Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders barred any entity of the Arkansas government from using gender-neutral terms that were created to replace female phrases.
Sanders called the words “woke” and “anti-woman” in her latest executive order.
“The science is clear and real. There are things only women can do, like perform the miracle of birth,” said Sanders in the order. “Government should reject language that ignores, undermines, and erases women; Government should celebrate gender distinctions between men and women — not erase them.”
Under the order, state government agencies are required to use “accurate, female-affirming alternatives.” This means using terms like “breastfeeding” rather than “chestfeeding,” “birth mom” instead of “birthing person” or “laboring person,” and “breast milk” rather than “human milk.” Government entities are prohibited from substituting the phrase “menstruating person or people” for “woman or women.”
The order also prohibits alternative spellings of the word women – for example, “womxn” or “womyn” – that LGBTQ advocates have deemed to be gender neutral.
“The ‘xn’ and ‘yn’ spellings were first adopted by feminists in the 1970s to remove the perceived sexism of ‘man’ from the original spelling,” notes WREG. “It has since been adopted as a more transgender-inclusive spelling.”
All government offices in Arkansas are barred from using “exclusionary, sexist language in official state government business.” The order took immediate effect.
“The Left is using nonsense words like ‘pregnant people’ to erase women and girls — and more importantly, our voices and our experiences,” wrote Sanders in a post on X on Oct. 19. “We just banned those words from Arkansas state government.”
“Biology is real. Chromosomes are real. Only women can give birth,” she concluded.
At the signing of the order, Arkansas Surgeon General Dr. Kay Chandler called the policy “common sense” and praised Sanders for taking steps to remove politically charged language from use in official government business.
“Our governor won’t let political correctness get in the way of science,” said Chandler.
Sanders has made other efforts since taking office to prevent the state government from using progressive language designed to avoid acknowledging gender. In January, she issued an executive order prohibiting state agencies from using “ethnically insensitive” terms like “Latinx.”
“Latinx” was created as a gender-neutral alternative for “Latina” or “Latino” but researchers have reported that just 3% of the American Latino community uses the term.
Sanders described the term as “pejorative language” that “has no place in official government documents or government employee titles.”
“The government has a responsibility to respect its citizens and use ethnically appropriate language, particularly when referring to ethnic minorities,” the governor wrote in her order. “One can no more easily remove gender from Spanish and other romance languages than one can remove vowels and verbs from English.”
