The language of gender ideology is all about making women acquiese to demands from others to use them as comodities. A "womb carrier" can rent out or even donate her womb. A vagina owner can rent out her vagina. It's just like renting out your car or using your oven to bake a cake for someone else. The fact that wombs and vaginas are an indivisible part of a human being, that sex and pregnancy are intimately experienced as something that happens to that human as a person, that babies belong in the most profound sense to their mothers and mothers to their babies, is quietly put to one side and ignored. How could those things be commodified if we acknowledged that? We are right back to the place where women are slaves, to be used for their sexual, reproductive and domestic labour as cheaply as possible. So much for "progressive politics".
I am not a body with a vagina nor a gestational parent. I am a woman and a mother. I am disgusted with people who demean women and mothers and many others with this debasing use of manipulated language. Thank you for exposing this disgusting and disrespectful mission by activists to destroy the goodness of language and people.
SF librarians have been told not to say your mother or father but your guardian.
I volunteer with an organization in Oakland and have been instructed not to say your son or daughter but your child. Volunteers with American Conservatory Theater are not to say sir or mam. when addressing a patron. The plague is far-reaching here.
A " Guardian" is different than.a Mother or Father. One is born to the parents or adopted. A Guardian is an inbetween LEGAL designation for kids whose parents could not parent. I have a family member who IS a Guardian because the Mother was not a responsible person.
Utter nonsense this assault on language and compelling us to cooperate. Nope, I won't.
Translating medical articles from English must be a nightmare nowadays. If you are bilingual or multilingual, try translating any of these terms like "egg producer" , "chestfeeder", "birthing parent" to another language.
Yes-and we must ask ourselves if going along with others delusions (some of which will lead to lifelong mutilation), is actually Kind at all. Or if it’s simply easier than holding the line of truth, which is helpful for mentally unwell folks who are so confused as to believe they could actually Alter their reality by submitting to surgical experimentation
This is dead on! Gender ideology has been likened to a religion; religion and gender ideology are, at heart, about control, particularly control of women.
Yes, I’ve heard UK academic, Helen Joyce, call the ideology a “godless neo-religion.” I learned from Joyce when it came to declaring pronouns, to just say, “sorry, I’m not religious.” We women won’t wheesht!
My take is that once ideologically inspired langauge is out there and in use, then style guides and dictionaries have to accommodate it.
A dictionary’s job is to record language as it is used, i.e. to be what linguists would call descriptive (rather than prescriptive).
I’m less forgiving of style guides or medical publications - very few of which are putting up any resistance to the ideological onslaught.
A book I was reading recently had various sections on cancer treatments - wherever there was a choice of using plain biology-based language or gender ideology-based language, the author opted for the latter. Some examples:
- “the majority of breast cancers are diagnosed in people who are biologically female”
- “the vast majority of breast cancers occur in people born with female sex organs”
- “a broader range of women* with ovarian cancer” was footnoted with “* or anyone born with ovaries”
Why not just place a note at the start of the book to make it clear that women refers to biological women only? The author or publisher preferred to infuse their text with ideology than to risk incurring the wrath of activists.
"When words lose their connection to reality, truth becomes subjective, and meaning becomes meaningless."
Here's a sample of the above by a master bullshitter, the renowned queer 'thinker', Judith Butler, at her finest:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
The word-lies take many forms! Fortunately this one self-destructs from it's own excess.
Oh my gosh. THANK YOU for writing this article! I am an editor and I have been saying this for YEARS! They are controlling our language as a way of controlling us! This is a really important article. Thank you!!!
This is a very good essay and I congratulate you for it. But I have an unrelated question: why are you called "LGBT..." ? Why are you using "their" language?
If the Trump administration manages to be organized and focused, federal strongholds of queerspeak such as the National Institutes of Health may rediscover biology and common sense. The "chestfeeding parent" era will seem like a bad dream.
