Blogs
Featured Image

September 4, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – In the current war on biological reality as it pertains to gender, the first intended casualty is language itself. In truly Orwellian fashion, the transgender activists have made tremendous progress on this front—as I pointed out in this space earlier this year, at some point almost the entire news media quietly climbed on board with the transgender agenda, obediently using the pronouns requested (even if they were factually inaccurate) and transforming their language overnight.

Thus, “sex change surgery” became “gender affirmation surgery” or “gender confirmation surgery.” I remember noticing the shift and wondering who wrote the new guidelines, who signed off on them, and how the trans activists had managed to get nearly the entire media on board with a cause nobody had heard of less than a decade ago in such a short period of time. These subtle shifts in language are actually tremendously important: “Sex change surgery” is a surgery performed to change somebody’s sex (or at least, attempt to make it appear that way through a series of alterations). 

Gender “affirmation” or “confirmation” surgery, on the other hand, infers something quite different. This terminology conveys the idea that the biological male is a female and the biological female is a male, and that the surgery being undertaken thus does not change anything at all. Rather, it affirms or confirms what the recipient of the mastectomies and castrations and other nips and tucks already knows with absolute certainty. In short, it corrects a profound mistake made by nature or nature’s God. There is an entire ideology packed into these small terminology changes, and very few people seem to have noticed the overnight transformation of the media into an obedient purveyor of transgender talking points.

As I mentioned last month, the media are engaged in a full-out gaslighting campaign, straight-facedly using phrases such as “her penis” and “his breasts” and then viciously attacking any sane soul who wanders onto the rainbow minefield and points out that there really is no such thing, strictly speaking. Those who point out that men can’t get pregnant or that getting castrated doesn’t make you a woman are instead attacked with the same ferocity with which the media have embraced this new nonsense, and thus what could once have been written off as ridiculous has become decidedly sinister. Don’t laugh, bigot, or we’ll destroy your life.

By way of example, today I spotted, for the first time, a brand-new phrase that I’d never seen before, gracing a news article from Long Island. It referred inelegantly to “genital gender confirmation surgery,” which presumably means that surgery, through creative mutilation, confirms that a vagina is now a penis, or vice versa (I won’t describe how they do these surgeries or the completed result, but let’s just say that it isn’t particularly effective nt the final product only loosely resembles what it is intended to, generally speaking). The article spoke glowingly of the surgical team at North Shore University Hospital, who stand ready to carve up physically healthy patients should they so request it.

Reading the article was a bit like reading a wartime report where the writer had to be very intentional in ensuring that nothing actually true is expressed. For example, this line: “The surgical team has already performed vaginoplasty for transgender women, which surgically constructs female genitalia out of the patients’ tissue.” You could be forgiven for not realizing that the “patients’ tissue” here referred to is, in fact, his penis, which the doctors will splice and dice until it is unrecognizable. No matter: Dr. David Whitehead told the eager press that he is “happy to work with every patient to determine how I can help them have their body better match their gender goals.”

I know it is tiresome to consistently read reminders that the press is lying to us, and doing so with a specific ideological goal. It is tiresome to constantly draw attention to it, as well. I would much rather be writing about literature, or something else I genuinely enjoy. But these are the times we live in, and we cannot stop speaking the truth, loudly and clearly. If we do not, eventually everybody will quietly knuckle under, and those who dare speak out will be “whacked” by what atheist comedian Bill Maher referred to as the LGBT “mafia.” The media may have lost its collective mind. That simply makes it all the more important that we do not do so, too.

Jonathon’s new podcast, The Van Maren Show, is dedicated to telling the stories of the pro-life and pro-family movement. In his latest episode, he interviews Alessandra Bocchi, a journalist who just returned from Hong Kong, where she was reporting on the protests. You can subscribe here and listen to the episode below: 

Featured Image

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.