Gender Neutrality in the House

There has been a lot of discussion this week surrounding gender neutrality in the House of Representatives. Multiple articles highlighted the United States House of Representatives’ recent policy change to include gender-neutral terms in their official language. This policy change does not completely eliminate the use of gendered language, but rather it enforces gender-neutral terms for specific, official language in the House rules. For example, instead of using the word “Chairman”, the term “Chair” will be applied. While the language change was supposed to promote diversity and inclusion in order to “honor all gender identities”, it came with criticism from multiple conservatives.

Fox Nation host, Tammy Bruce, commented, “Let’s not think this is some passive thing. Some might say radical. I say obscenely Marxist.” Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard stated, “…This recent rule change that the House just actually voted and passed on today removing references to mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters from congressional rules and administration, it’s mind-blowing because it shows just how out of touch with reality and the struggles of everyday Americans people in Congress are.” She continued to state the rule change is “denying the very biological existence of women”; however, an article called out Gabbard’s transphobic rhetoric. Other articles about upset Republicans mentioned Republicans’ confusion surrounding gender-neutral pronouns as they often mixed them up with gender-neutral nouns. Overall, multiple conservative sites, big and small, took this recent policy change as an attack and voiced concerns about political correctness.