A bill moving through the Tennessee legislature would make it optional for students, colleagues, and parents to use trans and nonbinary teachers’ preferred honorifics.

The bill would allow students to call a teacher “Miss,” for example, even if the teacher has made it clear they would prefer to be called “Mr.” instead. A law enacted in 2025 already allows students and colleagues to refer to a teacher by their dead name or sex assigned at birth without fear of discipline.

Related

Republicans are now coming for marriage equality in this state’s “slate of hate”

The bill’s House sponsor, state Rep. Aron Maberry (R), told lawmakers he believes the educational system should teach “objective truths,” and biological sex falls within that category, WKRN News reports.

“To confuse a child in the classroom, or an authority to ask a child to call them something they’re not, is problematic to me,” Maberry said. “It’s also problematic… to parents in our district.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

The Clarksville lawmaker claimed the bill was inspired by a transgender teacher in his district – Maxwell Jasper Bearden, whose special education students call them the gender-neutral name, “Teacher B,” avoiding an honorific altogether.

“My students have never had a problem with that,” Bearden said. “I have a whole folder of art made by my students that all refer to me as Teacher B. It’s got my little crutches or my little cane in it, and it says ‘Teacher B’ or ‘Techer B,’ whatever their spelling. None of my students have ever had a problem with it. It’s only ever been the adults.”

Maberry’s bill is “targeted,” Bearden said, and adds “another level of disrespect to what it means to serve in this field.” 

Instead of worrying about the services Bearden’s kids need, or the progress they’re making, “I’m having to sit here and argue with a person who could never walk a mile in my shoes to begin with about my right to exist as a person.”

“I love my students. I love my job, and I love working in this field, and it’s so frustrating to me that a single person and this single bit of legislation can turn that all on its head,” Bearden said. “I just want to be with my students and watch them succeed — as me.