When You Control the Words People Can Use, You Can Control Their Thoughts

How the AP Style Guide enforces gender ideology (via Breitbart):

ONE: Warns against “all views” in transgender coverage: The guide says to “avoid false balance [by] giving a platform to unqualified claims or sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views.” “Do not use the term ‘transgenderism,’ which frames transgender identity as an ideology,” the guide demands.
TWO: Demands the use of “gender-affirming care”: The guide says to use the term to describe puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender-reassignment surgeries.
THREE: Opposes describing people by their biological sex: “Use the term sex assigned at birth instead of biological sex, birth gender, was identified at birth as, born a girl and the like,” the style guide states. “Avoid references to a transgender person being born a boy or girl, or phrasing like birth gender. Sex assigned at birth is the accurate terminology.”
“Since not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender — as in the cases of nonbinary and intersex people — avoid references to both, either or opposite sexes or genders,” according to the guide.


Relatedly, via Matt Osborne:

To tell a boy that he should put on pants is exactly the same as saying that he ought to un-alive himself: this is what the Trevor Project means by “trans rights.” … According to the Trevor Project, telling a lesbian girl she was born in the right body is “conversion therapy,” a “dangerous and discredited practice,” whereas the surgical mutilation and biochemical harms of gender quacks are life-saving settled science etcetera.


And this:

Trump Halts Sterilizing Minors and the ‘Rogues Gallery’ Response


Adam Lehrer and Park MacDougald write in Tablet’s Daily Scroll (link below):

[After] Trump’s executive order halting “gender-affirming care” for minors, … New York City hospital NYU Langone canceled appointments for some children…. Trump’s executive order isn’t particularly reactionary but places our gender-affirming care practices in line with those of our allies; the United Kingdom, for example, banned puberty blockers for children under 18 last year.
Nevertheless, on Monday night, hundreds of people gathered in a park near NYU Langone’s before marching toward the hospital’s entrance to protest the cancellations. The rally was headed by speakers organized by local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America and included a rogues’ gallery of New York’s left-wing political figures, including City Council member Tiffany Cában and actress and former candidate for governor Cynthia Nixon, whose son received transgender care from NYU Langone.


Added: On the IGF Facebook page, a commenter asked: “Do you understand the difference between Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity? It appears that you do not.”

I replied: “I don’t think a 9-year-old boy knows the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. I do know that peer-reviewed studies overwhelming show that almost all kids with gender confusion or symptoms of gender dysphoria outgrew the sense they are “wrongly sexed” after puberty (and by their early 20s), and that of this cohort most turn out to be gay — if they weren’t put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that leave them permanently sterilized and unable to experience orgasm.”


And this!

Also: “[Dr. Erica Li] said there are signs many children who claim to be transgender or profess some other similar gender identity are victims of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a situation in which a person of influence makes up fake symptoms or is the cause of real symptoms in a child, in order for the adult to receive social approval.”

How Trump’s Transgender-Military Ban Might Have Been Defensible

The executive order would be more defensible if rather than veering into whether transitioning ones gender identity is dishonorable and untruthful, not to mention selfish, the administration had instead focused on practical issues. A point made in passing that should have been central is the reference to “the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved.”
An argument certainly could be made (but wasn’t) that just as insulin-dependent diabetics are barred from enlisting — as insulin can’t be guaranteed to deployed troops — so, too, it would seem reasonable to bar transgender personnel dependent on the lifelong use of cross-sex hormones, as people who have physically transitioned typically are. https://stephenhenrymiller.substack.com/p/how-trumps-transgender-military-ban


Added:

Along similar lines, The Scroll’s Adam Lehrer reports:

Rob Smith, an openly gay combat veteran, argues that the removal of trans people from the military is the right move because, he says, transgender service members are non-deployable, meaning that while their treatments are covered by Veterans Affairs, they effectively can’t serve the military primarily because they require ongoing medical treatments that are not compatible with military readiness. So, while some are criticizing the removal of 8,000 service members from the military, Smith and others assert that the executive orders remove 8,000 non-deployable service members and replace them with 8,000 deployable members.

