discrimination based on gender identity; and the complaint should be dismissed,” he concluded.
Under the Main Human Rights Act, not just institutions, but also their employees, can be sued for discrimination. By contrast, under the primary federal antidiscrimination laws, Title VII and Title IX, only institutions can be sued for discrimination, not individual employees or students.
“Biologists are canceled if they don’t admit that there’s a sex spectrum, there’s some gradations between male and female. And as one biologist said, there are people that are born with nine fingers and people that are born with 11, but we don’t say the number of fingers is a spectrum,” Professor Hammer says.
In September 2022, Hammer told her education class that “only male and female biological sexes exist.”
In response, students in the class debated the subjects of gender and biological sex, with the majority of the them arguing that both sex and gender are on a spectrum. A number of students were so outraged about being exposed to a contrary viewpoint that they left the classroom.
Later, most of the students in the class sought a restorative justice meeting with Hammer, requesting one in a letter to the University’s Department of Education and Human Development.
In a three-hour meeting, those students tried to “force [Hammer] to retract her statement that there are only two sexes” and “berat[ed] her for refusing to announce her preferred pronouns,” the Maine Wire says.
The University did not grant Leibiger’s request to fire Professor Hammer. However it did “try to force her to declare her pronouns and change the way she discusses sexual distinctions in class.”
Professor Hammer is currently seeking an attorney to bring a lawsuit on her behalf over the school’s pressure on her to say certain things and not to say other things.
Judges in New England tend to be very woke, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that a high-school student could be ordered to remove a T-shirt saying “There Are Only two Genders.” In surveys, two-thirds of Americans say there are only two genders, while one-third of Americans say there are more than two genders.
Professor Hammer did not say there are only two genders, but rather that there are only two sexes, which is probably less controversial than saying there are only two genders (people who recognize the binary nature of sex sometimes deny the binary nature of gender).
