Over the past decade, censorship has become a normal part of our daily lives. COVID, race, gender, immigration, the “threat to democracy” — the censorship regime tips the scale on a number of liberal narratives, as government, media and tech work together to push their own preferences while sidelining dissent. Despite representing a small fringe, perhaps no narrative has been more aggressively mainlined into society than the left-wing position on sex and gender — the normalization of radical transgender ideology. But in a stunning reversal, the Very Respectable readers of The New York Times just got a dose of reality.
How many times have you been lectured on the idea that “gender is a social construct” in recent years? Maybe you’ve been pressured to add pronouns to your name tag or email signature at work. You’ve likely had to answer confusing new paperwork at a doctor’s office specifying both your “sex assigned at birth” and “gender identity.” Even if you’ve personally escaped these new fads, you see the unconscionable push in public schools and medical institutions to provide “gender affirming care” to vulnerable minors. Of course, you’ve come to understand this is a euphemism for sex-change surgeries and pharmaceuticals.
None of this is a coincidence — a grassroots phenomenon in sudden recognition of a new, biological reality. It’s a top-down push toward a new sexual morality. We’ve seen it from dozens of medical organizations “speaking out against the disinformation” (i.e. reality) around “gender affirming care.” Tech platforms like Meta use broad interpretations of hate speech to censor wrong-think on “targeted misgendering.” The media plays no small roll, with increased “positive representation” of transgender issues. Even the President of the United States joins in, recasting Easter as Transgender Day of Visibility. The point is to leverage institutional authority toward a “new normal” and bully regular people into submission. For millions, it’s worked: only 60% believe in the fundamental reality that “a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth.”
“[A]voiding ‘sex’ doesn’t serve the cause of inclusivity: not speaking plainly about males and females is patronizing. We sometimes sugarcoat the biological facts for children, but competent adults deserve straight talk.”
Excellent @byrne_a @hoovlet https://t.co/24rjy6aIxo
— Leor Sapir (@LeorSapir) April 3, 2024
If you’re a member of the over-educated, credentialed coastal elite, you’re likely part of the other 40%. Why wouldn’t you be when all the elite authorities you believe in tell you the gender binary is a lie? However, no lesser authority than the Times itself gave its readers a dose of reality in a heretical op-ed titled, “The Problem With Saying Sex Assigned At Birth.”
The piece addresses the leftist euphemism “sex assigned at birth,” currently in vogue to describe whether someone is a man or woman. It’s based on the idea that gender is wholly separate from one’s biological sex; a doctor “assigned” you one way or the other, but it’s what you feel inside that truly determines what you are. At best, it’s presented as a harmless nicety; at worst, a total revision of reality itself. The op-ed rejects both in no uncertain terms: “Sex is a fundamental biological feature with significant consequences for our species, so there are costs to encouraging misconceptions about it.”
One such consequence is health. As the piece notes, women and men have different medical needs, so unclear terminology creates unnecessary confusion. Another consequence plays out in the culture, where biology remains “highly relevant.” As an example, it cites the “biologically driven athletic differences” of transgender athletes disrupting women’s sports.
It goes beyond simply noticing, and calls out the left’s intimidation tactics around the debate, explaining how “influential organizations and individuals” encourage “a culture in which citizens can be shamed for using words like ‘sex,’ ‘male’ and ‘female.'” This goes beyond the left’s “usual kind of censoriousness” and instead “repress[es] the very vocabulary needed to discuss the opinions in the first place.” (RELATED: What Do ‘Long COVID’ And Transgender People Have In Common?)
Proponents use these linguistic games to falsely “connote arbitrariness” and obscure “objective reality,” all to promote a “sociopolitical agenda.”
Excellent op-ed by @hoovlet and @byrne_a on how saying “sex assigned at birth…creates doubt about a biological fact when there shouldn’t be any.”
We should “each apply Strunk and White’s famous advice in ‘The Elements of Style’ to ‘sex assigned at birth’: omit needless words.” pic.twitter.com/zqiVBVi2TD
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) April 3, 2024
Ultimately, the piece rejects the entire philosophical basis of transgender ideology: “males and females would have been around even if humans had never evolved.” Sex is not a social construct, despite postmodern philosophers’ best attempts to frame it as such.
Acknowledging that the agenda is “imposed top-down,” the piece concludes with optimistic advice for getting elites to abandon their misguided ideology:
“Admittedly, no one individual, or even a small group, can turn the lumbering ship of English around. But if professional organizations change their style guides and glossaries, we can expect that their members will largely follow suit. And organizations in turn respond to lobbying from their members. Journalists, medical professionals, academics and others have the collective power to restore language that more faithfully reflects reality. We will have to wait for them to do that.”
It’s hard to believe that a piece like this appeared in The New York Times; it reads more like an activist handbook penned by anti-DEI crusader Christopher Rufo than your typical liberal think piece. To be sure, it is an opinion piece that does not reflect the official view of The Times, which still routinely covers the mainstream liberal position on “gender identity.” But still, it’s hard to imagine the outlet would even print something so iconoclastic even a few years ago. Remember, this is the same paper that ripped and revised its own editorial standards after Sen. Tom Cotton’s “Send In The Troops” op-ed ran afoul of the woke mob.
Yet this is part of a larger trend of The Times moderating on the Democrats’ most extremist position. In early February, The Times ran an op-ed questioning the wisdom of gender-transitioning minors. A few days later, it highlighted the harsh, and often suppressed reality of life as a detransitioner. Another piece noted the skepticism, even among Democrats, of teaching gender ideology in school. Just last week, The Times’ token conservative Ross Douthat cast doubt on the “new vision of sexual morality.”
Likely not a coincidence, it all seems to send a signal. The Times, along with the rest of our elite cultural arbiters, helped to build the brave new world without a sex binary. Millions of loyal, right-thinking progressives have fully bought into the extremism. True believers, they now act as a mutual reinforcement of the dogma their leaders imposed. Democrats have boxed themselves into these positions, but average Americans remain unconvinced. (RELATED: NYT Admits It — Dems Exhausted And Trump Has All The Momentum)
Overall, radical transgenderism is a losing issue, and political insiders know it. The Times’ trend towards moderation seems to be telling its readers: it’s okay to moderate, we won’t judge you; allow Democratic politicians to moderate as well. If you don’t, we’re in for a beating come November.