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A knowledge question is a question about knowledge, rather than focusing in on specific content or situations; it is an open-ended question, so you cannot answer it with a simple yes or no; it is general, meaning it is not specific to a subject.​​

Using the KQ in the top left corner of this screen, find another Real-Life Situation (RLS) that relates to the KQ in the same way the debate over a hotdog being a sandwich relates to the KQ.  Attach and then briefly describe your RLS and then explain why it relates to the KQ.  See the first column for an example.

Note:  Make sure you add your name to your post!

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This article is about how Democrats in Texas want to bring back straight-ticket voting.  This is where a ballot has the option to vote for everyone of a particular party.  For example, a voter would check "Democrat" and that would cast a vote for every Democratic candidate (President, Senate, House, etc.).  This relates to the KQ because many people choose to relate their opinions on issues by aligning with a certain political party.  The labels help them to describe their political viewpoints.

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A federal judge on Wednesday threw out Democrats' effort to reinstate the straight-ticket voting option in Texas.

Siding with the state, U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo found that Democrats lacked standing to challenge Texas Republicans' decision to kill straight-ticket voting ahead of the November general election. The judge dismissed the federal lawsuit after ruling that Democrats' claims of the electoral fallout that could come from eliminating straight-ticket voting were too speculative.

The Texas Democratic Party - joined by the chair of the Webb County Democratic Party and the Democratic campaign arms of the U.S. Senate and House - filed the lawsuit in March on the heels of Super Tuesday voting that left some Texans waiting for hours to cast their ballots.

They claimed the elimination of straight-ticket voting is unconstitutional and intentionally discriminatory because the longer lines and waiting times it is expected to cause would be disproportionately felt at polling places that serve Hispanic and Black voters.

The popular practice allowed voters to mark their support for all of the candidates of either party in a general election by simply picking a straight-ticket option at the top of a ballot.

Most states don't allow for one-punch voting, but its elimination in Texas met intense opposition from Democrats who feared the change would be most felt among voters of color and lead to voter drop-off, particularly in blue urban counties that have the longest ballots in the state. Texas Republican lawmakers championed a change to the law during the 2017 legislative session, arguing it would compel voters to make more-informed decisions because they would have to make a decision on every race on a ballot.

The change was signed into law almost three years ago, but a last-minute change to the legislation delayed its implementation until this year's general election. Starting in November, candidates will still be listed with their party affiliation, but voters will have to select each candidate individually.

In her order, Garcia Marmolejo ruled that that Democrats' predictions about the negative effects the lack of straight-ticket voting would have on voters and the election process were "uncertain to occur." She also found fault with their assumptions that the Texas secretary of state and local officials would not work to "ameliorate the situation."

Garcia Marmolejo also pointed to the likelihood that in-person voting would be transformed by the new coronavirus, which has led to long lines in other states where elections have already occurred during the pandemic, regardless of whether straight-ticket voting was eliminated.

"Considering the pandemic has already caused long lines at polling-places, many Texans will endure longer lines at polling places indefinitely, irrespective of any order issued by this Court," she wrote. "And other Texans will experience shorter lines given that voters have been encouraged to steer clear from in-person voting where possible."
Disclosure: The Texas secretary of state has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Federal court tosses suit brought by Texas Democrats seeking to revive straight-ticket voting

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A federal judge on Wednesday threw out Democrats' effort to reinstate the straight-ticket voting option in Texas. Siding with the state, U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo found that Democrats lacked standing to challenge Texas Republicans' decision to kill straight-ticket voting ahead of the November general election.

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This article discusses all the labeling factors that contribute to college applications. Students don't always know how to classify themselves on paper, especially given such a multitude of different backgrounds and identities. Moreover, some universities have received backlash for race-conscious admissions, such as the federal lawsuit against Harvard for discrimination against Asian-American applicants. This relates to the KQ because labels within college applications may restrict some students from being admitted.

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This article labels human activities as destructive or polluting, these terms help distinguish industries so that modern politicians can help change all aspects of corporate law to eco friendly methods. It also helps differentiate types of pollution that different industries contribute to further isolating issues.

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The environment can get contaminated in a number of different ways.

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In this wonderful article from Fox News, Tucker Carlson describes how Identity Politics is a scam that is deceiving Americans by distorting their perception of their place in the world

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Bernie Sanders is running for president again, not that he ever really stopped. Sanders announced his second campaign this morning in a ten-minute video. Before you drop everything and watch it, take half a moment to appreciate just how much America and the Democratic Party have changed over the past four years.

Pull up Sanders' first presidential announcement speech. It was May 26, 2015 in Burlington, Vermont. Sanders looked a lot different then, but the second thing you will notice, if you watch it is how familiar his words sound. It is spooky.

Virtually, all of the themes in Sanders' announcement speech, his first one, or what in the end got Donald Trump elected president -- the collapse of the middle class, the crushing cost of health care and student loans, the pointlessness of perpetual war in the Middle East, the distorting effects of the Washington lobbyists and donors - the swamp, the dangers of corporate power and the need for better jobs and higher wages for Americans, the generational disaster that is the trade policy -- it is all there, everything but build a wall.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM TUCKER CARLSON
Sanders has often described the 1970s era as socialist and that is basically true. He honeymooned in the Soviet Union. He looks like he combs his hair with a balloon, but if you listen carefully, what Bernie Sanders was really selling in the last campaign was not Marxism, it was economic populism and an awful lot of people agreed with it.

Many of them wound up voting for Donald Trump in the general election. In case you have forgotten, here is what Bernie Sanders said back then:

I am fighting to break up the large banks on Wall Street. (Cheering and applause) But I do want the opportunity to tell them face-to-face what their greed and illegal behavior has done to this country. (Cheering and applause) If Wall Street does not end its greed, we will end it for them.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FULL EPISODE
Well, you can disagree about whether Wall Street and the big banks are really driving America's decline, like all politicians -- Sanders was and is an over-stayer -- but looking back, there was something touchingly old fashioned about the way Bernie Sanders ran that campaign.

Sanders made no appeal at all to interest groups. He explicitly opposed interest groups. He instead talked about national unity and the people left behind. His first announcement speech did not mention the words "racism" or "sexism" or for that matter, "abortion" or "gun control." He said nothing about immigration or noncitizens.

Sanders was running for Americans -- all of them -- whether you would agree with him or not.

Needless to say, Sanders quickly found himself at war with Democrats. The modern Democratic Party has no place for the idea of nationhood. It rejects the existence of universal interests and values. Instead of a common American culture, Democrats see only tribes.

Now, Bernie Sanders is pushing 80 and he seems completely bewildered by these changes in attitude.

In the weeks after 2016 election, Sanders told one reporter that Hillary Clinton lost the race because "It's not good enough to say, 'I am a woman, vote for me.'" Well, Sanders was right,obviously. But he was way too late.

Modern Democrats are defined by identity politics, that's the idea that the accident of your birth determines what your worth, your value. Some groups are favored, others are blamed and punished. What matters isn't what you do, the choices that you make. What matters is who you are genetically. By the time Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court six months ago, the Democrats had made this entirely explicit. Here are a few examples:

JOHN GARAMENDI, FORMER UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE: Women across this nation should be outraged at what these white men senators are doing to this woman.

ELIE MYSTAL, HOST, LEGAL TALK NETWORK: This is all gross strategizing from 11 old white men.

A. SCOTT BOLDEN, ATTORNEY: It is a white man strategy that is politically dumb, in my opinion.

JOY BEHAR, HOST, THE VIEW: These people in Congress right now in the Senate Judiciary Committee, these white man, old, by the way, are not protecting women.

Old, white men. Not a favored group in the modern Democratic Party to put it mildly, and yet Bernie Sanders is undeniably all three of those things. So how do you win the nomination of a party that hates you for qualities that you can't change?

