“When did sexual orientation become a fixed truth but sexual difference merely a psychological choice, changeable at the beckon of the surgeon’s knife?”
It’s a good question, logical, objective, rational, common sense, and therefore in what passes for public discourse today, rejected as ipso facto discriminatory and hateful.
Meanwhile, American culture is caught up in battles over what constitutes an appropriate “inclusive” or “non-offensive” gender identity vocabulary.
This list evolves almost daily, but if you don’t keep up and misuse a term, you could find yourself in trouble at your job or bullied online.
“Never refer to a person as “it” or “he-she”. These are offensive slurs used against trans and gender non-conforming individuals.”
“You can’t always know what someone’s pronouns are by looking at them. Asking and correctly using someone’s pronouns is one of the most basic ways to show your respect for their gender identity.
When someone is referred to with the wrong pronoun, it can make them feel disrespected, invalidated, dismissed, alienated, or dysphoric (often all of the above).
It is a privilege to not have to worry about which pronoun someone is going to use for you based on how they perceive your gender. If you have this privilege, yet fail to respect someone else’s gender identity, it is not only disrespectful and hurtful, but also oppressive.”
Examples of gender identity vocabulary include, they/them/theirs instead of he or she, ze/hir/hir/hirself or zie or xe or zir/zirself, transgender kids, endless genders, homosuperiority, gender assigned at birth, Birthing person, chest-feeding, nursing fathers, gender-expansive youth, gender-confirmation surgery rather than sex change surgery, person with a cervix, people with a penis, male-appearing genitalia, people who menstruate, transphobe, anti-trans, cisheteropatriarchy, anti-indigeneity, just to name a few.
So, it is offensive to refer to someone in a manner that reflects biological reality.
In New York City people can be fined up to quarter million dollars for “misgendering” someone by using pronouns other than the ones they prefer. In Oct 2017, the Governor of California signed law that would send healthcare workers to jail for failing to use a person’s chosen pronouns.
Gender identity activists know that to win the battle for vocabulary is to win the war. If they can claim “inclusiveness,” victimhood, discrimination, or some other perceived oppression, they can leverage their views to accomplish their goals.
“The Left wins because it seizes language...I have noticed, news anchors now talk about ‘gender assigned at birth,’ as if that’s something different from one’s biological sex. There may be 57 genders, but there are only two biological sexes.
Don’t surrender the language. Reclaim the language. It’s the first step to recovering our civilization.”
“The war on pronouns, an assault upon the language by which we recognize a world in common, follows of necessity. What we are dealing with is nothing less than a war on reality itself. And everyone has just been pressed into service.”
If media, politicians, celebrities, academia, and corporations buy-in, and begin using the words gender identity activists invent, the battle is more than half-over. Indeed, it may already be lost.
The persons who define the words determine the outcome of the debate.
Consider for example, the fact that states reviewing or that have enacted laws preserving fair competition and protecting girls and women in sports are now regularly called “anti-trans” in media reports. Not “pro-girls” or “pro-women” but “anti-trans.” Similar battles are occurring on university campuses and in public education at all levels where school personnel are being forced to use the pronouns selected by students who self-proclaim as any number of sexual identities.
“In actuality, it is disrespectful to both you and the transgender person to use the anti-science pronoun. It demeans your knowledge of reality and perpetuates lies harmful to you and the transgender person, as well as to the rest of society…
One should not have to abandon one’s morals and sanity to appease gender activists, those who have been brainwashed by such ideology, and those struggling with gender dysphoria. Being manipulated into telling what you know to be a lie is not good for anyone…
It is harmful to perpetuate false gender theories. The person using a false pronoun violates the truth and obfuscates our culture’s understanding of biology. Since truth and goodness are intertwined, bowing to transgender ideology threatens both…
Manipulating words erodes our language and therefore thinking. Graham Hillard, an English professor at Trevecca Nazarene University, made this argument in National Review a few years ago. ‘What is at stake, however, is the irreplaceable right to say of one thing, ‘true,’ and of another, ‘false’ — to define the basic realities from which our politics proceed,’ Hillard wrote. ‘A man is a man. A woman is a woman. Let us not pretend otherwise.’”
Capitulating on common sense, rational, science-based vocabulary only yields confusion, chaos, anxiety, and personal and social emptiness.
“Inclusive pronouns” do not show God’s love; they betray the God of Truth and Love.
Christians must always love their neighbors as themselves. We must always speak the truth only in love, but we must speak the truth.
To use gender identity vocabulary may seem like a conciliatory act, a matter of respect for the other individual, but this is a false positive. Actually, we are only perpetuating lies and division, the very tools Satan wants us to use to destroy our witness.
There are innumerable ways to demonstrate love and compassion. Lying is not one of them.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
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