The gender cult is one of the most dangerous and authoritarian cults in recent history. This cult knows that changing language is obtaining power. They have learned this from dictators and now they are dictating what the rest of society can say and what words are acceptable to them.
This cannot continue, and we must resist by never using their words. Their actions and words are built on lies and on bullying. Nothing they say is true. We must respond with the truth .
The unfortunate truth is that coming down this hard on language is in of itself tyrannical. The dictionary ought to list a definition of “they” as a single person with a nonbinary identity, because it is used enough in that way, so this is helpful information for an English language learner.
Language will evolve, and often there’s an ideological root. Miss/Mrs/Ms is another example of this.
TERF-scolding people into using biologically based pronouns is like woke-scolding them into using identity-based pronouns; it’s a losing strategy.
Using "they" for a single person is ridiculous. I just had a conversation with a mother who started to refer to her daughter as "they". At the time, given the context I thought she somehow meant that there were two children. I honestly didn't cotton on until later. You're right that sometimes language just changes and it can be because there are ideological roots to it. The was some valid reason to use "Ms.". There is no valid reason to call someone "they" to denote that this person is neither female or male because that does not exist and it's part of a harmful ideology which right now is being rammed down everyone's throat. The point is, don't be forced into using stupid, nonsensical language. No one should be forced into anything. People can go on using their weird pronouns. What is not okay is demanding that everyone else do that.
I'm seeing this more and more, as well. I think we all need to guard against it. We're social creatures, and it's normal to start speaking the way we hear others speak. It's not necessarily conscious. People have somehow started speaking about individuals of known sex in the singular "they," sometimes without even meaning to suggest that the person has a nonsensical "gender identity." It's just seeping through the entire culture. It probably started as part of a campaign (led by the groups mentioned in this article, as well as others), but now, people speak this way without even knowing why.
The best way I know to handle it is to make sure I set a good example. I look for opportunities to use accurate and specific pronouns, in hopes of influencing norms. I also choose the authors I read based on their use of precise language, both because this precision is likely indicative of a good overall command of reality and because I know that what I read is likely to influence the way I write and speak.
I don't know. Should we add other grammatically incorrect terms to dictionaries just because they are common enough? Isn't the whole point of dictionaries is to give people a point of reference on what is correct?
Should dictionaries be descriptive or prescriptive? That’s an age-old debate. Should a word like “irregardless” be in the dictionary? My answer is that enough people are using it, then it should, but with a note indicating that it is “non-standard.” But that still begs the question, who sets the standards?
Yes, I agree with this, and I'll put things in a different light.
I refer to Helen Prejean as Sister Helen, even though I am not Catholic and have no intention of becoming so. I do this for clarity, and to indicate the respect I have for her and her work. Anyone who reads that as pro-Catholicism...well, that's not my problem.
Similarly, I am willing to use preferred pronouns to the extent that is reasonable and sensible. (I draw the line at bespoke terms like zir and bunself.) Those who take that to mean I support men in women's sports...again, not my problem.
While I see your point, it is unkind ultimately to bend to the delusional identity of others. This type of social support for their confusion is part of why many people went down the transition (aka lifelong chemical and physical mutilation) path. Kindness is in taking the truth, and we can respect others while still respecting ourselves
I'm not sure that my willingness to call a trans woman "she" has anything to do with the transition. What I think has more to do with transition is the expectation, built by years of trans maximalism, that those who transition get not only preferred pronouns but concrete policy concessions; i.e. entry into opposite-sex spaces and events. Those concessions, and not pronoun usage, are what fouled up the whole system, for everyone.
I don’t think we really disagree, except on the collusion- I refuse to collude with men in the fiction that they are any type of Woman, I think it is incredibly damaging to women’s rights and ultimately to that individual (in almost every case). Colluding with men in the erasure of women is not necessary for them to live their lives fully. I know plenty of men who prefer to dress as women have been expected to dress…they know they are men and do not feel it’s their right to cross women’s language or space boundaries.