Bernie Sanders is not the only Democrat facing this dilemma, far from it, nor is he the only one to realize that there is only one solution, you have to embrace identity politics. Getting woke is the only option, so Bernie Sanders has done just that. Here is this excerpts from his second presidential announcement video which was released on Tuesday:

"Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice. Our campaign is about redoubling our efforts to end racism, sexism, homophobia, religious bigotry, and all forms of discrimination."

So that is the new Bernie Sanders, and he seems a lot smaller than the old version. Instead of saving America from predatory global capitalism, Sanders plans to save us from Donald Trump's racism and sexism.

OK, let's say he does that. What then? Racism and sexism aren't actually the biggest problems that America faces, sorry, not even close, actually. Growing economic stratification and a dying middle class, those are the biggest problems, but nobody in Washington wants to talk about those things and why would they? People in Washington are richer than ever.

Any change of the status quo is a threat to them by definition. It is much better for them to have the population squabble over unresolvable questions of identity. A nation that is arguing about skin color is not asking how a tiny group of people is now flying private while almost everybody else has gotten poorer.

So identity politics is a tactic designed to prevent conversations dangerous to the ruling class, obviously. It is also a way for some of the most privileged people in America to recast themselves as victims.

Cory Booker, for example, Cory Booker went to Stanford, Oxford, and Yale. His parents were IBM executives. Booker has spent most of his career in the Senate carrying water for his fellow privileged people, his peers on Wall Street.

Privileged? Yes, Cory Booker defines that word. Now that he's running for president, it will be interesting to hear Cory Booker explain why he has allowed his friends in the finance world to continue to pay half the tax rate that you are probably paying now, but he likely doesn't want to talk about that.

Instead, he will probably spend most of his time talking about racism, including the racism he has personally experienced as a powerless person. -- A powerless person who went to Stanford, Oxford, and Yale and whose parents were IBM executives.

So you can see what is going on here. This is a scam. Identity politics is a scam and it is not so different from the one that Jussie Smollett just pulled.

Smollett a rich actor with a hit TV show. That is fine. We used to call people like that "pampered," but Smollett doesn't want to be thought of as pampered -- and nobody does really -- so here he recast himself as a victim.

The people oppressing him, he told us, were Trump voters. Badly educated thugs from some rural backwater probably, in-breeds who have never read a book. People who do not have Kamala Harris' personal cellphone number. People who probably don't even believe in global warming or like Thai food. Those people. They are the problem and they must be crushed.

Somehow, the left is telling us the weak are now oppressing the strong. That is their claim. The old left would have pushed back against this. They would have felt some sympathy for the people our economy has left behind, but not anymore. The new left reveres Cory Booker and Barack Obama. They are rallying behind Jussie Smollett. Once Smollett's fraud was exposed, they defended him without saying so.

Here's what Cory Booker said, "Well, the information is still coming out and I am going to withhold until all of the information actually comes out from on-the-record sources."
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
And Kamala Harris, "OK, so I will say this about that case. I think that the facts are still unfolding, and once the investigation is concluded, then we can all comment, but I'm not going to comment until I know the outcome of the investigation."

So no one can admit that Jussie Smollett is not a victim. He is a rich guy who played the victim and blamed other people. Now, nobody has asked Bernie Sanders about that story. But he would probably say the same thing. He has to say that, it is required now.

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Tucker Carlson: Identity politics is a scam and it's not so different from the one Jussie Smollett just pulled

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Bernie Sanders is running for president again, not that he ever really stopped. Sanders announced his second campaign this morning in a ten-minute video. Before you drop everything and watch it, take half a moment to appreciate just how much America and the Democratic Party have changed over the past four years.

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This article talks about how income and wealth are labeled in America. It explains how Americans truly don't understand how much wealth the top has and how little the bottom has. They also compare the general term "wealth" to blind tasting of wine because when you blind test wine you have nothing to base it on and have to use your senses. The same thing happens in society, we use our current position and labels that politicians give us to define wealth.

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There have been lots of questions and discussions recently about inequality and economists often argue about what is the right level of inequality to have in society.

But Mike Norton, professor at Harvard Business School, and I decided to take a different path and we decided to ask people what inequality they would want.

Now, there are lots of ways to ask this question and we used the philosopher John Rawls.

Rawls said that "a just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you'd be willing to enter it in a random place". And it's really a beautiful definition.

He called it a veil of ignorance, because if you're very wealthy, you might want the wealthy people to have lots of money and the poor to have very little; and if you are very poor, you might want the poor to have more money and the wealthy to have less.

But in Rawls' definition, you don't know where you'll end up, you have to consider all the different options and therefore you have to think about what is good for society as a whole.

Incomprehension

So, we took the American society and we asked people to imagine it divided into five buckets, the wealthiest 20%, the next 20%, the next, the next and the poorest 20%.

First of all, we asked people: how much wealth do you think is concentrated in each of those buckets?

It turns out people get it very wrong.

Even Americans understand that inequality is not a good idea and principle

The reality is that the bottom two buckets together, the bottom 40% of Americans, own 0.3% of the wealth; 0.3%, almost nothing, whereas the top 20% own about 84% of the wealth.

And people don't understand it. They don't understand how much wealth the top have and in particular, they don't understand how little the bottom has.

But then we described to people Rawls' definition, the veil of ignorance, and the idea they could end up anywhere. And we said: What society would you like to create? How much wealth? How would you like to distribute the wealth?

And it turns out people created a society that is much more equal than any society on Earth. It was much more equal than Sweden.

Blind tasting

In fact, when we did this experiment another way and we showed people two distributions of wealth, one based on the wealth distribution in the US and the other based on the wealth distribution that is more equal than Sweden, 92% of Americans picked the improved Swedish distribution.

So this suggests to me that when people take a step away from their own position and their own current state, and when people look at society in general terms, in abstract terms, Americans want a much more equal society.

There is one more interesting thing to this: 93% of Democrats picked the improved Swedish model, compared with 90.5% of Republicans. Different, but not very different.

And all this makes me wonder, how can it be that in our studies people seem to want such equal society but when you look at the political ideology, people don't seem to want that?

And I think it is a little bit like blind tasting of wine.

When you taste wine and you know the label and you know the price, you are going to be influenced by that. And when you are tasting wine in a blind way, now you don't have anything to base it on and you have to really use your senses.

I think the same thing happens with thoughts about just societies. When we are in the regular world, we are using our current position, our ideology and the labels that politicians give us, and they obscure reality and obscure what we really want.

But Rawls' definition really lets us strip all this away, lets us focus on what is really important and how people actually want something very different from what we have.

The question, of course, is how do we get people to think about this to a higher degree and how do we get them to act on that for a better future?
Dan Ariely is the James B Duke professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University in North Carolina. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not held by the BBC unless specifically stated. The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Links to external sites are for information only and do not constitute endorsement. Always obtain independent, professional advice for your own particular situation.

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How Americans view wealth and inequality

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There have been lots of questions and discussions recently about inequality and economists often argue about what is the right level of inequality to have in society. But Mike Norton, professor at Harvard Business School, and I decided to take a different path and we decided to ask people what inequality they would want.

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This article describes the hardships ex-cons go through when trying to get a job. When filling out a resume you have to check a box if you are a criminal or not, and once the box is checked your chances to get the job are at a high risk. Once labeled as a criminal, your life is changed forever.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/exqd4e/why-is-getting-a-job-after-prison-still-such-a-nightmare-429

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This article kind of goes into the label of being black and what that means. Some may categorize being black as your skin color, while others believe being black also has to do with the struggles you face and your connection to certain things. Some other people are trying to find a certain term for this.

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The push to capitalize black to refer to African-Americans is far more than a typographical change.

The prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement has helped reignite the debate over the capitalization of the word black. Above, protests continued last week following the killing by the police of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. Credit... Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times

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It's the difference between black and Black. A longtime push by African-American scholars and writers to capitalize the word black in the context of race has gained widespread acceptance in recent weeks and unleashed a deep debate over identity, race and power.

Hundreds of news organizations over the past month have changed their style to Black in reference to the race of people, including The Associated Press, long considered an influential arbiter of journalism style. Far more than a typographical change, the move is part of a generations-old struggle over how best to refer to those who trace their ancestry to Africa.

The capitalization of black, which has been pushed for years, strikes at deeper questions over the treatment of people of African descent, who were stripped of their identities and enslaved in centuries past, and whose struggles to become fully accepted as part of the American experience continue to this day.

"Blackness fundamentally shapes any core part of any black person's life in the U.S. context, and really around the world," said Brittney Cooper, an associate professor at Rutgers University whose latest book, "Eloquent Rage," explores black feminism. "In the choice to capitalize, we are paying homage to a history with a very particular kind of political engagement."

The move toward Black is not embraced by all African-Americans, and two of the country's major news outlets, The New York Times and The Washington Post, are still wrestling over whether to make the change.

"Black is a color," said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the longtime civil rights leader who popularized the term "African-American" in an effort to highlight the cultural heritage of those with ancestral ties to Africa. "We built the country through the African slave trade. African-American acknowledges that. Any term that emphasizes the color and not the heritage separates us from our heritage."

There are also concerns that turning black into a proper noun lumps people of the African diaspora into a monolithic group and erases the diversity of their experiences. Some have said it bestows credibility upon a social construct created to oppress black people. Perhaps the most notable concern is what to do about white and brown as racial identifiers.

So far, most news organizations have declined to capitalize white, generally arguing that it is an identifier of skin color, not shared experience, and that white supremacist groups have adopted that convention.

But some scholars say that to write "Black" but not "White" is to give white people a pass on seeing themselves as a race and recognizing all the privileges they get from it.

"Whiteness is not incidental," the sociologist Eve Ewing wrote on Twitter in arguing to capitalize white as well. She added: "Whiteness is a thing. Whiteness is endowed with social meaning that allows people to move through the world in a way that people who are not white are not able to do."

At a recent online meeting of Race/Related, a cross-desk team devoted to race coverage at The Times, a discussion of whether to capitalize black or not made clear that there is not universal agreement, even among African-Americans on the staff.

"It has been the subject of a lively and surprising debate," said Dean Baquet, the Times's executive editor, who has indicated that he will announce a decision on the issue soon.

The debate over racial vocabulary is unfolding amid growing recognition across society of the need to tackle racism after several high-profile police killings of black people incited mass protests nationwide.

The acceptable terms in America for identifying black people have evolved over generations, from colored to Negro to black and African-American. Also commonly used is "people of color," an umbrella term used to include many ethnic minorities.

In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, which has unleashed a national conversation on questions of race and racism, many say the country is long overdue to standardize the use of the uppercase B in black, which has been commonly used at black media outlets for a long time.

The New York Amsterdam News, for instance, describes itself as "the oldest Black newspaper in the country that offers the 'New Black View' within local, national and international news for the Black community."

The debate among black people in America over how they should be described has often centered on identity as a political statement.

In her 1904 essay "Do We Need Another Name?" Fannie Barrier Williams, an educator and activist, described a lively discussion unfolding at the time among African-American scholars over whether to shed the label Negro in favor of terms like colored or Afro-American. Colored, she wrote, was a "name that is suggestive of progress toward respectful recognition."

At the heart of the discussion, she wrote, was whether African-Americans needed a new label divorced from Negro and its connections to slavery, something of a fresh start that indicated their new place in society as free people.

Some, like W.E.B. Du Bois, favored keeping the term Negro and transforming it into something positive - an affirmation of their perseverance as a people and their freedom.

"There are so many Negroes who are not Negroes, so many colored people who are not colored, and so many Afro-Americans who are not Africans that it is simply impossible even to coin a term that will precisely designate and connote all the people who are now included under any one of the terms mentioned," Barrier Williams wrote.

Negro became the predominant identifier of people of African descent for much of the first half of the 20th century, and even then descendants of enslaved people from Africa waged a yearslong campaign before getting most of society, including The Times, to capitalize it.

With the rise of the Black Power movement in the mid-1960s, the word black, once seen as an insult for many African-Americans, started winning embrace. In just a few years, it became the predominant descriptor of black people as Negro became obsolete. Mr. Jackson's campaign brought African-American into popular use in the late 1980s, and it is now often used interchangeably with black.

For proponents of capitalizing black, there are grammatical reasons - it is a proper noun, referring to a specific group of people with a shared political identity, shaped by colonialism and slavery. But some see it as a moral issue as well.

It confers a sense of power and respect to black people, who have often been relegated to the lowest rungs of society through racist systems, black scholars say.

"Race as a concept is not real in the biological sense, but it's very real for our own identities," said Whitney Pirtle, an assistant professor of sociology specializing in critical race theory at the University of California, Merced. "I think that capitalizing B both sort of puts respect to those identities, but also alludes to the humanities."

Vilna Bashi Treitler, a professor of black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said that racial categories were fabricated, created to denigrate people considered to be nonwhite. Black and white are adjectives, not proper nouns to be capitalized, she said, calling a term like "African descendant" a more appropriate way to characterize black people.

"It's a placeholder for describing the group of people who are perpetually reinserted into the bottom of the racial hierarchy," Dr. Bashi Treitler, the author of the book "The Ethnic Project," said of the term black. "I think we can be more revolutionary than to embrace the oppressor's term for us."

In her first two books, Crystal M. Fleming, a sociologist and author, lowercased black in part because of academic differences between race and ethnicity. But the more she researched, the more those distinctions became blurred in her mind. She came to see race as a concept that could signify a politically and culturally meaningful identity.

Now Dr. Fleming, a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the author of "How to be Less Stupid About Race," is writing a book for young people about fighting racism. She has decided to use Black.

Part of the reason, she said, was her desire to honor black experiences and speak with moral clarity about antiracism. Another reason was more basic, born in the urgency of the current moment.

"Frankly," she said, "because I want to. That's also something that I think we need to see more of in every field - black people doing what we want to do."

Marc Lacey contributed reporting.

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A Debate Over Identity and Race Asks, Are African-Americans 'Black' or 'black'? (Published 2020)

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The push to capitalize black to refer to African-Americans is far more than a typographical change. [Please sign up here to have the Race/Related newsletter delivered weekly to your inbox.] It's the difference between black and Black.

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This article describes how the word choice in news reports/mass media, the audience can form prejudice opinions against minority groups.

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Combating prejudice against social minorities is a challenging task in current multicultural societies. Mass media can decisively shape prejudice, because it often represents the main source of information about social minorities. In 3 studies in the Czech Republic ( N = 445) and Switzerland ( N = 362; N = 220), we investigated how prejudice against negatively and positively perceived minorities (the Roma in Study 1, Kosovo Albanians in Study 2, Italians in Study 3) is influenced by a single exposure to a print news report, by manipulating the valence of reports about minority members (positive vs. negative vs. mixed) and linguistic forms for minorities' ethnicity (nouns vs. adjectives). Positive and negative reports shaped prejudice in the respective directions; the effect of mixed reports mostly did not differ from positive reports. Labeling ethnicity with nouns (e.g., a male Roma) resulted in more prejudice than adjectives (e.g., a Roma man), independent of report valence. Report valence influenced the affective part of prejudice (i.e., feelings toward a minority), whereas language consistently shaped the behavioral part of prejudice (i.e., preferred social distance from a minority).

The proportion of social minorities in Western Europe is growing faster than ever before (United Nations High Commission for Refugees, ). For harmonious coexistence of different groups, citizens need to come to terms with the diversification of society, which implies combating prejudice against social minorities (i.e., groups that differ in observable characteristics or practices, such as ethnicity or religion, from the overall population; Goldmann, ). Mass media represent a profound source of information about social minorities that can shape prejudice against them (e.g., Das, Bushman, Bezemer, Kerkhof, & Vermeulen, ; Visintin, Voci, Pagotto, & Hewstone, ).

