Newly Disclosed Memo Shows that State Department is Policing the English Language at the Behest of Gender Ideologists

Is it in the job description of the U.S. State Department to police the English Language? From National Review:

Making assumptions about another person’s gender identity based on their appearance or name “can be problematic” and send a “harmful, exclusionary message,” Blinken wrote in a February 5 cable, which instructed State Department employees to avoid using common terms like “mother/father,” “son/daughter,” and “husband/wife.”

National Review recently obtained the text of the cable and confirmed its authenticity. Some State Department staffers have questioned why Blinken is spending time promoting far-left gender activism at critical junctures in the raging wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

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Sasha Stone: How to Remake America

On a recent podcast, Sasha Stone condemned the Biden administration, offering some words of support for Donald Trump. Unlike Stone, I would never consider voting for Trump. Nor can I in good conscience vote for Biden, as I did three years ago. That said, I very much agree with Stone about the many ways the United States has gone off the rails during the Biden years. An excerpt:

Four words on a red hat. Make America Great Again.

Make America able to take a joke again.

Make America understand basic biology again.

Make America the land of the free and home of the brave again.

Make it okay to be white, a Christian, a male, a Jew, a woman, a mother and American again.

Make Thomas Jefferson a hero again.

Make movies watchable again.

Make America a country where we can still say what we think without fear of banishment, public humiliation or the loss of our jobs.

Make America tolerant again.

Make reality cool again, make it okay to reward merit.

Make it okay to be friends with people you don't agree with.

Lots of the hysteria is happening on both sides. It has to do with algorithms and their effects on our brains and our perception of reality.

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Anthropologists in Denial about Biological Sex

At Public we learn that many anthropologists consider it impolite to acknowledge that there are two sexes. An excerpt:

In the field of anthropology, it’s difficult to avoid talking about sex. For physical anthropologists, much of the field’s focus is on skeletal remains where body size, bone mineral density, and other sex differences are of utmost importance. For forensic anthropologists, determining the sex of remains is a crucial element of identifying crime victims. Archaeologists, too, glean valuable insights into social structures by studying "grave goods" interred alongside individuals of each sex.

Thus, the distinction between males and females is crucial in the study of human beings and their cultures. So when a group of anthropologists organized a panel titled, ‘Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology,’ for the 2023 American Anthropological Association (AAA)/Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) conference, the only reasonable question that should arise is why this seemingly evident truth even needs stating at all.

However, we are not living in reasonable times. Despite having their panel approved by both the AAA and CASCA in July, a little over a month before the event, the panelists received notice that their session had been removed from the conference program. The rationale behind this decision was that the ideas to be discussed would "cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large." What’s more, the AAA explained that the decision to cancel the session about one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence was reached in the spirit of respect for the values of the AAA, the “safety and dignity of its members, and the scientific integrity” of the program.

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