Senator still getting insults after being called ‘Madam Chairman’

POWELL — It's been weeks since a protestor went viral for derisively referring to Sen. Tim French as “Madam Chairman” during a legislative hearing, but French said he’s still getting nasty messages.

“Boy, man, have they come after me,” the Powell Republican said at a town hall March 27.

French was chairing a Feb. 20 Senate Agriculture Committee meeting and taking testimony on the “What is a Woman Act” when the exchange occurred. The legislation, House Bill 32, defines men and women by their biological sex at birth and is meant to counter gender identities.

“Why it was assigned to ag, I have no clue,” French said, but he slated it for debate.

“I figured we should know what a woman is,” he said. “I guess there’s some people out there that don’t know.”

At the committee meeting, lead sponsor, Rep. Jamye Lien, R-Casper, said she was grateful the bill defining men and women was referred to the ag committee, because “we understand, as breeders, what that looks like.”

Lien said her legislation would help ensure state laws are based on objective truth and protect everyone’s civil rights. Most of those who delivered public comments were supportive of the bill, but Britt Boril was one of those who spoke via Zoom to oppose the measure.

“The ‘s’ hit the fan at that point,” French said.

Boril, who is from Casper, spoke for roughly two minutes and charged that the bill was part of lawmakers’ “hateful rampage to put women trans[gender] people in deliberate physical danger.” But it was the opening seconds of her comments that drew all the attention.

“Hello, thank you, Madam Chairman,” Boril began, before French cut in.

“You can call me Mr. Chairman if you want,” he said.

“Well, I cannot be compelled to use your preferred pronouns,” Boril said, “as you have all voted …”

“Wait a minute. We’re talking about preferred pronouns, a lot of people are,” French cut back in. “I prefer to be called Chairman French. That’s my preferred pronoun.”

“I know,” Boril said, “and you all voted that preferred pronouns cannot be compelled speech ...”

She was referring to Senate File 77, a separate measure that says state and local governments cannot require their employees to use another employee’s preferred pronouns.

The law, which takes effect July 1, does not address private employers, private citizens or how government employees interact with private citizens.

The exchange took up about 30 seconds of Boril’s allotted two minutes; French allowed her to continue after warning that her time was “almost up.”

“I was kind of proud of myself that I kept my cool,” French said at last week’s town hall.

The moment went on to be viewed millions of times on social media and rehashed in multiple media outlets, including BuzzFeed.

Just one clip, shared by a Cheyenne therapist, was seen some 1.9 million times on TikTok.

In a later post to Instagram, Boril said she wasn’t expecting her testimony to get so much attention, but was flattered. She said misgendering people is “always disrespectful and dehumanizing whether intentional or not.”

In the case of her exchange with French, “I did it very deliberately because I’ve been watching these legislators in my state tear people down and not listen to public testimony,” Boril said. “So in this instance, disrespect was the message. But I didn’t take it lightly.”

French said he’s received a slew of disrespect since the meeting, too.

“I was shocked: I was getting the nastiest, vile, disgusting emails, texts,” French said at a March 27 town hall at Northwest College, adding that the messages are continuing to trickle in.

French said he told one of the commenters to “just slap a dress on me and call me Shirley,” but reiterated to the Powell crowd that Mr. Chairman or Mr. French is his “preferred pronoun.”

Gov. Mark Gordon allowed the “What is a Woman Act” to go into law without his signature.

That prompted the town hall’s moderator, Park County Republican Party Vice Chairman Bob Ferguson, to guess that “Gov. Gordon is still confused on that.”

In a letter laying out his reasoning, Gordon indicated that he believed Wyoming law already recognized males and females based on their biological sex at birth. He said he suspected the law “was not drafted with keen legal objectives in mind as much as it was to scratch a welcome national political itch.”

Gordon took a similar stance on SF 77. While he agreed Wyoming governments shouldn’t mandate certain kinds of speech, Gordon said he wasn’t sure “what value a vastly expanded legal code will provide in knowing how to address one another.”

This story was published on April 10, 2025.