by James A. Bacon
“He who controls the language controls the masses,” left-wing activist Saul Alinsky famously wrote in his 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals.” A modern-day example is how cultural elites have smuggled their language about the transgender movement into popular discourse.
Axios Richmond had this to say this morning about a change in Chesterfield County school policy: “Chesterfield School Board voted early Wednesday to roll back some protections for transgender students that have been in place since 2021.”
The changes will (1) give parents more input about the counseling services their children receive, (2) require parental permission to call trans-identifying children by a different name, and (3) forbid the district from forcing students or staff to use a student’s chosen name or pronouns if it “would violate their constitutionally protected rights.”
Axios has framed the issue as “rolling back protections for transgender students.”
The reporters could have just as easily framed the issue as Chesterfield advancing the rights of parents… but didn’t.
They could have just as easily framed the issue as Chesterfield affirming the constitutionally protected free-speech rights of students and staff… but didn’t.
The underlying premise in the Axios phraseology is that the rights of transgender children are paramount, and those rights are being compromised. The children’s wishes take precedence over those of their parents. Their ill-defined identity as “trans” warrants “protection” from their intolerant guardians.
A tiny percentage of the population is genuinely gender dysphoric, a proclivity that manifests itself at an early age, and society needs to find a way to accommodate them. But, as ably documented by author Abigail Shrier, there is a large element of social contagion at work in middle and high schools.
Many confused adolescents suffer from loneliness, anxiety or depression, and in a desperate quest for belonging self-diagnose as transgender — a vague term with meanings that mutate faster than the radioactivity-resistant hounds of Chernobyl. It is undeniable that many children — not all, but many — grow out of their transgender phase. According to Microsoft Copilot AI (feel free to double check its claims) research has shown that anywhere from 65% to 94% cease to identify as transgender by the time they reach adolescence or adulthood.
By framing the controversy as about “protections for transgender students,” Axios implicitly assumes that the self-diagnoses of all transgender-identifying students are equally valid and their conditions are equally immutable. They aren’t.
Guess who else warrants “protection?” The children who grow out of their transgender identities. They need protection against zealous teachers and staff who embrace transgender ideology and eagerly seek to implement it, often at the expense of the child.
Someone needs to come up with better phraseology.
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