A curious update from the Associated Press this week:
The full significance of that update may not immediately be clear. Over at the AP Stylebook we see that it's a response to a reader-submitted question:
Since there is now a lot of discussion concerning abortion access and abortion rights, I wanted to know what is the AP's guidance concerning noun and pronoun usage. For example, can we still say "a woman's right to choose" Or is that no longer allowed? Should it be changed to "a person's right to chose?"...
To which the Associated Press responds:
Phrasing like pregnant people or people who seek an abortion seeks to include people who have those experiences but do not identify as women, such as some transgender men and some nonbinarypeople. Such phrasing should be confined to stories that specifically address the experiences of people who do not identify as women.
In case it weren't clear, the AP makes it very explicit:
[W]e'd still refer to a woman's right to choose unless the story is specifically addressing the experiences of people who do not identify as women.
This is a remarkable development from the Associated Press. At a time when most major institutions in the United States simply cannot get on board with transgender ideology fast enough, the AP is in effect rebuking a significant portion of it: They're basically admitting that they're only going to use the incoherent, incorrect language of transgender ideology only in stories that deal with that ideology directly.
That's an outwardly small but still notable decision.
Transgender activists have worked furiously to have their views accepted, validated, and promoted at pretty much every level of society. Chief among those efforts have been the largely successful attempt to replace the term "pregnant woman" with "pregnant person" so that women's identities could be erased and replaced with transgender ideology.
The AP's decision to overwhelmingly utilize explicitly female language—even if it is just in the ghoulish pro-abortion genteelism of "a woman's right to choose"—should be seen as a quiet rejection of those efforts.
On its face it's a minor development. But who knows—it could end up being the start of a larger rejection of this poisonous ideology that has infected our society and ruined so many lives.
Keep an eye on the AP! Just kidding, we wouldn't ask you to suffer through that. We'll do it for you.
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