The Sermon (and who is actually putting ‘gay kids’ at risk)

Ben Appel writes about the Inaugural prayer service sermon that LGBTQ+ activists and progressive media have been celebrating:

By now, you may have heard about the sermon that Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde delivered during the inaugural prayer service…. Near the end of her sermon, Budde addressed President Trump directly. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said. “There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.” …
I hadn’t planned to write about this topic until I came across a New York Times headline on Wednesday, which appeared to take a page right out of a Democratic strategist’s playbook. “Bishop Asks Trump to ‘Have Mercy’ on Immigrants and Gay Children,” the headline read. Yes, Budde did mention gay and lesbian kids as well as trans kids. But let’s not pretend that that’s the population the Democrats, the mainstream media, and LGBTQ activist organizations are constantly fretting about “protecting”: gay kids. …
We need to be very clear: President Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology extremism,” just like the Florida legislation before it, is a direct result of the total capture of our institutions by the pseudoscientific religious belief of gender ideology. If blue-haired radicals hadn’t entered schools and told kids that sex is “assigned” rather than simply observed, that the sex they feel like inside supersedes the material reality of their bodies, and that some kids don’t have a sex at all, then these measures wouldn’t even be a figment in the GOP’s imagination. …
For years now, gay people like me have been pleading with Democrats, mainstream news outlets, and activist organizations to consider the implications of affirming feminine boys and masculine girls as “transgender,” when the research (not to mention our own experiences) tells us that nearly all of these gender-dysphoric/gender-nonconforming/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-them kids, if not socially transitioned, will grow up to be gay and choose not to medically transition. …


And this, a welcomed development:

More Americans Oppose Female-Identifying Males in Women’s Sports

>


Added: The LGB Alliance USA praises President Trump’s executive order. It’s arguable if the order goes too far by not recognizing adults who transition, but there’s no question that the ludicrous over-reach by transactivists, especially regarding putting gender-nonconforming kids on the trans train and obviously bio males in women’s locker rooms and sports teams, led to this.

Even Most Democrats Oppose Medicalized Conversion Therapy for Minors

Just-released results from a New York Times/Ipsos poll show that 71% of Americans (including 54% of Democrats) believe…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Sunday, January 19, 2025


Ben Appel makes clear why big-money LGBTQ+ groups are so wrong:


And an Inauguration Day post from the LGBT Courage Coalition:


A thought from the LGB Alliance: “Some people believe girls who like football need puberty blockers and a double mastectomy. We believe they need football boots.”

Boys and Girls

Andrew Doyle writes: >>Of all the absurdities of the culture war, perhaps the most egregious is the normalisation of the…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, January 15, 2025

As the Post-Millennial reports, the bill amends Title IX to read:

It shall be a violation of subsection (a) for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates an athletic program or activity to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls. … [Sex under the amendment] shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth. …
Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prohibit a recipient from permitting males to train or practice with an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls so long as no female is deprived of a roster spot on a team or sport, opportunity to participate in a practice or competition, scholarship, admission to an educational institution, or any other benefit that accompanies participating in the athletic program or activity.

Hopes and Warnings for 2025

Andrew Doyle’s wish list for 2025 includes “a complete ban on puberty blockers” and that “we need to stop basing public…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Friday, January 3, 2025


Clearly, the fight to protect gay kids will heat up this year, with the LGBTQ+ left all-in on promoting transitioning for gender-nonconforming kids, most of whom we know would otherwise go through puberty and recognize themselves as gay. Here are a few worthwhile recent posts on this struggle.

Jesse Singal writes: >>It’s very strange to deny the possibility that social transition may alter a child’s…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, December 31, 2024

And:

Matt Margolis writes: >>A user on X accused [J.K. Rowling] of having a “hateful focus on trans kids” and declared it…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Monday, December 30, 2024

An interesting idea:

The “Our Duty” Substack argues that “transgender ideation” is a better term than “gender dysphoria”: >> Terms like "…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Monday, December 23, 2024


And worth repeating: