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March 30, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Hello everyone. For today’s lesson on media gaslighting, I would like to direct you to a headline in The New York Times, which reads as follows: “Transgender Girls in Sports: G.O.P Pushes New Front in Culture War.”

If I were to invent a headline to illustrate the point that the media is gaslighting the public, this would be roughly what I would come up with. It is, however, all too real. There is so much about this single sentence that highlights how brazen the media are in their attempt to transform American mores that it is worth breaking it down.

First, we have the phrase “transgender girls.” Who are they referring to here? Biological boys who identify as girls — males who suffer from gender dysphoria. The language demanded by the trans movement has been accepted as fact by The New York Times and cited as such. In short, those who do not accept the new ideology that posits that boys can become girls or vice versa or that biology is unharnessed from gender are implicitly portrayed as either nonexistent, stupid, or bigoted.

There is no pretense here that there is a massive cultural debate over sex and gender raging. “Transgender girls” are girls — that is what The New York Times would like you to know — and we’re not even halfway through the headline.

Then there is the stunning role reversal they have invented. The transgender movement, which exploded onto the scene in the last decade, is spearheading an assault on the traditional (and scientific) understanding of biological sex from the classroom to the bathroom (and, as this article describes, on sex-segregated sports.) They are waging a culture war on the status quo; they are insisting on a radical transformation of society on every level.

And how does The New York Times describe this? As a “new front in the culture war” pushed by … the GOP. Those who are defending the status quo — in this instance, merely insisting that biological males not participate in girls’ sports — are the ones opening a “new front” in the culture war, rather than those upending a few thousand years of our collective understanding of biological sex. This is the definition of gaslighting and projection, and it is being done to shape public perception and understanding.

Let me give a quick example illustrate this. Suppose, a decade ago, The New York Times had run a headline reading “Marriage: G.O.P Pushes New Front in Culture War.” Everyone would have understood how ridiculous it was for those assailing the institution of marriage and seeking to redefine it to be portrayed as the ones defending the status quo, because that simply would have been obviously untrue. A few years later, however, and the Times is insinuating that the G.O.P. is just refusing to recognize the obvious: that “transgender girls” are girls. 

What they are doing is asserting a collective consensus in the hopes that doing so will make it so. The activists demand we transition society and trash our understanding of the human person — The New York Times obediently accuses those who are, rather meekly, I might add, suggesting that we perhaps slow down a bit of being the aggressors in this cultural revolution. It is the defenders opening the “new front,” not those, you know, opening up the new front. 

The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media are hoping that if they lie brazenly to our faces, we’ll give up, knuckle under, and float downstream. This is the media version of “why do you keep hitting yourself.” It is — or should be — transparent. It should also be treated with absolute contempt.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.