OPINION:
When the minuscule transgender lobby, powerful far beyond its estimated .003% of the population, says, “Jump!,” liberal Democrats, academia and mainstream media dutifully ask, “How high?”
As such, it’s not really surprising that they have fallen servilely in line with the nonsensical use of “preferred pronouns,” as demanded by the militant transgender activists, including the awkward use of “they” as if it were singular.
The left, in and out of the media, also willingly plays along with the absurd notion of characterizing one’s gender as a mere social construct “assigned at birth,” one that is up for debate and negotiable, rather than as a biological — and binary — fact of life.
The transgender lobby would have everyone believe humankind is no longer either-or, but instead some kind of Heinz-like 57 varieties. (Facebook says it’s 58.)
But XX and XY chromosome science doesn’t lie, and that might explain why the left seldom refers to climate change anymore as “settled science” and skeptics as “science deniers.” That would be akin to pointing a finger in the mirror.
In like fashion, many of the same Democrats who just a few short election cycles ago baselessly accused Republicans of waging a political “war on women” now are themselves engaged in a figurative femicide.
The erasure by the left of real (aka biological) women — in deference to transgender “men” (also biological women), transgender “women” (aka biological men) and the self-delusional “nonbinary” — now even extends to the abortion debate, as the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s imminent ruling in a case that could overturn Roe v. Wade.
The latter is a truly bizarre phenomenon, one explored in a front-page article Friday in The New York Times, “A Vanishing Word in Abortion Debate: Women.”
As one might expect, far-left activists at the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, many Democrats in Congress, and members of the Biden administration have enthusiastically embraced the gender-neutral gymnastics involved in replacing “pregnant women” with “pregnant people” and “birthing people.”
What’s surprising — and disturbing — is the buy-in for this radical linguistic erasure of women by such prestigious institutions as the British medical journal the Lancet, the Cleveland Clinic and the American Cancer Society, all of which should know better.
The editor of the Lancet apologized last September after a cover that referred to women dehumanizingly as “bodies with vaginas” drew deserved blowback.
“The Cleveland Clinic … posed a question on its website: ‘Who has a vagina?’ Its answer begins, ‘People who are assigned female at birth (AFAB) have vaginas,’” The New York Times’ Michael Powell reported.
The “assigned male/female at birth” verbiage — irrespective of genitalia as the obvious determinant — is another example of obeisance to the transgender lobby.
“The American Cancer Society website recommends cancer screenings for ‘people with a cervix,’” the paper added, further noting that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “has a section on ‘care for breastfeeding people.’”
Taking that absurdity to the next level, the Washington State Department of Health helpfully offers advice on “lactation, breastfeeding & chestfeeding.”
“Did you know that over 95% of all babies born in Washington state start their lives breastfeeding or chestfeeding?” the department asks on its website. “Breastfeeding and chestfeeding benefits the parent and baby’s health while providing a lifetime of health protection for both.” (Note also the use of “the parent” there in lieu of “the mother” or “the woman.”)
You don’t need to be an unemployable gender studies major at an Ivy League university to think this linguistic lunacy makes sense, but it surely helps.
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