The Left Wrecks the English Language
Proponents of silly terms such as “pregnant people” and “birthing persons” are only asking to be mocked.
“Y'know,” said author and conservative commentator Andrew Klavan, “the news of the week can be difficult to understand if we look at it from only one side.”
True enough, we’d say — especially if we, like Klavan, “fail to consider the ideas of left-wingers simply because they’re violent, baby-killing pervert groomers who lie about everything and then try to silence the truth to keep themselves from being found out.”
Still, we don’t feel any less perspicacious today despite having missed the rationale from the Associated Press for saying “pregnant person” instead of abiding by the term that’s been used endlessly around the globe, across cultures, and down through the millennia without a single exception: pregnant woman.
Because, after all, there are two sexes: male and female. Those with XY chromosome pairs and those with XX chromosome pairs. And even though we’re no more a biologist than Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, we know with every fiber of our being that only females can become pregnant and give birth to babies.
So: pregnant woman, not pregnant person.
And yet, here we are, with the once serious and highly regarded Associated Press making a mockery of the English language. As Fox News reports:
The AP Style Guide recently made an update to its inclusive language protocols, adding the phrase “pregnant people” to cover trans or nonbinary people who can get pregnant but don’t identify as women. On Wednesday, Associated Press reporter Kimberlee Kruesi — who announces her pronouns in her Twitter bio — alerted Twitter to the new guidance. She tweeted, “New AP style guidance alert” and shared a screenshot of the update. The entry gave a newly defined usage for the phrase “pregnant people,” and also included instructions on usage for the phrase “people who seek an abortion.”
Of course, it can’t end with “pregnant people.” Or to put it another way, the AP can’t become partially pregnant. So if its style guide makes an accommodation for “pregnant people,” it must also accommodate terms like “people who seek an abortion” and “birthing person,” which, as Klavan says, those on the Left insist on “in order for their fantasy lives to continue undisturbed.” He continues: “They even issued emojis of a pregnant man, with which they could decorate their text messages, so that they could be used later in a court of law to bolster their insanity defense.”
As you might imagine, though, this language fluidity also creates inconsistencies — such as when its practitioners, having insisted that men can become pregnant, are then forced to insist that men cannot become pregnant in order to restrict them from rendering an opinion on abortion cases being adjudicated before the Supreme Court.
Here, it seems that resistance and mockery are called for, because those who control the language have inordinate power over those who don’t. Take those in government, for example. As The Daily Signal reports, “A division of the Labor Department charged with overseeing benefits for American workers is telling employees to use the words ‘they,’ ‘them,’ and ‘their’ to describe individuals as part of ‘Gender-Inclusive Language Policy.’”
Since when are “they,” “them,” and “their” singular pronouns? Well, since the Employee Benefits Security Administration issued a memo insisting that its policy conforms with President Joe Biden’s executive order regarding dignity for federal employees “no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
Call us a sentimental schmuck, but words have meaning. And one doesn’t treat others “with dignity” by condescending to them, nor by taking a wrecking ball to the English language on behalf of them. And we mean “them” in the standard plural sense.