Nashville massacre proves twisting language and reality has deadly consequences

By Brandon Showalter and Jeff Myers, Op-ed contributor Monday, April 10, 2023

The immense confusion that is a feature, not a bug, of gender ideology emerged this week following the devastating massacre of six people at a Nashville Christian School. 

In the aftermath of the horror, conflicting news reports emerged about the identity of the assailant, as it was unclear whether the shooter was male or female. This was due to the insertion of a “transgender” identifier and how it obfuscates the material reality of sex in favor of an amorphous “gender identity.” Indeed, this is precisely how transgenderism sows social chaos by hijacking our language, rendering it utterly unrecognizable even about the most basic of facts. 

As British lesbian feminist academic Julia Long said at a September free speech event in Bristol, “the word ‘trans’ has one function and that is to falsify reality…as soon as you have a word that can institute the lie that a man is a woman, everything is reversed.  ”Despite the term “transition,” which implies that hormone treatment or surgery can turn males into females and vice versa, most trans activists admit that the euphemistically labeled “gender affirming care” can do no such thing. Rather, they say, it is a means of creating psychological relief, sort of like smoothing wrinkles through plastic surgery or producing a winning smile through dental implants. But there is a difference—one that is huge and unbridgeable.

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Changing sex is impossible. No amount of chemical intervention or surgery can change a person’s sex. The XX chromosomes remain XX. The XY chromosomes remain XY.

But there is also damage done to language itself when we begin to refer to biological males or females by opposite sex pronouns and act as if, by our words, we can change reality. The twisting of language is a deadly serious problem.

At base, the splitting of sex and gender is a distortion of language to change how people see reality. Behind the distortion is a belief that no truths about the world can be known with certainty. Rather, truth is up to the individual. In the United States, a majority now believes this. If nothing about reality is knowable, then no meaningful difference exists between male and female (or truth or a lie, or justice or injustice, or any other distinction, for that matter). Words bear no clearly identifiable relationship to anything knowable. At root, the gender ideology battle is a battle over the very meaning of words. It is a twisting of language to change how people see the world.

While many, if not most, people understand and use the word “gender” to mean sex, gender ideologues have built an entire theoretical edifice in support of its larger aims, namely the deconstruction of sex, even its abolition. If you can convince people to observe males and females and conclude that there is no meaningful difference, you can convince them of anything.

The prefix “trans” means “to change,” and the individuals who experienced some kind of body dysmorphia that manifested in confusion about one’s sex were, until recent years, known as “transsexuals.” For many, the word connotes something extremely odd — perhaps a sexual fetish. But with the introduction of the idea that gender is malleable, people were led to question whether the distinction between male and female even exists or matters.

Because of the long-running game that activists have played to confuse the public about sex and gender, the insertion of “trans” has dulled the senses of the masses. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when the shift from what was once called “transsexuals” to “transgender” persons happened; but the shift was, we believe, a cunning one that was intended to mainstream transgenderism and even apply it to children.

The idea of a “transsexual” child still creates discomfort in many people because, at least for now, most people continue to object to the sexualization of children. To refer to a child as a transsexual would make people feel uneasy. But with the introduction of a malleable “gender,” which might be followed by the add-ons “identity” and “expression,” the term is softened and sounds less abrasive. A “transgender” child could be a pre-pubescent youth on hormone-blockers or may be just a kid who does not conform to certain gender norms and stereotypes. This murky, catch-all label for this category of people allows for the confusion to continue to metastasize.

Meanwhile, the discordance is more broadly furthered both in the child’s mind and in society because of how the use of words drifts further from the ontological reality of sex. Good-faith conversations and debates about these issues become impossible because there is no longer a common frame of reference within which to exchange ideas.

Indeed, among the most pernicious aspects of twisting language is that people are required, if they want to be socially acceptable, to participate in lies. This is not merely the modulation of language that occurs through time. It is an undoing of the very idea that the words we use refer to anything real.

The gender ideology movement insists that for humans to be free to pursue their fullest self-interest, reality itself must be deconstructed. But reality is a stubborn thing. It is knowable. It cares little about our perceptions, if those perceptions do not line up with the way things really are. In relation to sex and gender, regardless of our linguistic machinations, our sex as male or female is stamped on nearly every cell of the body. No matter what linguistic tools are employed to achieve this end, it is a vain effort that will fail.

The attack on language as an attack on reality itself is nothing new. And the confusion of language leads, inevitably, to confusion in all things.

This is an adapted excerpt from the book “Exposing the Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens from the Transgender Industry’s False Ideology” by Dr. Jeff Myers of Summit Ministries and Brandon Showalter of The Christian Post. It can be downloaded here.