Despite the impact of mass media on shaping public opinion, there is little research that captures the causal effect of different media features on attitudes toward different social groups (Atwell Seate & Mastro, ; Mutz & Goldman, ; cf. Saleem, Prot, Anderson, & Lemieux, ; Schmader, Block, & Lickel, ). Past studies have usually focused on the impact of the content of media news about social minorities, mostly in terms of their valence (e.g., Joyce & Harwood, ; Ramasubramanian, , ). However, there are subtler features that can influence prejudice beyond the content of news, such as language employed for description of social minorities (Geschke, Sassenberg, Ruhrmann, & Sommer, ; Graf, Bilewicz, Finell, & Geschke, ). So far, these two important aspects of media news-their valence and language used for describing group members-have been examined in isolation. This research focuses on how prejudice against social minorities can be shaped by the language used for minorities' group membership (i.e., nouns vs. adjectives) depending on the valence of print news reports (i.e., positive, negative, vs. mixed).

Social minorities in mass media

The discrimination that social minorities suffer in society is reflected in their underrepresentation or negative presentation of their members in mass media (e.g., Larson, ; Tukachinsky, Mastro, & Yarchi, ). Particularly negatively stereotyped social minorities (e.g., immigrants) are mostly presented in report-based media programs that introduce predominantly negative information (e.g., Dixon & Linz, ; Mastro & Greenberg, ; Pagotto & Voci, ; Visintin et al., ). A large analysis of print newspapers addressing immigration in the United States showed that there was a greater amount of negative information about immigrants than positive information (Dragojevic, Sink, & Mastro, ). The prevalence of negativity over positivity was more pronounced in information about outgroups compared to ingroups, which suggests that the effect was not simply due to a general tendency of news to cover more negative than positive events. The prevalence of negative information in the news about social minorities is alarming, given the fact that already a single exposure to a negative report about a minority can deteriorate attitudes toward this minority (Mastro, ; Saleem et al., ).

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the news often represents the major source of information about social minorities. For instance, Italian citizen's direct contact with immigrants (i.e., face-to-face encounters) and information from films and TV series were much scarcer than information from TV news and newspapers. When distinguishing between positive and negative information about immigrants, negative information from TV news and newspapers was the most frequent type of information about immigrants in Italy (cf. other types of information in Table 4 on p. 184, Visintin et al., ). Consequently, other sources of information (e.g., from entertainment-based programs or face-to-face encounters) that are more balanced with respect to the valence of their content (e.g., featuring more positive information) may fail to improve the negative representation of social minorities spread by the news. The prevailing negativity and the widespread nature of news about social minorities can bear direct implications for the difficult standing of social minorities in society (Atwell Seate & Mastro, ; Dixon & Azocar, ; Pan & Kosicki, ).

Following the prevalence of negativity in media news, past studies have predominantly dealt with the effects of negative information (e.g., Atwell Seate & Mastro, ; Das et al., ; Dixon & Azocar, ; for a review see Mastro & Tukachinsky, ). However, to understand the effect of media news, it is necessary to compare the effect of negative news to information of other valences. An experimental study comparing the effect of negative, positive, and neutral media footage about Muslims showed that negative information, as compared to neutral and positive conditions, increased perceptions of Muslims as aggressive, as well as support for harsh actions against Muslims in the home country and abroad (Saleem et al., , Study 3). Despite the merit of Saleem et al.'s study, it is challenging to present participants with a truly neutral condition, especially in the context of negatively perceived minorities. Even seemingly neutral news footage about a delay of football practices during Ramadan in Saleem et al.'s study may constitute an infringement of ingroup (i.e., U.S.) values for many and thus lean toward negativity. Moreover, many news reports are not exclusively negative, containing positive and negative information at the same time. Nevertheless, the effect of such mixed valence in news reports has been largely ignored. The lack of testing negative reports against not only positive but also against mixed valence reports is a substantial gap in the literature.

To our knowledge, only one study has so far simultaneously compared the effect of positive, negative, and mixed information about social minorities on prejudice (Joyce & Harwood, ). In the context of the U.S. border to Mexico, U.S. participants viewed a TV documentary depicting interactions between a border-patrolmen and an illegal immigrant that was either positive, negative, or mixed. Only the positive TV documentary improved participants' attitudes toward illegal immigrants; the documentary with mixed content did not differ from the effect of negative content or control group. Until now, evidence is missing whether this pattern of results would hold for different media content, such as print news, and in different intergroup contexts.

Nouns and adjectives communicate group membership

Although the valence of media news about social minorities is obvious, other subtler linguistic means that convey implicit biases about other groups and their members can escape conscious awareness (Franco & Maass, , ; Geschke et al., ; Maass, Corvino, & Arcuri, ). Two linguistic categories that play a crucial role in communicating group membership are nouns and adjectives. Although both nouns and adjectives can be employed to convey membership in a certain social category, nouns have greater inductive potential when it comes to inferring characteristics from the given label than adjectives (e.g., a Jew vs. Jewish; Carnaghi et al., ). Nouns support category-congruent inferences (e.g., attends synagogue regularly) and inhibit category-incongruent inferences (e.g., works on Fridays). The same behavior (e.g., likes to work with plaster) is judged as a more prominent and stable feature of a person described with a noun (e.g., an artist) than of a person described by a corresponding adjective (e.g., artistic; Carnaghi et al., ).

Nouns for category labels influence not only the perception of persons, but also of groups. Nouns, as compared to adjectives, used for labeling nationality or ethnicity lead to more pronounced intergroup bias-the tendency to favor one's ingroup over outgroups (Graf et al., ). When asked who should have confiscated property from the Second World War returned-whether the ingroup or the outgroup-a representative Polish sample consistently displayed ingroup favoritism. People always favored returning confiscated property to their ingroup (i.e., ethnic Poles) over the outgroup (i.e., ethnic Jews), irrespective of linguistic labels used for ingroup and outgroup membership. Yet, the difference between favoring the ingroup over the outgroup was larger in the noun (i.e., Poles over Jews) compared to the adjective condition (i.e., Polish citizens over Jewish citizens; Graf et al., , Study 3). This implies that subtle linguistic cues do not change the direction of firmly embedded intergroup preferences; however, they are able to make them more pronounced.

The limitation of past studies on nouns and adjectives is that we do not know whether their effects depend on contextual factors such as valence. So far, no research has contrasted the effect of nouns and adjectives in positive and negative texts at the same time. Nouns may always lead to more pronounced prejudice against social minorities or they may strengthen prejudice only in the context of specific valence (e.g., in the previously tested negative contexts).

The present research

To increase the current understanding of how mass media shape prejudice against social minorities, this research examined the effect of print news reports about distinct social minorities in three experimental studies. Specifically, we focused on the effects of report valence and language used to describe the group membership of minority members.

We expected that a single exposure to a report of distinct valence should lead to different levels of prejudice (Hypothesis 1). Specifically, positive reports should lead to less prejudice than negative or mixed reports; and mixed and negative reports should not significantly differ (based on Joyce & Harwood, ). With respect to the effect of linguistic forms in contexts of distinct valence, we expected that nouns should lead to more prejudice than adjectives irrespective of report valence (Hypothesis 2; based on Graf et al., ; see Table 1 for the summary of predictions).

