CNN reported Tuesday “it’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.”
The article, which highlighted executive orders from South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem that bar male athletes from competition in women’s sports without an enforcement mechanism, is advertised by the network as “news” written by CNN breaking news reporter Devan Cole, rather than opinion.
“Though the two executive orders signed by Noem do not explicitly mention transgender athletes, they reference the supposed harms of the participation of ‘males’ in women’s athletics,” Cole wrote, describing them as “an echo of the transphobic claim, cited in other similar legislative initiatives, that transgender women are not women.”
The orders, Cole continued, “also reference ‘biological sex,’ a disputed term that refers to the sex as listed on students’ original birth certificates.”
Male and female distinctions then, according to CNN, are a mirage of the imagination.
The same network ran ads encouraging viewers to identify certain fruits as they appear, in which apples and bananas were metaphorical symbols for facts. The transcript and the ad are below: