CNN Demonstrates Logical Incoherence in Contemporary Gender Theory

In their coverage of legislation that is moving forward in many states to protect girls’ sports, two separate CNN journalists, here and here, have used precisely the same language to challenge something that until two minutes ago, everyone thought was one of the most basic fundamental truths about being human: how we know people are either male or female. The first story reported on girl’s protection efforts in Arkansas and Tennessee and the second addressed South Dakota’s.

Both articles claim, remarkably, that there is no clear way to determine whether a newborn baby is male or female. Both articles originally stated “there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” You can see each for yourself here:

This raises the question of which CNN journalist plagiarized the other in using precisely the same language in their stories. Or could it be that a CNN editor simply inserted a carefully constructed trans talking point in both? These are serious questions, as it is certainly more than an embarrassing coincidence.

However hours after publication, CNN editors surreptitiously changed both articles’ language with the imprecise clarification that “This story has been updated to provide additional explanation as to the distinction between gender and sex” as evidenced here:

Their new version changed what you see above to now state, “…and for some people, the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have.”

One would assume CNN editors heard from more than a few readers and discovered there is indeed a very clear and reliable “consensus criteria” for determining sex at birth and deleted their silly claim that there was not.

But CNN still insists, in both articles, that birth certificates are untrustworthy and “misleading” vehicles in describing one’s sex. They are not the only serious source to make this novel claim.

Remarkably the New England Journal of Medicine made a similar but utterly baseless claim in December 2020. Both claims are rooted, not in science, but solely in fashionable and ever-changing gender ideology which claims that while male and female are mere social constructs, as Gender Studies 101 wrongly holds. But if you simply believe you are the opposite of what your male DNA-laden body says you are, then you really are an actual woman and no one better try to tell you otherwise.

Yes, contemporary gender theory really is that inconsistent. And these kinds of logical and editorial conflicts happen when you are just making up a new philosophy about what it means to be male or female on the fly.  

Dr. Margaret Harper McCarthy, a professor of theological anthropology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute at the Catholic University of American in Washington DC, addressed precisely what is going on here this week in a very important piece over at The Wall Street Journal.  She explains how the new gender efforts we are seeing in society are at direct war with reality itself, referencing noted political philosopher Hannah Arendt who observed that “Modern ideology is characterized by the knowledgeable dismissal of the visible.” And so it is.

When you are making up a wholly new reality, as gender theorist currently are, you have tell people what they know to be plainly true is not true. This is what CNN is now trying to do in applying trans-friendly boiler-plate language about what it means to be human as male and female into their stories and then needing to secretly change what they said in the same day. When you are simply making up a new reality about being human, you are bound to get your story mixed up. That is precisely what CNN demonstrated this week in these two instances.  

Photo from Shutterstock