The Associated Press recently updated its canonical style guide to tell journalists to stop calling transgender people transgender.
SO WHAT
The AP joins a growing list of elite institutions in embracing woke gender notions, even as everyday Americans appear to be turning against the ideology.
WHAT HAPPENED
The AP Stylebook, widely accepted as the Bible of journalistic prose, decreed in its 56th annual updated, issued in June, that “often phrasing like is a woman is more to the point than identifies as a woman.”
In other words, according to The AP, transgender women are literally women.
- “Use the term sex (or gender) assigned at birth instead of biological sex, birth gender, was identified at birth as, born a girl and the like,” the guide also urged.
- “Avoid terms like biological male, which opponents of transgender rights sometimes use to oversimplify sex and gender, is often misleading shorthand for assigned male at birth, and is redundant because sex is inherently biological.”
SAME ENERGY
The AP and much of the mainstream media have helped lead a top-down redefinition of English language as it pertains to sex.
- Over the last three years, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has added new definitions for the words “female,” “girl” and “they” to conform with progressive gender ideology, which holds that gender identity trumps biological sex.
- And federal government bodies, from the White House to Congress to the Navy, have adopted gender-neutral language.
OK, BUT
The American public, meanwhile, has begun to reject gender ideology regardless of the terminology used, according to recent polls.
- Sixty percent of Americans believe gender is “determined by sex assigned at birth,” up from 54% five years ago, according to a Pew Research Center study released in June.
- Another poll published by NPR/Ipsos in June found 63% of Americans oppose transgender girls and women being allowed allowed to compete in women’s sports, including 41% of Democrats.
