Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - 7:35 am
To the Editor:
People are getting upset over things that aren’t even happening. Shouldn’t the sources that mislead people be held accountable?
The author of “Opinion: Pelosi Seeks to Verbally Neuter Our Language” got angry based on what she heard. The Fox headline, “Gender Terms Banned Under New House Rules”, was circulated on Facebook and Instagram.
Republican Kevin McCarthy tweeted that the Democrats “won’t let you say gendered words like father and mother”. Those are distortions of a simple fact. Some words in the written House Rules were replaced by more generic ones. No one is banning gender words in speech or writing. But headlines designed to rile people up, followed by a flurry of social media posts and reposts have everyone in a tizzy. (That’s how the lie that we can’t say Merry Christmas got started.)