Your comparison is invalid. The term “sister” in your example is a title—an honorific—like “president” or “your honor.” Everyone knows is conventional. Pronouns are different because they refer to the biological fact that we mammals are sexed male and female. That’s the point of the article: using cross-sex pronouns distorts reality. You’re not distorting reality if you refer to a nun as sister. Everyone knows she is not literally your sister. But right now, as I write this, a female nurse in England’s National Health arrive is fighting a court battle because she was fired for not wanting to change her clothes in front a man who calls himself a woman and demands to be referred to by female pronouns. That’s the reality discussed in this article. She had to fight in court to prove her sex based rights.
Going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Very darvo style response-and conflating two things that are not at all alike…calling people out for obfuscating reality and bending to coercion is quite a different animal to coercing others speech in an attempt to erase and muddle reality. Sure, each side might be equally obnoxious to the other, and method of approach will affect results…but there’s no similarity between these two demands
Non binary is a nonsense term. I would say it would be a better argument for a single person when the sex is unknown. Columbia’s John McWhorter has made that argument and him I deeply respect. But nonbinary is 🐂 💩
The language of gender ideology is all about making women acquiese to demands from others to use them as comodities. A "womb carrier" can rent out or even donate her womb. A vagina owner can rent out her vagina. It's just like renting out your car or using your oven to bake a cake for someone else. The fact that wombs and vaginas are an indivisible part of a human being, that sex and pregnancy are intimately experienced as something that happens to that human as a person, that babies belong in the most profound sense to their mothers and mothers to their babies, is quietly put to one side and ignored. How could those things be commodified if we acknowledged that? We are right back to the place where women are slaves, to be used for their sexual, reproductive and domestic labour as cheaply as possible. So much for "progressive politics".
Well said!
Thank you
Thank you! I restacked.
I am not a body with a vagina nor a gestational parent. I am a woman and a mother. I am disgusted with people who demean women and mothers and many others with this debasing use of manipulated language. Thank you for exposing this disgusting and disrespectful mission by activists to destroy the goodness of language and people.
SF librarians have been told not to say your mother or father but your guardian.
I volunteer with an organization in Oakland and have been instructed not to say your son or daughter but your child. Volunteers with American Conservatory Theater are not to say sir or mam. when addressing a patron. The plague is far-reaching here.
Drove me crazy before I left the Bay Area in 2013. Much worse now. But I tell them " I don't play the pronoun game!!
As a Butch Lesbian I fought hard enuff to be PROUD OF THE FEMALE I AM!!
Good grief!!
"Your guardian"?!
"Your child" sounds benign. Why specify if there's no confusion?
A " Guardian" is different than.a Mother or Father. One is born to the parents or adopted. A Guardian is an inbetween LEGAL designation for kids whose parents could not parent. I have a family member who IS a Guardian because the Mother was not a responsible person.
Utter nonsense this assault on language and compelling us to cooperate. Nope, I won't.
It must be hard. Orwell so influences me language is vital.
Thank you
Translating medical articles from English must be a nightmare nowadays. If you are bilingual or multilingual, try translating any of these terms like "egg producer" , "chestfeeder", "birthing parent" to another language.
Yep but it's also a Grift That Keeps Giving to those running courses on inclusive langauge
I love “the grift that keeps giving”
Me too
Great essay. It truly is about so much more than being “polite” or “kind.”
Yes-and we must ask ourselves if going along with others delusions (some of which will lead to lifelong mutilation), is actually Kind at all. Or if it’s simply easier than holding the line of truth, which is helpful for mentally unwell folks who are so confused as to believe they could actually Alter their reality by submitting to surgical experimentation
This is dead on! Gender ideology has been likened to a religion; religion and gender ideology are, at heart, about control, particularly control of women.
I'm thinking cult more than just religion.