We distinguished between two components of prejudice that can bear different consequences for behaviors toward members of social minorities. We focused on the affective component of prejudice (i.e., feelings toward social minorities) because it generally represents a stronger predictor of intergroup behavior than cognitive components (i.e., stereotypical characteristics of social minorities; Pettigrew & Tropp, ; Stangor, Sullivan, & Ford, ). Furthermore, we used a behavioral proxy embodied by the social distance scale that captures the desired psychological distance from social minorities (Esses & Dovidio, ). We assumed that distinguishing between different components of prejudice offers a more nuanced understanding of how distinct aspects of print news reports impact prejudice against social minorities. Because there is no consistent evidence from previous studies, this part of our research is merely exploratory. To ensure the effect of news reports was due to experimental manipulation, we further introduced pre- and postmeasurement of prejudice in the design of Study 3, a methodological strength not often present in past studies. In Study 3, we could, therefore, examine the effect of the distinct aspects of news reports, especially in terms of their valence, on the change in prejudice.

To provide more generalizable evidence, we tested the hypotheses in two different intergroup contexts-the Czech Republic (Study 1) and Switzerland (Studies 2 and 3)-and three minority groups-the Roma (Study 1), Kosovo Albanian immigrants (Study 2), and Italian immigrants (Study 3). Although Italian immigrants in Switzerland are viewed positively, the Roma in the Czech Republic and Kosovo Albanian immigrants in Switzerland belong to the most negatively perceived groups. The Czech Republic and Switzerland represent distinct settings with respect to language and the share of social minorities. Both Czech and German are Indo-European languages, but belong to different families: Czech to Slavic and German to Germanic languages. In both languages, adjectives always precede nouns, with which they are associated. With respect to the specifics of the intergroup settings, the Czech Republic represents a country with a very low percentage of immigrants and social minorities (less than 5%; Czech Statistical Office, ). In contrast, Switzerland is at the opposite pole, with one of the highest share of immigrants in Europe (up to 25%; Eurostat, ). The differences between the three social minorities, the two countries and languages make the chosen intergroup settings optimal for a comprehensive test of how report valence and linguistic forms for labeling ethnicity in print news shape prejudice against social minorities.

Study 1

Study 1 dealt with a highly stigmatized minority in the Czech Republic, the Roma. The Roma belong to the least liked groups in the Czech Republic-only 15% of Czechs would not have a problem with the Roma as their neighbors (Stem, ). The stereotypical views on the Roma include both low warmth and low competence, making their image especially negative.

Method

Participants and design

The online questionnaire was presented in Czech and filled out by 588 Czech participants. Participants read one of six fictitious newspaper reports (3× report valence and 2× linguistic form for ethnicity, between participants), and indicated their attitudes toward the Roma. Because the study dealt with the effect of print news reports, we excluded participants who did not believe that the report was real ( n = 143), resulting in the final sample of 445 participants (72% women, M age = 26.18, SD = 6.35).

Procedure and materials

Participants were addressed via email; they had previously provided this along with their consent to be part of a pool for psychological studies. The research was introduced as dealing with perceptions of media reports. The print news reports were ostensibly taken from a local newspaper and informed participants about an assault featuring a Roma man (adjective condition) or a male Roma (noun condition) who was either the perpetrator (negative version) or the savior of the victim of the attack (positive version). The mixed report featured two Roma men, one being the perpetrator and the other the savior of the victim. The ethnicity of the victim and the perpetrator in the positive version, and the savior in the negative version of the report were not specified, implying majority membership. All report versions featured the same number of labels (eight) and were comparatively long (app. 200 words, see Appendix for details).

Prejudice was operationalized along its affective and behavioral components. The affective component of prejudice was measured with a feeling thermometer ranging from 0 to 100 with the anchors cold and warm (Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, ), higher values indicating less prejudice (i.e., warmer feelings to the Roma minority). The behavioral component of prejudice was measured with the social distance scale comprising five items (i.e., to what extent participants would be happy if the Roma were their colleagues, neighbors, friends, family members, or partners; adapted from Esses & Dovidio, ; α = .85). The responses ranged from 1 ( not at all) to 5 ( very much) with greater values indicating more prejudice (i.e., higher preferred distance from the Roma minority).

To control whether participants considered the experimental material real, they indicated whether they believed that the report was a real newspaper report with three response options: (a) I believed, (b) I doubted, (c) I did not believe that the report was real. At the end of the questionnaire, participants answered items about their demographic characteristics (age, sex, origin, and immigration background) and were debriefed.

Results

Throughout all three studies, p values of .05 or less were considered significant. To estimate the effect of report valence and linguistic forms for ethnicity labels on affective and behavioral components of prejudice against the Roma, we performed a MANOVA since both measures of prejudice were correlated, r = .66, p < .001. Using Pillai's trace, the MANOVA revealed a significant effect of report valence, V = 0.02, F(4, 878) = 2.41, p = .048, and linguistic forms, V = 0.02, F(2, 438) = 4.87, p < .01, on prejudice. The interaction between report valence and linguistic forms was not significant, V = 0.01, F(4, 878) = 1.07, p = .373, indicating that the effect of linguistic forms was independent of the report valence.

We followed up the MANOVA with univariate tests to determine the simple main effects. The ANOVAs showed that report valence predicted prejudice on the feeling thermometer, F(2, 439) = 3.64, p = .027, = .02, and the social distance scale, F(2, 439) = 4.28, p = .014, = .02 (see Hypothesis 1, Figures 1 and 2). The planned contrasts indicated that participants who read the positive report expressed less prejudice against the Roma (feeling thermometer: M = 39.15, SD = 24.43; social distance scale: M = 3.46, SD = 0.80) than participants who read the negative report (feeling thermometer: M = 32.89, SD = 23.22; social distance scale: M = 3.69, SD = 0.84), 95% CI [1.02, 11.46], p = .019 for the feeling thermometer, 95% CI [−0.41, −0.04], p = .018, for the social distance scale. However, participants who read the positive report expressed the same amount of prejudice as participants who read the mixed report (feeling thermometer: M = 39.39, SD = 20.48; social distance scale: M = 3.43, SD = 0.78), 95% CI [−4.92, 5.30], p = .943, for the feeling thermometer, 95% CI [−0.22, 0.14], p = .691, for the social distance scale. Participants who read the mixed report expressed less prejudice than participants who read the negative report, 95% CI [1.10, 11.76], p = .02 for the feeling thermometer, 95% CI [−0.45, −0.07], p = .007, for the social distance scale.

Linguistic forms predicted prejudice on the social distance scale, F(1, 439) = 3.73, p = .050, = .01 (see Hypothesis 2, and Figure 2), but not on the feeling thermometer, F(1, 439) = 0.34, p = .562. Labeling ethnicity with nouns led to higher preferred social distance from the Roma ( M = 3.60, SD = 0.81) than labeling ethnicity with adjectives ( M = 3.44, SD = 0.81).

Discussion

In Study 1, report valence and linguistic forms for ethnicity shaped prejudice against the Roma after a single exposure to a print news report about the Roma. Our data supported Hypothesis 1 in that reports of distinct valence led to different levels of prejudice. Accordingly, participants who read the positive report expressed less prejudice than those who read the negative report. However, participants who read the positive report did not significantly differ from those who were exposed to positive information combined with negative information in the mixed condition. Furthermore, at odds with evidence form Joyce and Harwood (), participants who read the mixed report significantly differed from those who read the negative report.

With respect to the effect of linguistic forms, nouns led to higher preferred social distance from (but not less warmth felt toward) the Roma than adjectives irrespective of report valence, supporting Hypothesis 2. Specifically, participants who read the print news reports where Roma's ethnicity was labeled with nouns preferred greater social distance from the Roma than participants who read the reports with adjectives.

Study 2

Study 1 showed that a single exposure to a report about members of a negatively perceived minority can shape prejudice against this minority. Study 2 aimed to test this finding using a different language and in another intergroup context with another minority group, namely Kosovo Albanians in Switzerland.

