Ruth Speaks Out

This blog is maintained by the Ruth Institute. It provides a place for our Circle of Experts to express themselves. This is where the scholars, experts, students and followers of the Ruth Institute engage in constructive dialogue about the issues surrounding the Sexual Revolution. We discuss public policy, social practices, legal doctrines and much more.

CNN Struggles with PC Trans Terminology

Posted on: Thursday, April 08, 2021

This article was originally published on SalvoMag.

- Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

CNN parrots the most absurd positions of the transgender movement. We should start calling it the PCNN, Politically Correct News Network. And they can’t even keep their own PC terminology straight.

In a March 30 broadcast on South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s executive order on transgender males in women’s sports, the politically correct network editorialized:

“The order also references ‘biological sex,’ a disputed term that refers to the sex as listed on students’ original birth certificates.” In the same broadcast, the network claimed, “It’s not possible to know a person’s identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.”

Following substantial backlash, CNN updated the story to “provide additional explanation as to the distinctions between gender and sex.” Their story now states, “It's not possible to know a person's gender identity at birth, and for some people, the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have.”

The Gender Theorists have inflicted this new terminology on all of us. The least they can do is to apply it consistently. After all, the term “sex” refers to the body. The Sexual Revolutionaries invented the distinction between “sex” and “gender” to undermine the stability of male roles and female roles. “Gender” is the term they use to describe the complex of social roles, personal preferences, feelings and identity. The Revolutionaries maintain that sex roles are socially constructed and can be reconstructed. This distinction allowed them to pursue their agenda of eliminating everything based on male-female differences, without having to maintain that the body is completely irrelevant. They’re saying: “All we want to do is provide more flexibility in gender roles. We accept that male and female bodies are different.”

But now the mask is slipping. They can’t keep their story straight. There absolutely is a criterion for “assigning sex at birth”: DNA, which is almost always immediately obvious from secondary sex characteristics. Of course, we can’t know a person’s “identity” at birth, if that term includes everything they are ever going to think or feel. But that complex of feelings is not relevant to which sports teams a person should play on. The body is the only relevant consideration for that purpose.

CNN’s attempt at clarification did not help. CNN’s statement that “the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have,” is absurd. The sex of the body has not changed. The individual has changed their “gender identity,” not the sex of their bodies.

It’s just more of CNN being CNN. In a story last August on screenings for cervical cancer, instead of “women,” it used the expression “individuals with a cervix.” Increasingly, doctrinaire outlets like CNN, try to avoid saying “men” and “women” which are thought to exclude so-called transsexuals.

CNN’s newscasts should come with a warning label: “No News Ahead. Propaganda Only. Some viewers may find the following broadcast upsetting.”

Bias like this is one reason we at the Ruth Institute recently launched our Transgender Resource Center with research, media and other resources to fight the transgender ideology which permeates our society.

Keep Reading

Permalink | Comments

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Submission to the United Nations

Posted on: Thursday, March 11, 2021

Ruth Institute Submission to the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI)

A Response to the Call for Input to a Thematic Report:

“Gender, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”

Submitted by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

Founder and President, The Ruth Institute

March 9, 2021

We offer the following items for the consideration of the Independent Expert:

1. SOGI-based policies promote violence and discrimination – Attempts to impose a radical gender agenda are promoted as a way to protect individuals against violence and discrimination, but invariably lead to violence and discrimination against those whose only crime is to dissent from the ideology of the Sexual Revolution. It is easier to sell a cause as defensive, rather than offensive – as this most certainly is. Forcing women and girls to share showers and bathrooms with so-called trans-males is an assault on their privacy (modesty), hence a type of violence.Gender “non-discrimination” laws discriminate against adherents to the natural order. Catholic hospitals and physicians would be forced to provide hormone-blocking drugs and surgery (including the removal of healthy organs) in violation of their conscience.
2. Gender identity laws would eliminate all sex-based protections for women and girls, which required decades to achieve – Gender identity would destroy women’s sports by forcing females to compete with males who say they’re women, with their superior strength, agility, speed and endurance. A man who says he is a woman who is also a rapist could be incarcerated in a woman’s prison and gain access to shelters for battered women, thus endangering the safety of women.
3. Enshrining SOGI-based rights into law creates an open-ended redefinition of the meaning of unlawful discrimination – For instance, discrimination could potentially include failure to provide surgery, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
4. SOGI-based laws have the potential to criminalize speech – What constitutes “violence and discrimination” when gender identity holds sway? Defining criticism as a crime will ultimately suppress speech. Criticism of government policy is a natural human right. We reject the idea that criticizing gender theory is a form of violence and discrimination. The theory that an individual can choose his or her sex ought to be highly contested. The theory that efforts to protect women’s spaces is the equivalent of inciting hatred is itself a type of bigotry. SOGI-based laws could also ban or redefine the use of gender-specific words.
5. “Gender identity” is anti-science – The expression “gender identity” has only come in vogue in the past few years. It implies that the sex of the body is “assigned at birth” and is an artificial construct based solely on physical characteristics. The further implication is that individuals can chose their “gender identity” from a shopping list created by activists. (112 different “gender identities” are reported on Tumblr.) In reality, individuals are born male or female, with only a handful of medical exceptions. Someone born a male will remain a male until the day he dies, regardless of what he does to his body with hormones and surgery. DNA can’t be changed.
6. SOGI-based policies undermine the family, which is entitled to protection, according to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted in 1948) acknowledges a number of inalienable rights. Article 15 describes the family as, “the natural and fundamental group unit of society,” which thus is “entitled to protection by society and the state.” So-called SOGI rights are a direct assault on the family. Their adherents push for gender indoctrination in the schools and media. Some want hormone treatments and surgery on minors administered/performed without parental knowledge or consent.
7. SOGI is an assault on religion – Christianity, Judaism and Islam all hold that God created us male and female and endowed us with a nature based on our sex. Gender ideologues believe these ideas are antiquated and bigoted. In other words, if a person is born a male (with a penis and testicles) he can, nevertheless, choose to be a “woman” and by proclaiming that choice – with or without chemical or surgical alteration -- become every bit as much a “woman” as one who was born a woman. Along with science, religion is the primary force which denies transgenderism, which makes it a principal target of gender activists. We reject the idea that believers should be forced to deny the tenets of their faith. Christians and Jews should not be required to re-write Genesis (“Male and female, He created them,” in the words of the King James Bible).
8. A gender regime would force people to lie about the reality of biological sex – Prohibiting certain types of speech is bad enough. Compelling speech is even worse. Compelling false speech and forcing people to lie, corrupts people’s consciences and sense of right and wrong.