The White House has announced that it will not engage with reporters who use gender pronouns in their inquiries. White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt said she refuses to talk to those media representatives who use such pronouns in their electronic signatures. About this informs Washington Post.
“Any reporter who chooses to add whatever pronouns they prefer to their bio clearly doesn’t care about biological reality or truth, and therefore can’t be trusted to write an honest story.” Levitt said.
The White House did not respond to follow-up questions from reporters about when exactly the policy was implemented, nor did it specify whether it applies to all official communications with reporters outside the press office. So far, at least one journalist with the specified pronouns in the signature has recently received responses from administration officials.
Specifying pronouns—such as “he,” “she,” or the neutral “they”—is practiced by non-binary people and others to avoid misgendering, that is, being mistakenly addressed as inconsistent with their gender identity.
In many fields, this practice has become common in recent years, both in person and in e-mail. At the same time, Republican politicians actively oppose such a norm. Some of them have even proposed legislative initiatives that limit the use of pronouns in the school environment.
We will remind that on January 20, the administration of US President Donald Trump told federal institutions to stop using any functions in official letters that involve the indication of pronouns. On the day of his inauguration, Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the United States officially recognizes only two genders — female and male.