Method

Participants and design

The online questionnaire in German was filled out by 486 Swiss participants, native German speakers. Because we wanted to focus on Swiss majority's attitudes, we excluded 94 participants with an immigration background and 30 participants who indicated that they did not at all believe that they read a real news report, resulting in the final sample of 362 participants (65% women, M age = 23.38, SD = 4.44 years). The design of Study 2 was the same as in Study 1, employing six experimental conditions (3× report valence and 2× linguistic forms) with two measures of prejudice.

Procedure and materials

To select a minority to be used in Study 2, we first conducted a media content analysis of Swiss newspapers. The content analysis indicated that Kosovo Albanians are negatively stereotyped in Switzerland due to their association with crime and, as a result, we chose this minority as the target group. In the fictitious print news reports, a male member of Kosovo Albanian minority gets into a fight between two Swiss men and engages in either helping (positive) or aggressive behaviors (negative). In the mixed condition, one Kosovo Albanian engages in helping and another one in aggressive behaviors in the same situation. In each of the three valence conditions, the nationality of minority and majority members was labeled with either adjectives (a Kosovo Albanian man and a Swiss man) or nouns (a male Kosovo Albanian and a male Swiss; see Appendix for the experimental materials).

Subsequently, participants expressed their prejudice against the Kosovo Albanian minority on the feeling thermometer (ranging from 0 to 100) and on the social distance scale ( α = .89) as in Study 1. Next, participants were asked about the report credibility. Different to Study 1, we employed a continuous measure, asking participants to what extent they believed that the report was a real newspaper report, on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 ( not at all) to 5 ( very much). Finally, participants filled out demographic characteristics and were debriefed.

Results

To estimate the effect of report valence and linguistic forms on affective and behavioral components of prejudice against Kosovo Albanians, we performed a MANOVA because both measures of prejudice were correlated, r = .51, p < .001. Using Pillai's trace, the MANOVA revealed a significant effect of report valence, V = 0.04, F(4, 712) = 3.49, p = .008, and of linguistic forms, V = 0.03, F(2, 355) = 5.00, p = .007, on prejudice. The interaction between report valence and linguistic forms was not significant, V = 0.00, F(4, 712) = 0.17, p = .952, again indicating that the effect of linguistic forms was independent of the report valence.

Subsequent ANOVAs showed that report valence significantly predicted prejudice on the feeling thermometer, F(2, 356) = 6.66, p < .001, = .04 (see Hypothesis 1, and Figure 3), but not on the social distance scale, F(2, 356) = 1.74, p = .178 (see Figure 4). As predicted, the planned contrasts revealed that participants who read the positive report ( M = 62.25, SD = 19.71) expressed less prejudice (i.e., warmer feelings) than participants who read the negative report ( M = 52.87, SD = 21.73), 95% CI [4.32, 14.54], p < .001. At the same time, participants who read the positive report expressed less prejudice (i.e., warmer feelings) than participants who read the mixed report ( M = 57.15, SD = 19.33), 95% CI [−10.14, −5.30], p = .048. There was no difference between the effects of the mixed report and the negative report, 95% CI [−1.02, 9.68], p = .112.

Linguistic forms predicted prejudice on the social distance scale, F(1, 356) = 9.03, p = .003, = .03 (see Hypothesis 2, and Figure 4), but not on the feeling thermometer, F(1, 356) = 0.44, p = .510. Labeling ethnicity with nouns led to higher preferred social distance from Kosovo Albanians ( M = 2.92, SD = 0.65) than labeling their ethnicity with adjectives ( M = 2.70, SD = 0.76).

Discussion

Study 2 aimed to validate the findings of Study 1 in a different intergroup context with a different language and minority. We found that prejudice against the negatively stereotyped minority of Kosovo Albanians in Switzerland was shaped by a single exposure to a print news report about Kosovo Albanians, supporting Hypothesis 1. Participants who read the positive report expressed significantly warmer feelings toward Kosovo Albanians than participants who read the negative report, similar to the case of the Roma in Study 1. However, in contrast to Study 1, Study 2 provided supporting evidence for the results of Joyce and Harwood (), finding a significant difference between the effect of the positive and the mixed report and the lack of difference between the effect of the mixed and the negative report. Swiss participants who were exposed to the positive report about Kosovo Albanians displayed warmer feelings toward Kosovo Albanians compared to participants exposed to the mixed report. At the same time, the warmth expressed toward Kosovo Albanians did not differ between participants who were exposed to negative and positive information in the mixed report and those exposed to solely negative information in the negative report. Labeling the nationality of Kosovo Albanians with nouns led to higher preferred social distance from (but not less warmth felt towards) Kosovo Albanians as compared to adjectives across the different valence conditions, supporting Hypothesis 2.

Study 3

Studies 1 and 2 dealt with media reports about stigmatized minorities and found the effects of valence and language on prejudice in two markedly different intergroup contexts. However, these effects may only occur in the case of negatively stereotyped groups. To examine whether valence of print news reports and language for minority ethnicity can influence prejudice against minorities more generally, we employed a positively stereotyped group of Italian immigrants in Switzerland in Study 3.

Studies 1 and 2 provided conflicting evidence for the effect of the simultaneous presentation of positive and negative information about social minorities because the mixed report once differed from the effect of a negative (but not a positive) report and once from the effect of a positive (but not a negative) report on prejudice (see Table 1 for hypotheses and summary of results). Study 3 thus employed a more nuanced operationalization and measurement of the effect of mixed news reports. Studies 1 and 2 introduced participants to only one version of the mixed report where the negative information preceded the positive information (first an outgroup member attacked, then another outgroup member helped). In Study 3, we controlled for the potentially confounding primacy and recency effects of the presentation of positive and negative information in the mixed article and prepared two versions of the mixed report (one introducing the negative information first vs. the other introducing the positive information first).

Last, in the two preceding studies we only measured attitudes after participants were exposed to the reports, neglecting their initial attitudes toward the given outgroup. In Study 3, we therefore asked about participants' attitudes before and after they were exposed to the experimental manipulation, to be sure that the difference in prejudice between groups was due to the exposure to the reports of different valence.

Method

Participants and design

The online questionnaire in German was filled out by 252 Swiss participants, native German speakers. Because we focused on Swiss majority's attitudes, we excluded 11 participants with an immigration background and 21 participants who indicated that they did not at all believe that the article was a real newspaper report (i.e., 1 on a five-point scale), resulting in a final sample of 220 participants (72% women, M age = 26.36, SD = 8.45 years).

The design of Study 3 was the same as in both preceding studies and comprised six experimental conditions (3× report valence and 2× linguistic forms) and two measures of prejudice. Unlike the two previous studies, we measured the change in prejudice toward Italian immigrants that represented the difference between pre- and post-measurement of attitudes on two feeling thermometers.

Procedure and materials

To distract participants from the fact that we were interested in their attitudes toward Italian immigrants specifically, they were asked to indicate their attitudes toward various socially relevant issues (e.g., waste separation and nuclear energy) and social groups (e.g., Turkish immigrants, Italian immigrants, German immigrants, Spanish immigrants, Italian-speaking Swiss, French immigrants, German-speaking Swiss, French-speaking Swiss, employed mothers, and homeless persons) on feeling thermometers. All labels for nationality or ethnicity of the employed groups were either used in the noun or adjective form to keep the linguistic forms constant in the pre- and postmeasurement of attitudes. To further prevent participants from remembering the exact value of their attitudes toward Italian immigrants on the feeling thermometer before the manipulation, we employed feeling thermometers where exact values were not marked (only the end points and the middle of the scales). We measured the initial level of prejudice only with feeling thermometers because we were primarily interested in the effect of news valence that has been previously shown to impact especially the affective part of prejudice. Furthermore, the social distance scale consists of five items that would be difficult to complete with so many other groups and impossible to use with social issues.

