By Andrea Widburg
In 1984, George Orwell essentially predicted the internet, envisioning a world in which all information is stored electronically. Winston Smith’s Ministry of Information job has him recovering back issues of The Times and “correcting” to Big Brother’s past predictions to align with present realities. Someone at the BBC was taking notes because, in an article quoting a rape victim, the BBC altered to “they/them” the masculine pronouns she used when talking about her rapist because the rapist claims to be “transgender.” Understanding why the BBC did this is important if we want to understand the latest phase in the leftist war on the West.
The facts describes pure journalistic fraud:
The quote, given by an anonymous lesbian, initially read: “I was too young to argue and had been brainwashed by queer theory, so he was a ‘woman’ even if every [fiber] of my being was screaming throughout, so I agreed to go home with him. He used physical force when I changed my mind upon seeing his penis and raped me.”
A source for The Times claimed the story first contained all male references, but a heated editorial meeting involving “woke” employees at the news website led to a change of language.
“Some journalists argued that the quote should remain intact, while others said it should reflect the trans woman’s preferred she/her pronouns,” The Times reported.
The language alterations were done to an October 2021 article discussing how transgender women believe that lesbians are transphobic because they are typically not romantically, or sexually interested in them.
This was not a situation in which a BBC journalist violated the outlet’s woke policies by properly identifying a “transgender woman” (i.e., a man pretending to be a woman) as “he” or “him.” Instead, the BBC deliberately altered the truth—that the woman quoted used the pronouns ‘he,’ ‘his,’ and ‘him’—to create an artificial reality consistent with its dystopian mindset.
We’ve long known, though, that the BBC is a propaganda outlet rather than a news organization (something obvious to Israel’s supporters decades ago), so why does this story matter? It matters because it reveals how significant transgenderism, which is ubiquitous today, is to the left. So, again, we must ask “why”? Here’s my best guess about the answer to that question.
The new left’s greatest enemy is the Bible. That’s because the Bible and the Western culture flowing from it stand for a few ideas make it impossible for the left to achieve total dominance:
There is a God. Under leftism, there can be no authority greater than the state, with the anthropomorphism of the state embodied in the current leader (e.g., Kim Jong Un).
There are fixed moral principles: The Ten Commandments do not change according to the political needs of the day or power struggles within the party. Leftism is purely relativistic because morality, like everything else on the left, is tied to power.
The individual has value: The Bible says each of us is created in God’s image, with the corollary being we all have inestimable worth. Socialism, however, is predicated on collectivism, with individuals’ value determined by their utility to the state.
The family unit: The Western Biblical tradition is built around the nuclear family, which is the antithesis of the state. In a family, each person matters and the family unit will fight the state if need be (witness angry mamas at school boards) to protect the family.
All these principles underly America’s foundational documents: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Leftists tried to destroy the western Biblical tradition by pointing to Western racism. However, religious people ultimately agreed, saying the equivalent of “You know, you’re right because the Bible says that we are all equal before God in whose image we’re made.”
Leftists also tried to use feminism to attack the western Bible tradition. Again, though, religious people agreed (“You know, you’re right. Not only are we all equal before God in whose image we’re made, but Eve came from Adam’s rib, meaning she is neither above nor below him but equal to him, although different from him.”)
The attack on gender, though, may be the one that succeeds in destroying entirely the Biblical tradition that underpins our Constitution and everything else that is Western culture. If the left succeeds in undermining the entire concept of gender, there is no way to align that with the Bible.
The Bible is clear: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” and “Male and female created he them; and blessed them….” There is no third gender in the Bible. If leftists can succeed in changing reality to “prove” that the Bible is wrong as to the most fundamental aspect of human life and that which flows from it (individualism, morality, family), it has discredited the Bible entirely. Leftism wins.
And that’s why it matters that the BBC committed fraud against its readers by changing the rapist’s pronouns.