Shapeshifting Propaganda

CNN Struggles with PC Trans Terminology

CNN parrots the most absurd positions of the transgender movement. We should start calling it the PCNN, Politically Correct News Network. And they can’t even keep their own PC terminology straight.

In a March 30 broadcast on South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s executive order on transgender males in women’s sports, the politically correct network editorialized:

“The order also references ‘biological sex,’ a disputed term that refers to the sex as listed on students’ original birth certificates.” In the same broadcast, the network claimed, “It’s not possible to know a person’s identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.”

Following substantial backlash, CNN updated the story to “provide additional explanation as to the distinctions between gender and sex.” Their story now states, “It's not possible to know a person's gender identity at birth, and for some people, the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have.”

The Gender Theorists have inflicted this new terminology on all of us. The least they can do is to apply it consistently. After all, the term “sex” refers to the body. The Sexual Revolutionaries invented the distinction between “sex” and “gender” to undermine the stability of male roles and female roles. “Gender” is the term they use to describe the complex of social roles, personal preferences, feelings and identity. The Revolutionaries maintain that sex roles are socially constructed and can be reconstructed. This distinction allowed them to pursue their agenda of eliminating everything based on male-female differences, without having to maintain that the body is completely irrelevant. They’re saying: “All we want to do is provide more flexibility in gender roles. We accept that male and female bodies are different.”

But now the mask is slipping. They can’t keep their story straight. There absolutely is a criterion for “assigning sex at birth”: DNA, which is almost always immediately obvious from secondary sex characteristics. Of course, we can’t know a person’s “identity” at birth, if that term includes everything they are ever going to think or feel. But that complex of feelings is not relevant to which sports teams a person should play on. The body is the only relevant consideration for that purpose.

CNN’s attempt at clarification did not help. CNN’s statement that “the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have,” is absurd. The sex of the body has not changed. The individual has changed their “gender identity,” not the sex of their bodies.

It’s just more of CNN being CNN. In a story last August on screenings for cervical cancer, instead of “women,” it used the expression “individuals with a cervix.” Increasingly, doctrinaire outlets like CNN, try to avoid saying “men” and “women” which are thought to exclude so-called transsexuals.

CNN’s newscasts should come with a warning label: “No News Ahead. Propaganda Only. Some viewers may find the following broadcast upsetting.”

Bias like this is one reason we at the Ruth Institute recently launched our Transgender Resource Center with research, media and other resources to fight the transgender ideology which permeates our society.