Where the fundamental, incontrovertible differences between men and women—and the implications of those differences—are downplayed and ignored, the acid of pretense will eat away at our grasp of the truth. Nowhere is safe from such corrosion; the home, the local church, and society writ large all become compromised to the point of destruction when we ignore one of the most basic tenets of the human experience.
At some point in the past decade, the battle of the sexes seems to have given way to a war on the sexes.
Last month, the Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi enlisted the US House of Representatives in the fight when she proposed, and the House narrowly passed, its new rules for the 117th Congress. According to a press release, the changes are intended to make the House rules the “most inclusive in history.” As part of this effort, the rules will “honor all gender identities by changing pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral.”
What does this mean? For one thing, the new House rules strike out the following heretofore uncontroversial words: ‘‘father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, step-sister, half brother, half sister, grandson, or granddaughter.”
In the place of these apparently problematic words, the rules allow referrals instead to ‘‘parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling, first cousin, sibling’s child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, step-child, stepsibling, half-sibling, or grandchild.”
Don’t worry, since we’re just coming out of the holiday season, you’ll have at least a little time to get used to referring to your “parent’s sibling” instead of your uncle, and your “sibling’s child” instead of your niece or nephew before the next extended-family gathering.
Of course, we should be able recognize the performative nature of this baffling proposal for what it is. After all, Nancy Pelosi’s Twitter bio still reads “mother, grandmother, dark chocolate connoisseur.” But there is also a profound lesson here to learn, and a warning to heed.
Gender Neutrality is Not Neutral on Gender
For those who have been paying attention, the world was only very recently introduced to gender-neutral identities. The idea that someone could identify neither as male nor female, but as “other,” is quite new.
The whiplash effect this has had on the everyman is quite understandable. We were only yesterday coping with the idea that some think a man can become a woman; now we are having to consider the idea of a person leaving behind manhood and womanhood altogether.
Gender neutrality went public most prominently through the overnight proliferation of non-binary pronouns and various announcements from celebrities you didn’t know existed until they announced they would henceforth identify as “genderqueer.”
