Language games: How a major newspaper changed way to describe women
A well-known US newspaper uses strange new words to describe female athletes in sports coverage. Famous sports stars and writers speak up against odd language choices in modern media
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
