Words matter, especially in today’s cultural and political battles, and we have to start being more aware of the words and terms that the left uses to sway public opinion on divisive political issues.
This week, for example, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about Tennessee’s ban on transgender procedures and puberty blockers for minors. The mainstream media is doing everything it can to influence public opinion on this issue by using the deceptive phrase “gender-affirming care,” when reporting on the issue.
“The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared sympathetic to Tennessee's efforts to restrict access to gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, as the justices stepped into the politically charged debate over health care for transgender youth,” reported CBS News.
“Majority of Supreme Court seems reluctant to block state bans on gender-affirming care for minors,” reads a headline in The Boston Globe.
“Supreme Court seems reluctant to block state bans on gender-affirming care for minors,” an Associated Press headline read.
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The term “gender-affirming care” is used to describe the use of surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers to treat individuals experiencing gender confusion. However, adopting this language is not a neutral act. It validates a false narrative that gender is fluid and that it can be “changed” through medical intervention, and that such medical intervention is correcting a problem.
The word “affirming” implies support and validation, making it sound compassionate and kind. However, the procedures and treatments the left calls “gender-affirming” are anything but. For years, we’ve been reporting on the irreversible dangers of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, including infertility, bone density loss, and cardiovascular issues.
Surgeries such as double mastectomies or genital reconstruction permanently alter healthy bodies and often leave individuals with lifelong medical complications that are painful and grotesque.
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By calling these procedures “gender-affirming care,” advocates of this ideology seek to shield them from scrutiny. The phrase is a carefully crafted rhetorical tool to disarm critics and silence debate. Calling the butchering of healthy body parts "gender affirming' deliberately obscures the reality that these interventions are experimental, irreversible, and often regretted.
Even worse, when conservatives or skeptics of transgender ideology repeat the term “gender-affirming care,” they lend credibility to the idea that these treatments are valid and beneficial. Using this language plays into the hands of those pushing for the normalization of irreversible medical interventions on children and adults.
We’ve seen this kind of thing before. In the abortion debate, we see abortion advocates euphemize the procedure of killing a child by calling it “choice,” “reproductive rights,” or “reproductive freedom.”
We can't keep letting the radical left manipulate our language like this.
