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  • 2019-01-28 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a California State Senate Committee Ban Saying 'He' and 'She'? (en)
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  • In 2017, the California Legislature passed the Gender Recognition Act, a bill sanctioning the use of a third, non-binary gender category (in addition to male and female) on driver's licenses and other state-approved forms of identification. Similar measures have been enacted in Oregon, Washington, D.C., Washington state, and Maine in recent years. In January 2019, shortly after California's gender-neutral statute took full effect, a number of conservative news outlets reported that the chairperson of the State Senate Judiciary Committee had summarily banned the use of gendered pronouns during committee hearings. Fox News posted a video clip of Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson announcing the proposed change during the committee's 17 January opening session: Watch the latest video at foxnews.com Despite the fact that Jackson never uttered the word ban in her statement (a full-length video of the committee session can be viewed here), the Daily Caller used that word to describe the change as well, quoting the disparaging reaction of Spiked Online Editor Brendan O'Neill (a guest on the Fox & Friends segment), who said the change exemplified a kind of transgender extremism: The Daily Caller, LifeSiteNews, and The Blaze all joined Fox & Friends in characterizing the motion as a prohibition on using the pronouns his and her in committee hearings and taking Jackson to task for supposedly breaking her own rule when she went on to refer to her aforementioned grammar teacher as her. The Daily Caller, for example, reported that: Utterly missing from that account was any acknowledgment of the jocular spirit of the exchange, during which Jackson did not, in fact, violate her own pronouncement. As we learned by contacting Jackson's office, the change that was proposed by her and approved by the committee pertained to the language used in the committee's rules themselves, not in the day-to-day business of the committee. Here, for example, is how the first sentence of the committee's rules read prior to the 2019 session: The Chair shall preside at meetings when present, except when the committee is considering a bill of which he or she is the sole or lead author. And this is how that same sentence now reads in accordance with the approved revision: The Chair shall preside at meetings when present, except when the committee is considering a bill of which they are the sole or lead author. Beyond that minor change, the revised 2019-20 rules do not ban, prohibit, discourage, or even mention the use of gendered pronouns during the course of committee hearings or other business. Jackson's office provided us with a statement from the senator clarifying the nature of the announced revision and its mischaracterization by various online outlets: (en)
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