The New York Times latest sports article shows how far media language has shifted — using three-word phrase “non-transgender women“ instead of just saying women. This odd word-choice came up in their write-up about NCAAʼs new trans-athlete rules (where bio-males with 4x normal female testosterone can join womens teams)
Martina Navratilova who came out about 40 years ago didnt hold back her thoughts:
NYT- you stink. We are women‚ not NOT TRANSGENDER WOMEN. Just WOMEN will do in the future
The paper seems to follow a strange new-speak trend; other media outlets do it too. Sky News once wrote about a criminal case using weird grammar choices that mixed male and female words in one sentence. Even political groups joined in: the Green Party used super-complex terms like “Self identifying Non-Male Co-Chair“ (which is just a long way to say female)
JK Rowling pointed out this issue before:
People who menstruate. Iʼm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?
Former NYT writer Bari Weiss left the paper because of such issues — she said stories were picked to make happy just a tiny group of readers; not to inform everyone. Many reporters told her about feeling pressure to use specific words; like some kind of modern-day thought-police was watching them