A reporter urged other journalists Wednesday to stop using the term “biological males,” deeming the scientific term a “serious anti-trans slur” that is hateful to use.
“It’s totally okay to have debate and disagree, but folks in media, the term ‘biological males’ is a serious anti-trans slur,” LGBTQ+ reporter for The 19th Kate Sosin tweeted.
“You should not use it without noting that,” Sosin added.
We were instructed that there is a Taliban-like threat in the United States called “domestic terrorism.” These terrorists are characterized in part by “anti-government,” “anti-authority” or “abortion-related” extremism and various “supremacist” ideas. None of these terms are defined. The Marine Corps entrusts the government’s HR department to figure that out.
Reporting requirements are key. Do you suspect someone supports an “extremist ideology?” Alert the chain of command. Have you heard a Marine express “contempt toward officials?” Notify the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Don’t handle anything on your own. Just rat them out. After all, “service is a privilege” and it’d be a shame to lose that privilege for failing to do your part to stamp out “extremists.” One PowerPoint slide posed this imperative in stark terms: “Do you want to be a Marine or do you want to be part of an organization that sows disunity and hate. You cannot have divided loyalties.”
Where did all this come from? Soft liberalism has taken root in the military over several decades. These alarming trends are already well documented in James Hasson’s book Stand Down: How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging America’s Military. But in the wake of President Joe Biden‘s election—and more precipitously since the January 6 “insurrection”—bureaucratic progressivism has hardened into iron-fisted wokeism.
What’s so scary about the left in this country is that they truly have no lines. Every new authoritarian epiphany sounds better in their ears than the last. There’s no pause to consider how ridiculous what they are suggesting is. It’s just full bore “progress” all the time, unintended (and intended) consequences be damned.
Let’s be frank about what de Blasio is saying he wants to do here. He’s asserting that he wants the police, which he controls, to show up at the doors of people who did something non-criminal but that he deems “hateful” in order to scare the intimidate them. Of course, what qualifies as “hateful” is malleable, and in New York, that can literally mean anything that doesn’t fit left-wing orthodoxy. Call someone by their real pronoun and not one they “prefer?” A cop could show up and lecture on the finer points of “tolerance.”
Bill Maher made an interesting point on his show last Friday, arguing that America’s obsession with political correctness is crippling its institutions, leaving the country hobbled in the geopolitical race with China. That’s an accurate assessment, one that also tasks the defenders of cultural sanity with resisting wokeness while not getting bogged down by trivialities at the cost of basic efficiency.
That’s an impossible balance to strike. Despite the left’s false but emergent narrative that conservatives are foolishly and disproportionately obsessed with the culture war, I’d contend the response is largely proportionate. That isn’t to say flashpoints like the fight over Dr. Seuss are never milked or depicted inaccurately by some. Of course they are.
But it’s clear that ignoring and conceding perceivably small battles like, for instance, six Dr. Seuss books or Mr. Potato Head is what empowers the left’s culture warriors to take control of everything. By dismissing flare-ups of insanity on college campuses or in the legacy media, leftists normalized their radical new standards before the public even saw it coming. It’s like the metaphor of the boiling frog. Death by a thousand cuts.
Standards are set in the small dust-ups. The legacy press covers them from the left, then corporations and government institutions respond to the pressure, sometimes convinced the cost-benefit analysis suggests it’s easier to roll over. But rolling over sets the standards, and the standards are unjust.
But those standards are also now the ones by which we’re forced to live, lest we face social and professional consequences for alleged bigotry. Bear in mind that workers without the financial means of a canceled celebrity or journalist are hurt most by those rigid strictures of cancel culture, forced to violate their consciences or suffer financial consequences for perceived transgressions.
As part of its ongoing efforts to feature language that is more inclusive and reflective of modern-day society, Dictionary.com will no longer include the word “slave” as a noun identifying a person, instead using the adjective “enslaved” or referencing the institution of slavery. The change is one of 7,600 updates the online resource has announced, which also include the addition of terms relevant to race, social justice and identity, such as “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and “Critical Race Theory.”
The latest updates — which also include capitalizing “Indigenous” when referring to people, and adding entries for “racialization,” “disenfranchisement” and “overpolice” — follow those announced last September. That round of revisions saw the capitalization of the word Black in reference to people, and the addition of terms relevant to mental health (specifically, suicide and addiction) and LGBTQ identity. John Kelly, managing editor of Dictionary.com, tells Yahoo Life that the changes are an important part of respecting the power of language and its ability to offer representation and dignity.
Kew Gardens in London is to change labels on its plants and flowers in order to inform visitors on how racist they are.
Yes, really.
The popular attraction, which welcomes over 2 million visitors a year from all over the world, is set to “change display boards for plants such as sugar cane – previously harvested by slaves – to highlight their ‘imperial legacy’”, reports the Daily Mail.
According to Kew director Richard Deverell, the change is part of an effort to “move quickly to decolonise collections.”
The change happened after managers at Kew consulted with Ajay Chhabra, “an actor with an insight into how sugar cane was linked to slavery.”
This is yet another capitulation to woke mobs who are trying to subvert the United Kingdom and make its population ashamed of their heritage and birthright, despite the fact that Britain was the first major country in the world to end slavery.
Brits like William Wilberforce literally risked their lives to travel to the colonies and free slaves.
The purpose of activist efforts to push for “decolonisation” is actually just reverse cultural colonisation by the woke mob.
Most Americans hate woke politics — and most minorities don’t share “woke” priorities. Indeed, according to pollster David Shor, woke excesses are causing black voters to flee the Democratic Party. Despite endless charges of “racism,” former President Donald Trump took the biggest share of minority voters of any Republican in my lifetime.
Woke tyrants ride high, even so; according to a Cato/YouGov poll, 62 percent of Americans self-censor their political expression. Only a tiny minority of consumers care about Mr. Potato Head’s toxic masculinity, about “Aunt Jemima” as a brand or about the #MeToo aggressions of Pepé Le Pew. Yet corporations, universities and governments rush to placate that minuscule slice of the population, trashing large chunks of our culture in the process.
It’s happening not because anybody voted for it, but because a small but determined and vicious minority is bullying people to go along, relying on cowardice and groupthink to achieve ends that could never happen via majority vote: How do you think Dr. Seuss would have done in a referendum?
Hellbound and Down 
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