Next, participants were exposed to a fictitious print news report, in which an immigrated Italian (vs. Italian immigrant), the owner of a restaurant, either invites homeless people who are sitting in front of his restaurant for a free meal (positive) or shoos them away (negative). Because we attempted to recreate credible, real-life news reports, we employed stereotypical characteristics of the given minority. While the stereotypical image of the Roma and Kosovo Albanians contains elements of realistic threat, a danger to personal safety, the stereotypical image of Italians is less negative, containing characteristics relating to emotional instability (e.g., quick tempered reactions). Consequently, we toned down the negativity in the report about Italian immigrants in Study 3, as compared to the reports about the Roma and Kosovo Albanians employed in Study 1 and 2.

All conditions mentioned two Italian immigrants (vs. immigrated Italians) who owned a restaurant together to keep the number of presented outgroup members constant (see Appendix for the exact wording). We created two versions of the mixed report with positive information presented first in one and negative information first in the other. Specifically, in one version of the mixed report, one immigrated Italian invites the homeless people for a free meal and another immigrated Italian, his business partner, shoos them away. In the other version of the report, the homeless people are shooed first by one immigrated Italian and then invited in by the other.

Following the manipulation, participants expressed their attitudes toward Italians living in Switzerland on a feeling thermometer (ranging from 0 to 100) and the social distance scale ( α = .90). To account for the change in attitudes after reading the report ( M = 1.65, SD = 19.46), we subtracted the value on the feeling thermometer after the manipulation ( M = 73.50, SD = 21.78) from the value on the feeling thermometer before the manipulation ( M = 74.96, SD = 19.46). Consequently, a negative score represents a decrease in prejudice; a positive score represents an increase in prejudice. At the end of the questionnaire, as in Study 2, we asked participants about the credibility of the report, demographic characteristics and debriefed them.

Results

First, we checked whether the order of presenting positive and negative information within the mixed report influenced participants' attitudes toward Italian immigrants. The order of presentation did not influence either the change in attitudes on the feeling thermometer, t(90) = .70, p = .492, or the social distance scale, t(90) = 1.25, p = .214. Thus, the presentation order of the positive and negative events did not have an effect on participants' attitudes.

Using Pillai's trace, a MANOVA revealed a significant effect of report valence, V = 0.07, F(4, 428) = 3.78, p = .005, but no significant effect of linguistic forms on prejudice against Italians, V = 0.02, F(2, 213) = 2.22, p = .111. The interaction between report valence and linguistic forms was not significant, V = 0.02, F(4, 428) = 1.29, p = .272, indicating that the effect of linguistic forms was independent of the report valence.

Subsequent ANOVAs revealed that report valence significantly predicted the change in attitudes toward Italian immigrants on the feeling thermometer, F(2, 214) = 7.83, p < .001, = .07 (see Figure 5). Report valence did not predict attitudes measured with the social distance scale, F(2, 214) = 0.12, p = .884 (see Figure 6). The planned contrasts showed the expected difference between the effect of the positive report ( M = −3.84, SD = 14.70) and the effect of the negative report ( M = 8.67, SD = 23.23) on the change in attitudes toward Italian immigrants, 95% CI [−18.84, −6.25], p < .001. However, the effect of the positive report did not differ from the effect of the mixed report ( M = 0.82, SD = 18.24), 95% CI [−1.37, 10.72], p = .129. The effect of the mixed report significantly differed from the effect of the negative report, 95% CI [−14.08, −1.67], p = .013. Thus, the change in attitudes of participants who were exposed to both positive and negative information in the mixed condition was not different from those exposed to solely positive information but different from those exposed to solely negative information.

Looking closely at the attitudes toward Italian immigrants before and after the experimental manipulation, we found that the negative report caused the greatest change in attitudes (see Figure 5). The one sample t-test indicated a significant difference from zero in case of the negative report, t(66) = 3.06, p < .001, and in case of the positive report, t(73) = 2.25, p = .031. This means that participants' attitudes toward Italians significantly worsened after the negative report and significantly improved after the positive report. In case of the mixed report, the change in attitudes after the manipulation was not significantly different from zero, t(78) = 0.40, p = .693. The effect of the negative report on the change in attitudes after the experimental manipulation was significantly larger than the effects of both the positive report and the mixed report.

We found a trend of the effect of linguistic forms on the social distance scale corresponding to Studies 1 and 2, F(1, 214) = 3.58, p = .060, = .02, in that nouns led to higher preferred social distance ( M = 2.68, SD = 0.81) than adjectives ( M = 2.49, SD = 0.83; see Figure 6). However, despite the effect size similar to the effects of linguistic forms in Study 1 and 2, the difference between nouns and adjectives on the social distance scale was not statistically significant in Study 3. Linguistic forms did not predict the change in attitudes toward Italian immigrants on the feeling thermometer, F(1, 214) = 1.29, p = .257.

Discussion

Study 3 dealt with Italian immigrants in Switzerland to test whether the effects of valence and linguistic forms found in highly negatively perceived minorities would hold in a positively stereotyped group. Furthermore, Study 3 aimed to validate the results of Study 1 and Study 2 in a more methodologically elaborate design.

Similar to prejudice against the Roma in the Czech Republic and Kosovo Albanians in Switzerland, report valence predicted prejudice against Italian immigrants on the feeling thermometer, supporting Hypothesis 1. Nevertheless, due to a more rigorous design of Study 3, we were able to show that the effect was caused by the experimental manipulation, as indicated by the change in prejudice after participants read the print news reports. The change in prejudice of participants who were exposed to the positive report was significantly different from the change in attitudes of participants who were exposed to the negative report. Similar to results of Study 1, participants simultaneously exposed to positive and negative information in the mixed condition did not differ from participants exposed to the positive report, but significantly differed from participants exposed to the negative report. The difference in the effect of the negative and mixed report was not due to the recency effect of the lastly presented positive information in the mixed report of Study 1. In Study 3, the order of presentation of positive and negative information did not make a difference to participants' prejudice, eliminating the order of presentation as a possible confound from the effect of the mixed report.

Having read the positive or the negative report about Italian immigrants significantly changed participants' subsequent attitudes toward Italians as compared to their initial attitudes. The effect of the negative report on attitudes following the experimental manipulation surpassed the effect of both positive and mixed reports. This more determining effect of negativity was found in a positively perceived group and despite the fact that the negative information presented in the report was very mild (i.e., shooing someone away). Furthermore, the target of the described negative behavior were members of a highly stigmatized group (i.e., homeless people) that usually do not evoke much sympathy. The effect of negative information on change in attitudes may be stronger than positive information in negatively perceived groups-particularly in cases of serious instances of negative behavior (e.g., brachial aggression), and when negative behavior targets ingroup members (vs. marginalized outgroups). Indeed, a meta-analysis of experimental studies on individual-to-group generalization showed that negative information has a generalization advantage for stigmatized groups, in comparison to positive information for admired groups (Paolini & McIntyre, ). Further evidence is offered by intergroup contact literature, where information about group members that matches group stereotype (e.g., negative for stigmatized groups) is more likely to be generalized than information that does not match group stereotype. This effect is due to high category salience evoked by the matching information (Brown & Hewstone, ). Group members who do not fulfil expectations based on group stereotypes can be subtyped and thereby excluded from the formation of prejudice about the given group (Fiske & Neuberg, ; Richards & Hewstone, ).

On the other hand, social cognitive literature holds that the effects of negative information may be especially strong in positively stereotyped groups. Perceivers direct their attention and give importance to clues that are most informative (Fiske, ). In this light, stereotype-inconsistent information may provide novel, and thus more important, information about a group than stereotype-consistent information that fulfils the expectations based on group stereotype (Fiske, ). In the context of Study 3, members of positively stereotyped minorities are expected to behave positively, thus, the negative information was the one considered most informative, attracting more attention and processing, resulting in greatest change in attitudes after having read the negative report. Consequently, in negatively stereotyped groups, positive information may be the most informative, potentially resulting in greater change in attitudes after having read the positive report, as compared to reading the negative report. More evidence is needed to resolve which information is the most influential in positively and negatively evaluated groups-a test that is beyond the scope of this article.

