As state legislatures across the country deal with the ramifications of the gender ideology’s movement to redefine gender and differentiate it from sex, PolitiFact’s resident “LGBTQ issues” staff writer Grace Abels warned on Friday that those opposed to this redefinition are persuing bills that will “lead to discrimination.”
For Abels, it is a fact of life that the two words are different, “Today, medical experts understand biological sex assigned at birth as more complex and consider it distinct from gender identity.”
Despite this, Abels also spends several paragraphs going over the recent history of the word “gender.” She writes, “In the 1950s and ’60s, psychological research emerged that differentiated biological sex from "gender." Researchers coined terms such as "gender roles" as they studied people born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that didn’t fit the typical definitions of male or female and observed how children sometimes developed identity distinct from their biological sex.”
That not everybody conforms to stereotypical depictions of their sex is not exactly a profound insight, the question is whether that 1950s definition is correct or politicized, and Abels, wittingly or not, shows that it is the latter, “Feminists saw the term as useful for describing the cultural aspects of being a ‘woman’ as different from the biological aspects, he said.”
Additionally, “Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who argued sex discrimination cases before the court in the 1970s, said that she intentionally used the term ‘gender discrimination’ because it lacked the salacious overtones 'sex’ has.”
She also writes, “After the 1980s, gender’s term usage rose rapidly, moving beyond academic and activist circles. In common American English, ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ began to be used more interchangeably, including in state law — sometimes even in the same section of the law.”
Abels never explained why she started her history lesson in the 50s. She did write that prior to the 1970s “the word ‘gender’ was rarely used in American English,” but that doesn’t mean it was never used because when it was, it was used as a synonym for “sex.”
If there is one thing Abels got right, it is that the truth matters when it comes to what is gender’s proper definition because whatever definition politicians come up with will have profound consequences. Unfortunately, she got it wrong for the sake of the transgender narrative. Earlier, she wrote, “Transgender rights advocates say that requiring IDs to match the sex a person was assigned at birth can expose transgender Americans to discrimination.”
On the issue of red states seeking to stop the verbicide, Abels claims that “Transgender rights advocates say access to identification that matches an individual’s identity and presentation is important. ‘If you can’t update the gender marker on your ID, you are essentially outed as transgender at every turn,’ said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality to PolitiFact for a previous story on drivers licenses in Florida.”
Abels did manage to briefly cite Iowa GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds claiming such bills are necessary to protect “women’s spaces and rights,” but given that she took the side of the gender activists, it is possible Reynolds or those who agree with her could one day find themselves on the wrong side of the truth-o-meter for speaking the truth.