Yes, I’ve heard UK academic, Helen Joyce, call the ideology a “godless neo-religion.” I learned from Joyce when it came to declaring pronouns, to just say, “sorry, I’m not religious.” We women won’t wheesht!
My take is that once ideologically inspired langauge is out there and in use, then style guides and dictionaries have to accommodate it.
A dictionary’s job is to record language as it is used, i.e. to be what linguists would call descriptive (rather than prescriptive).
I’m less forgiving of style guides or medical publications - very few of which are putting up any resistance to the ideological onslaught.
A book I was reading recently had various sections on cancer treatments - wherever there was a choice of using plain biology-based language or gender ideology-based language, the author opted for the latter. Some examples:
- “the majority of breast cancers are diagnosed in people who are biologically female”
- “the vast majority of breast cancers occur in people born with female sex organs”
- “a broader range of women* with ovarian cancer” was footnoted with “* or anyone born with ovaries”
Why not just place a note at the start of the book to make it clear that women refers to biological women only? The author or publisher preferred to infuse their text with ideology than to risk incurring the wrath of activists.
Do not comply. Just say No!
Superb essay. You all just get better and better—and you started at a VERY high bar of excellence. I have restacked.
"When words lose their connection to reality, truth becomes subjective, and meaning becomes meaningless."
Here's a sample of the above by a master bullshitter, the renowned queer 'thinker', Judith Butler, at her finest:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
The word-lies take many forms! Fortunately this one self-destructs from it's own excess.
Talk about word salad!
Oh my gosh. THANK YOU for writing this article! I am an editor and I have been saying this for YEARS! They are controlling our language as a way of controlling us! This is a really important article. Thank you!!!
This is a very good essay and I congratulate you for it. But I have an unrelated question: why are you called "LGBT..." ? Why are you using "their" language?
I was just about to ask why you have the T in your name, but Alta beat me to it. This is reality-based LGBs distinguishing themselves from the "T".
Stay tuned
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
This is about who does get to be the "master". Little did Alice know.
… "there's a nice knock-down argument!"
…
"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
"When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."
"Oh!" said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
These words are being made to mean too much and too little.
Excellent reference!
This right here: “Reality is obfuscated by enforced language, as writers are instructed to prioritize identity claims over clear communication.”
#nailedIT
Thank you for this well and accurately written piece.
If the Trump administration manages to be organized and focused, federal strongholds of queerspeak such as the National Institutes of Health may rediscover biology and common sense. The "chestfeeding parent" era will seem like a bad dream.
Let’s hope so, but even Trump can’t do it all . The rest of us have to speak out against this.
He can only affect organizations that receive federal funding.
The gender cult is one of the most dangerous and authoritarian cults in recent history. This cult knows that changing language is obtaining power. They have learned this from dictators and now they are dictating what the rest of society can say and what words are acceptable to them.
This cannot continue, and we must resist by never using their words. Their actions and words are built on lies and on bullying. Nothing they say is true. We must respond with the truth .
The unfortunate truth is that coming down this hard on language is in of itself tyrannical. The dictionary ought to list a definition of “they” as a single person with a nonbinary identity, because it is used enough in that way, so this is helpful information for an English language learner.
Language will evolve, and often there’s an ideological root. Miss/Mrs/Ms is another example of this.
TERF-scolding people into using biologically based pronouns is like woke-scolding them into using identity-based pronouns; it’s a losing strategy.
Using "they" for a single person is ridiculous. I just had a conversation with a mother who started to refer to her daughter as "they". At the time, given the context I thought she somehow meant that there were two children. I honestly didn't cotton on until later. You're right that sometimes language just changes and it can be because there are ideological roots to it. The was some valid reason to use "Ms.". There is no valid reason to call someone "they" to denote that this person is neither female or male because that does not exist and it's part of a harmful ideology which right now is being rammed down everyone's throat. The point is, don't be forced into using stupid, nonsensical language. No one should be forced into anything. People can go on using their weird pronouns. What is not okay is demanding that everyone else do that.
