Re-elected U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is kicking gendered pronouns to the curb in a bid to be the wokest Congress in history. No, really.
Late last week, House leaders announced a package of ethics and legislative reforms to kick off the 117th Congress that included stripping out gendered language referring to a representative’s family members and replacing it with gender-neutral terms to honor “all gender identities.”
If passed, there will no longer be father, mother, son, daughter, wife, husband, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, stepmother, stepfather, stepson, stepdaughter, mother-in-law, father-in-law, or any other familial term you can think of. In their place will be parent, sibling, child, child’s parent, and parent-in-law.
In addition, Democratic leadership proposes making an office of Diversity and Inclusion permanent to ensure diversity in witness panels.
As my colleague Charlotte Hayes wrote today, these weren’t the only shenanigans that marked the start of this new congressional session.
Speaker Pelosi apparently believes that killing off gendered pronouns is the way to bring equality to the rules of Congress.
Hypocrisy alert: Pelosi wants to change congressional rules, but she hasn’t even changed her own Twitter profile. In her description, she wrote: “mother, grandmother, dark chocolate connoisseur.”
This rule change is woke virtue signaling at its worst. The Speaker has said if she wins re-election this would be her last time holding the gavel. If that promise holds true, that may explain why she’s going all-in on wokeness and far-left priorities. Sadly, this is probably just the start of what we are likely to see.
The Left claims to care about diversity and inclusion, but this is only limited to race, gender, and sexual orientation. It excludes diversity of thought. Where is the celebration of the conservative women and conservatives of color who made historic gains in Congress in 2020?
Most importantly, pronouns are not the most pressing issue facing Americans. Americans are worried about feeding their families, small businesses are teetering on collapse, we need to distribute the coronavirus vaccine to hundreds of millions of Americans who want them, millions of kids have lost an entire year of educational attainment, and our foreign adversaries like China, Iran, and Russia are busy trying to undermine our economy, our freedom, and our global leadership. How about Congress passing a balanced budget?
There are so many more issues that Pelosi could concern herself with. Pronouns should not be one of them.