Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds submitted an opinion piece to the Des Moines Register earlier this month. It was about the Register’s efforts to defend the Linn-Mar School District keeping secret gender plans from parents of students in grades 7-12.
The policy has been highly controversial. And Reynolds wanted to respond to the Register’s editorial in defense of the policy.
The Register’s opinion editor, someone we believe to be a biological male called Lucas Grundmeier, planned to publish it in last Sunday’s edition. With one “substantive change…”
Grundmeier wrote:
“This sentence: Biological males will be allowed to share restrooms, locker rooms and sleeping quarters on overnight trips with girls.
“Became: Children assigned male at birth will be allowed to share restrooms, locker rooms and sleeping quarters on overnight trips with girls.
“I will not revert to the original, but if you’d prefer a different edit I will use it instead. Please let me know this afternoon.”
The Governor’s office asked Grundmeier if the statement “biological male” is factually incorrect. Keep in mind this is an opinion piece, meant to convey the opinion of the author.
Grundmeier wrote it isn’t a question of accuracy. And that while the Register isn’t bound by the AP Stylebook, it is “the starting point” of how the Register handles “topics” where “language itself is part of the political debate.”
What the hell are these people talking about? Biological boy describing someone who was born a boy is now a “political debate.” These people have lost it — if they ever had it to begin with.
The AP Stylebook, as The Iowa Standard regularly points out, counsels against using a phrase such as “biological male.” Not because all males are biological males as science would suggest, but because it wants “unbiased language.”
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Grundmeier noted the Register has quoted Reynolds, Representatives Skyler Wheeler and Sandy Salmon as using the apparently “biased term” biological males in the past year. And they even wrote it themselves frequently in older stories, he said.
Grundmeier noted there is not a prohibition on the scientifically accurate term “biological male,” he agrees with the guideline that it “needlessly reduces people to their physical characteristics.”
Who does this guy think he is?
Grundmeier asked for a counterproposal, instead the Governor’s office withdrew the piece. You can read it here.
This is insane. At any other point in human history if someone took exception to the term “biological male” and insisted we label them as someone who was “assigned male at birth” the human race would have never again taken that person seriously — about anything. Ever.
Yet this is the opinion editor for the USA Today networks here in Iowa. And this isn’t his only recent display of insanity.
Grundmeier refused to allow a letter to be published because it cited the World Climate Declaration, which includes 1,100 scientists and professionals who declared there is no climate emergency.
He wrote:
“I will not permit the Tribune’s platform to be used to lend credibility to such disinformation as the World Climate Declaration.”
It’s an opinion piece. It is someone else’s opinion — not the Register’s, not USA Today’s. Hell, keep in mind it is USA Today that published a piece about referring to pedophiles as “minor-attracted persons” in an effort to destigmatize pedophilia.
The Register isn’t even allowing people to share their own opinions using their own language. There is nothing vulgar about biological males.
Aren’t these the same people who implored everyone else to “trust the science” literally a year or two ago?
We should note, as we say everywhere we go, the AP Stylebook is essentially a journalist’s Bible. Small-town weekly papers, big-city daily papers, TV networks — nearly everyone uses the AP Stylebook. And language matters.
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I would send it back to Register with proposed edit:
“Children assigned male at the moment of conception , by God, who endowed the child with biological male XY Chromosome DNA , leading to the formation of male phenotype reproductive organs (penis and testes) by the baby in utero , witnessed and recorded by delivering medical professional licensed by the State of Iowa , Department of Public Health , on official birth certificate issued by the same department , which lawfully answers to me , The Honorable and Beautiful Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds, according to the Constitution of Our Great State , and not the style guide of the AP or editor of a paper which does little more in the eyes of the majority of the electorate than peddle leftist propaganda.”
[…] A couple of weeks ago we detailed how the Des Moines Register refused to publish an op-ed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds over her use of the scientific term “biological boy.” […]
[…] that refused to print an op-ed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds because she used the term “biological boys” instead of children assigned male gender at […]