For almost 60 years, 90-year-old Fran Itkoff has volunteered with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, offering support to countless individuals afflicted with the same illness that claimed her late husband’s life.
The elderly volunteer recently revealed to Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok that she was abruptly fired from the MS Society for supposedly daring to criticize the organization’s social constructivist virtue signals, including the usage of gender pronouns.
Even though the MS Society is supposedly a disease-fighting organization, identitarian and LGBT ideologies have recently taken hold of the group.
The MS Society started holding race-based summits in 2020, eliminated Columbus Day as a holiday, and included Juneteenth as a paid holiday. It also started requiring staff members to read its DEI declaration before all meetings. The next year, the MS Society intensified its fixation with racial politics and introduced “pronoun choices” to common email signature designs.
In addition to its yearly Black Summit, it started hosting Hispanic summits by 2022 and instituted a zero-tolerance inclusion policy, emphasizing its commitment to “embedding equity, diversity, and inclusion in all we do.”
Many decades before this institutional breakdown, Fran Itkoff’s husband became the leader of the Long Beach MS support group with the intention of aiding others who had his condition.
Itkoff said to Raichik, “I always assist him, of course. Everyone wanted to continue the group, so I chose to do so after he died away, which was 20 years ago.”
The older volunteer said that everything was well until lately, when she received a communication from someone purporting to be from the MS Society asking her to use her pronouns.
“I didn’t understand. Itkoff remarked, “I had no idea what it was or what it signified. I was unaware of the meaning behind the pronouns that followed the person’s name in a few of the letters that I had seen. I eventually decided to ask her, “What does that mean?” during our conversation. I’ll let her explain.”
Itkoff went on, “She claimed it indicated they were all-inclusive, which did not make sense to me since if you’re simply putting in she/her, it seems like you are labeling for females and not guys. A few days later, she sent me an email apologizing but requesting that I resign from my position as an MS Society volunteer.”
