Once again showing that the MAGA folk exhibit the exact same behaviours they falsely ascribe to their more liberal enemies but in the opposite direction, I see that the little boys have got all over-excited about “pronouns”. You know, words like “he” and “she”.
And literally those ones, we’re not even talking exclusively about ones that the average Trumpy sycophant may never have encountered before their last viewing of an overdramatic Fox News report.
Soon after the new administration clocked in, federal government workers were literally banned from mentioning their pronouns in email signature blocks.
“All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks ,” instructions to State Department employees read, in an email they received Friday.
Oh, and they should be eradicated from official forms too:
The instructions to medical staff at some Veterans Affairs facilities also articulated how references to gender would have to be excised on forms: “The use of GENDER is not allowed on any form. We can only use SEX, and there should be only 2 options — MALE and FEMALE.”
More recently, it turned out that it’s apparently not enough that the remaining government employees are to have their at-worst-harmless email signatures censored and silenced. Non-government journalists aren’t supposed to use them either. Well, not if they want the White House to respond to their questions anyway:
On at least three recent occasions, senior Trump press aides have refused to engage with reporters’ questions because the journalists listed identifying pronouns in their email signatures.
Why? As if it wasn’t obvious. But it’s sometimes hilarious to hear what exactly they think they’re scared of.
“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Ms. Leavitt, the press secretary, wrote in an email.
The thought of sitting down at my professional job and writing a sentence like that just blows my mind. Of course the same could be said for a lot of official communiques these days.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director had the following to say, apparently with no irony whatsoever.
If The New York Times spent the same amount of time actually reporting the truth as they do being obsessed with pronouns, maybe they would be a half-decent publication.