Brava, Alison! Well said!
I'm seeing this more and more, as well. I think we all need to guard against it. We're social creatures, and it's normal to start speaking the way we hear others speak. It's not necessarily conscious. People have somehow started speaking about individuals of known sex in the singular "they," sometimes without even meaning to suggest that the person has a nonsensical "gender identity." It's just seeping through the entire culture. It probably started as part of a campaign (led by the groups mentioned in this article, as well as others), but now, people speak this way without even knowing why.
The best way I know to handle it is to make sure I set a good example. I look for opportunities to use accurate and specific pronouns, in hopes of influencing norms. I also choose the authors I read based on their use of precise language, both because this precision is likely indicative of a good overall command of reality and because I know that what I read is likely to influence the way I write and speak.
I don't know. Should we add other grammatically incorrect terms to dictionaries just because they are common enough? Isn't the whole point of dictionaries is to give people a point of reference on what is correct?
Should dictionaries be descriptive or prescriptive? That’s an age-old debate. Should a word like “irregardless” be in the dictionary? My answer is that enough people are using it, then it should, but with a note indicating that it is “non-standard.” But that still begs the question, who sets the standards?
Yes, I agree with this, and I'll put things in a different light.
I refer to Helen Prejean as Sister Helen, even though I am not Catholic and have no intention of becoming so. I do this for clarity, and to indicate the respect I have for her and her work. Anyone who reads that as pro-Catholicism...well, that's not my problem.
Similarly, I am willing to use preferred pronouns to the extent that is reasonable and sensible. (I draw the line at bespoke terms like zir and bunself.) Those who take that to mean I support men in women's sports...again, not my problem.
While I see your point, it is unkind ultimately to bend to the delusional identity of others. This type of social support for their confusion is part of why many people went down the transition (aka lifelong chemical and physical mutilation) path. Kindness is in taking the truth, and we can respect others while still respecting ourselves
I'm not sure that my willingness to call a trans woman "she" has anything to do with the transition. What I think has more to do with transition is the expectation, built by years of trans maximalism, that those who transition get not only preferred pronouns but concrete policy concessions; i.e. entry into opposite-sex spaces and events. Those concessions, and not pronoun usage, are what fouled up the whole system, for everyone.
I don’t think we really disagree, except on the collusion- I refuse to collude with men in the fiction that they are any type of Woman, I think it is incredibly damaging to women’s rights and ultimately to that individual (in almost every case). Colluding with men in the erasure of women is not necessary for them to live their lives fully. I know plenty of men who prefer to dress as women have been expected to dress…they know they are men and do not feel it’s their right to cross women’s language or space boundaries.
The collusion is but one arm of the maximalism you are describing.
Your comparison is invalid. The term “sister” in your example is a title—an honorific—like “president” or “your honor.” Everyone knows is conventional. Pronouns are different because they refer to the biological fact that we mammals are sexed male and female. That’s the point of the article: using cross-sex pronouns distorts reality. You’re not distorting reality if you refer to a nun as sister. Everyone knows she is not literally your sister. But right now, as I write this, a female nurse in England’s National Health arrive is fighting a court battle because she was fired for not wanting to change her clothes in front a man who calls himself a woman and demands to be referred to by female pronouns. That’s the reality discussed in this article. She had to fight in court to prove her sex based rights.
Going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Very darvo style response-and conflating two things that are not at all alike…calling people out for obfuscating reality and bending to coercion is quite a different animal to coercing others speech in an attempt to erase and muddle reality. Sure, each side might be equally obnoxious to the other, and method of approach will affect results…but there’s no similarity between these two demands
Non binary is a nonsense term. I would say it would be a better argument for a single person when the sex is unknown. Columbia’s John McWhorter has made that argument and him I deeply respect. But nonbinary is 🐂 💩