The widespread adoption of compulsory, or at least strongly encouraged, use of preferred pronouns emerged prominently in the mid-to-late 2010s in the US, in academia, corporate media, and workplaces, as well as mass media and popular culture. It was not a gradual but rather a rapid cultural and institutional shift driven by evolving interpretations of anti-discrimination laws. That was the cover, in any case. The charge was that accurately sexing a person was “misgendering” them, an Orwellian inversion that, in a hegemonic context, manufactured a reality that people could actually be a different sex than they were. The science is clear on the matter: they can’t.
People should pause and consider the significance of widespread mandatory actual misgendering, that is, referring to men using feminine pronouns and women using masculine pronouns. It was as if someone flipped a switch, and suddenly all the major sense-making institutions began referring to men with feminine pronouns—and women with masculine pronouns. A thing like that doesn’t happen by accident, and the claim that it was rooted in anti-discrimination laws is not a compelling explanation. Powerful people met in rooms and talked about something. Organizations drafted and disseminated directives and memos, instructing administrators and employees to use preferred pronouns that contradicted biological sex. Those who refused to comply with the falsehood were shamed and disciplined. Before we knew it, newspapers were referring to male serial killers as women if they identified themselves as such. Men who said they were women were sent to women’s prisons. (See Why We Must Resist Neologisms like “Cisgender”.)
This was not the first time that elites engaged in a systematic, comprehensive program to reeducate the population at the flip of a switch. The widespread adoption of “Ms.” in the 1970s closely parallels the rise of preferred pronouns. To people living through the change, it felt abrupt, yet decades of debates about marital-status titles, women in the workforce, and legal equality had quietly laid the groundwork. An even clearer example is the singular “they.” The singular they had been discouraged in formal grammar for centuries. In the 2010s, style guides began endorsing it. It changed so rapidly that, in 2019, Merriam-Webster named it “Word of the Year.” Shortly before then, I was scolded in a meeting for correcting a document that used “they” as singular. I sat there thinking: I missed the memo on this.
George Orwell captures the technique in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four with the phrase “Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” In the story, the world is divided into three totalitarian superstates that are locked in a state of perpetual war: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The ruling Party of Oceania maintains control by manipulating the truth through “doublethink,” propaganda, and surveillance. During Hate Week, a massive public rally where citizens are whipped into frenzy against the current enemy, it is reinforced that Oceania, allied with Eastasia, is officially at war with Eurasia. Mid-speech, during a fiery denunciation of Eurasia, the speaker receives a note from the Party leadership announcing a sudden switch: the war is now with Eastasia, and Eurasia is the ally. Without acknowledging the change, the speaker continues the rant, now directed at Eastasia, while the crowd cheers as if nothing has shifted.
The Party in Orwell’s nightmare retroactively alters all records, newspapers, and history itself to claim that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and never with Eurasia. Any evidence or memory to the contrary is erased or dismissed as “thoughtcrime.” This Orwellian revisionism—or “rectification” in the novel’s terms—speaks to the Party’s power to control the past, and thus to control the present and future. The people have been conditioned in doublethink, the ability to accept two contradictory realities at once (e.g., knowing the enemy changed yesterday but believing it has always been this way). Orwell is describing gaslighting on a societal scale: The regime forces the population to deny their own memories—and their common sense—and accept fabricated history, eroding independent thought. (See When Thinking Becomes Unthinkable: Motivated Reasoning and the Memory Hole; Industrial Strength Gaslighting; The Project to Gaslight the Masses is Massive and Comprehensive.)
Today, while a majority of Americans never fully accepted the lie that mammals, the class to which humans belong, can change their gender, recent surveys show that a concerning portion of those under 30 still hold related misconceptions about biology. This makes it more important than ever to declare the truth: sex is binary and immutable. It falls to all of us to help deprogram those still caught in the lie. We’re seeing the effects of this deprogramming across the Western world, as more medical institutions move away from so-called gender-affirming care. The Orwellian euphemisms are collapsing. But we must not rest on our laurels. Madness has a way of adapting to conditions. That it has to still adapt is promising.
And madness it is. The switch that flipped gender justified—and still does—altering physiology and performing irreversible surgeries in the medical-industrial complex, pushing gender-identity doctrine in public education. The scope of the gender project is astonishing. And while we’re making progress in reclaiming truth and common sense, that only means trans activists will become even more militant in demanding acceptance of their claims (the ACLU is suing the state of Kansas to restore the power of transgender individuals to falsify official documents). The reason for our progress is simple: people began speaking up despite intense pressure to conform. As soon as I recognized it was a lie, I had to speak out—I didn’t want to look back years later and regret my silence. Courage is contagious, they say. The more people speak up, the more others feel empowered to stand on the ground of truth. (The same dynamic applies to DEI and other forms of identitarianism.) Progress will be retarded if we take our foot off the gas. (See The Emperor is Naked: The Problems of Mutual Knowledge and Free Feelings; Wokism and the Naked Truth.)
Today, thankfully, woke progressivism is on the run, which is why Democrats are desperate to block election-integrity efforts. They look ever more ridiculous as they cling to their big lies. But it bears repeating: we can never underestimate their power. After all, consider what they accomplished. It will take decades to unwind the damage. I feel deep sympathy for those drawn into the vortex of this lie, now unable to undo the drastic, irreversible alterations done to their bodies. It is a crime against humanity, reminiscent of the Nazi doctors’ experiments, which is why I continue calling for a new round of Nuremberg-style trials. Stopping the madness and pretending everything is fine is not enough. Those responsible must be held accountable to ensure it never happens again. That we have not put the officials who imposed the COVID-19 pandemic controls on trial is a travesty of justice. They will pull that stunt again.
Critics will no doubt respond that all of this—the mandatory pronoun usage, the reclassification of male criminals in official records, the institutional insistence on affirming self-identified gender—is merely an expression of the simple, humane command to “be kind” (see The Problem of Empathy and the Pathology of “Be Kind”). Yet this very objection is itself a familiar tactic of rectification: by framing dissent as unkindness, the Party shifts the debate from truth to tone, from biological reality to emotional etiquette. To question the decree becomes not an appeal to evidence or reason, but an act of cruelty; to notice the contradiction is to lack compassion. (See In Exposing the Counterrevolution, Grasping Strategy is as Important to Debunking Ideas.)
In this way, the demand for kindness functions as a shield for the underlying mechanism of control, discouraging scrutiny of the rapid, top-down rewriting of language, law, and common sense. Far from being an innocent plea for courtesy, it is the latest euphemism deployed to silence those who refuse to participate in the manufacture of a new, state-sanctioned reality—one that requires us all to deny what our eyes and biology plainly show. True kindness, in the end, does not demand that we lie to one another; it demands that we tell the truth, even when the truth is uncomfortable. Even if truth-telling necessitates ridicule. (See Mocking Nonsense: A Defense of Ridicule in an Age of Bad Faith.)
It’s not yet 1984. We came close to crossing the threshold. Donald Trump was re-elected in the nick of time (see The Trump Administration Takes a Stand Against Genital Mutilation; The Significance of Trump’s Executive Orders on Gender Ideology and DEI). The Party—the Democratic Party—is a wannabe Big Brother. Winston caved. We can’t. Beware of dissimulation, the act of disguising one’s true identity, intentions, and thoughts. Democrats may appear to moderate their politics. But it is an appearance; the Party is fully committed to the managed decline of the American Republic. They pine for Airstrip One. Also, beware AI, which is becoming a de facto Ministry of Truth. Learn how to deceive the algorithm (see Professors, Propaganda, and the De Facto Ministry of Truth).
freedom and reason 