Trans issues

The ugliness of the American media is on full show in the aftermath of a tragic mass shooting at a Nashville Presbyterian school, which left three staffers, including the head of the school, and three children, all nine years old, dead. Police identified Audrey Hale, a twenty-eight-year-old woman and alleged former student, as the shooter. Late yesterday, police chief John Drake confirmed that the biological female identified as a trans male.

A recently updated version of Politico’s style guide reveals that the outlet is doubling down on forcing reporters to use so-called "inclusive" language — such as "pregnant people" instead of women — and will require all articles on transgender issues to be specially reviewed by multiple editors. I first reported on Politico’s woke style guide in my book The Snowflakes’ Revolt, which also uncovers how reporters were required to attend a struggle session led by transgender activists. As I lay out in an excerpt published in The Spectator, that version of the guide, which was created in January 2022, warned reporters to avoid gendered language like "manmade," "manhunt," "waiter or waitress," "biological sex" and more.

In my new book, The Snowflakes’ Revolt, I examine how progressive millennials have infiltrated and influenced American media over the past decade, taking ideas from college campuses into the newsroom and pushing the editorial line further to the left than ever before. Among the many prominent organizations where this has happened is Politico. One sign of the shift at this Washington news mainstay came in December 2020, when staff revolted after conservative commentator Ben Shapiro guest-authored the outlet’s flagship newsletter, Playbook. A few months later newsroom activists, unsatisfied by Politico’s response to their concerns, quickly seized on a new culture war battle — transgender issues.

It’s a funny old world. Cockburn noticed today that Facebook and Instagram have been told to overhaul their longstanding ban on exposed female nipples, as the policy impedes the right to expression for, wait for it, trans and nonbinary people. Isn’t it funny that more than a decade after breastfeeding mothers first held a “nurse-in” at Facebook’s headquarters to protest, Meta’s oversight board has called for an overhaul to the boob ban to satisfy the rights of people that insist they are now men. What a victory! “Lactivists,” otherwise known as women, spent an entire decade in the 2000s attempting to reverse the ban by explaining that images of breasts were not inherently sexual. This resulted in the campaign to #FreetheNipple, which went mainstream in 2013.

Rachel Levine, the United States assistant secretary for health, has become a lightning rod for attention and controversy in the Biden administration. Levine is a nonbinary transgender woman who, as a biological male, was married with two children. Levine was named Woman of the Year by USA Today. When the Christian satire website Babylon Bee published an online post calling Levine “Man of the Year,” Twitter suspended the Bee’s account, which was then unsuspended under new Twitter owner Elon Musk. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has put Levine front and center in the cultural and medical fight over treatment for minors under eighteen who claim they are trans.