With respect to the effect of linguistic forms, we found a trend corresponding to the outcomes of Studies 1 and 2 where nouns used for labeling nationality led to higher social distance, as compared to adjectives, irrespective of report valence. The fact that the difference between nouns and adjectives was not statistically significant in Study 3 could be due to a lower number of participants because the effect sizes of linguistic forms were comparable across the three studies.

General discussion

This series of three studies represents a first attempt to determine how a single exposure to print news reports about minority members, combined with distinct labels for their group membership, influences prejudice against social minorities. The studies tested the effects of the two aspects of news reports in settings that differ with respect to the share of social minorities and language. The results showed that prejudice against social minorities can be influenced by a single exposure to a news report. Both researched aspects of the news-their valence and language used for ethnicity-had an effect on prejudice. However, the two aspects of newspaper reports influenced different components of prejudice. Valence mainly had an effect on the affective component of prejudice, whereas the linguistic forms had an effect on the behavioral component of prejudice (see Table 1 for summary of results across the three studies). Thus, while positivity and negativity of news about different social groups can shape how we feel about them, the labels for group membership influence how close we wish to be to these groups. As different aspects of news influence different components of prejudice, it is advisable to distinguish between them in future studies on media influence and use them when tailoring interventions aimed at combating distinct parts of prejudice.

With respect to the report valence, a single exposure to solely positive information had the most positive effect on participants' attitudes. Despite the fact that positive information is rather scarce in the news about social minorities, all three studies showed the advantages of disseminating positive news-especially about negatively perceived minorities-to combat prejudice against them. Furthermore, including positive information even into negative reports about social minorities may combat prejudice. In two out of three studies, positive information in the mixed reports balanced out the detrimental impact of negative information that-when presented alone in the solely negative reports-led to most pronounced prejudice. These findings are at odds with the outcomes of the Joyce and Harwood's study (), which found that the effect of mixed content about social minorities did not differ from the effect of solely negative content on prejudice. Our findings are more promising with respect to improving the stance of social minorities in society through mass media, however, the conflicting outcomes need to be put to the test in future studies. More research is needed to explain whether and when the simultaneous presentation of positive and negative information surpasses the effect of solely negative or even positive information on prejudice.

Study 3 included measurement of attitudes before the experimental manipulation, supporting the assumption that the difference in attitudes after reading a positive, negative, or mixed report is due to report valence. A single exposure to a positive report led to improvement in attitudes, a highly optimistic finding that nevertheless needs to be examined by future studies in different intergroup settings, particularly because Italians in Study 3 represent a positively stereotyped group. Alarmingly, the negative report had the strongest effect on the change in attitudes. The greater impact of negativity over positivity is well documented for a wide range of psychological outcomes (for a review see Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, ). The higher effect of negative (vs. positive and mixed) information on prejudice against a positively stereotyped group may be even stronger for stigmatized minorities (Paolini & McIntyre, ). If negative information has a stronger effect than positive information on prejudice against stigmatized minorities, the only possible means of combatting this effect would be with a greater amount of positive information. Unfortunately, in reality the news about social minorities is predominantly negative (e.g., Visintin et al., ), leaving especially stigmatized minorities with small hope of having their image improved through mass media.

Though this is one theory, there is also contrasting evidence to suggest that negative information is especially prominent in shaping attitudes toward positively perceived groups because negative information diverges from the expectations of positivity (Fiske, ). Consequently, negative reports about stigmatized minorities would be unlikely to worsen prejudice, as the effect of the unexpected positive information would be stronger than the effect of stereotype-matching negative information. More research is needed to clarify the effects of positive and negative information in mass media reports about positively and negatively stereotyped minorities, before exact predictions about the impact of news of distinct valence can be made.

Our research is novel in that it examined not only the effect of valence of print news reports on prejudice, but also the effect of distinct linguistic labels for group membership. In two different languages (i.e., Slavic and Germanic) and two cultural contexts (Czech and Swiss), using nouns for minority members' ethnicity or nationality consistently resulted in greater preferred social distance from the social minorities than using adjectives. This is in line with previous findings that nouns lead to more pronounced intergroup bias. Across our studies, nouns always led to higher preferred social distance than adjectives-not only after reading a negative, but also after reading a mixed or a positive report. Based on evidence from previous studies (Graf et al., ), linguistic forms on their own cannot eradicate prejudice. However, their repeated and ever-present nature in mass media can contribute to either solidifying or combating prejudice, which is especially relevant in the case of stigmatized minorities.

Limitations and future directions

In all three studies, the effects of report valence and linguistic forms on prejudice were small, but consistent for all three minority groups. Additionally, corresponding effect sizes have been found in previous research (e.g., Graf et al., ; Saleem et al., ). The fact that a one-off exposure to a single report about a concrete behavior of outgroup members can alter prejudice against the whole outgroup is intriguing, particularly considering the potentially additive effects of news that people consume on daily basis (Mastro & Tukachinsky, ).

We tested our assumptions in two different intergroup and language contexts, including three different minority groups that are perceived differently by the majority. Due to the novelty of our integrative approach, our findings should be tested in other intergroup contexts, languages, and minority groups. Despite the fact that we included different intergroup and language contexts, we did not treat them as moderators in the analyses. Future studies may provide a more valid cross-cultural comparison of the established effects that can differ in size depending on the cultural background.

Our research dealt with the effect of news reports about social minorities on majority's attitudes. Future studies should look closely into the effects of media news and language used for description of minority membership on attitudes held by minorities (cf. Schmader et al., ). Effects within minority groups may differ from those found in the majority (Pettigrew & Tropp, ), therefore conducting research with social minorities would be an interesting avenue for future research.

Conclusions

The findings of our research are timely and socially relevant due to the increasing number of social minorities with different ethnicities in European countries and the power of mass media to reach a great number of people. On the one hand, the valence of media reports can be easily identified-people are able to discern whether presented information is positive or negative-and as a result they may-at least to some extent-be aware of the influence that mass media has on their attitudes. On the other hand, differences in labels for ethnicity represent subtle language cues that may escape people's awareness. The difficulty to control the effects of language in polarizing people's attitudes poses a challenge for responsible media use. There were attempts to abandon ethnicity labels in certain media contexts (e.g., crime reports), however, to our knowledge, no attempts have been made to draw attention to the effects of distinct linguistic forms used for category membership (i.e., nouns vs. adjectives). Information about the role of different aspects of media in enhancing or reducing prejudice is of relevance to professionals communicating about social minorities (e.g., journalists, politicians, social workers, nongovernmental organizations employees) as well as their audience (e.g., general public, social policy makers) and, as such, should be included into school curricula or training for critical media consumption.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

1. Study 1 also included a measure of ethnic essentialism (6 items adapted from Roets & Van Hiel, ) and direct and mass mediated intergroup contact with the Roma (4 items adapted from Pagotto & Voci, ) that were not employed in the design of this study.

2. When controlling for participants' sex, the pattern of results remained unchanged, with sex having no effect on participants' attitudes, V = 0.01, F(2, 437) = 1.05, p = .352.

3. Study 2 included a measure of ethnic essentialism (6 items adapted from Roets & Van Hiel, ), direct and mass mediated intergroup contact with Kosovo Albanians (4 items adapted from Pagotto & Voci, ), and perceived typicality of the described behavior for the minority as a whole (1 item adapted from Brown, Vivian, & Hewstone, ) that were not employed in the design of this study.

4. When controlling for participants' sex, the pattern of results remained unchanged, with sex having no effect on participants' attitudes, V = 0.01, F(2, 354) = 1.39, p = .250.

5. Study 3 included a measure of ethnic essentialism (6 items adapted from Roets & Van Hiel, ), direct and mass mediated intergroup contact with Italian immigrants (4 items adapted from Pagotto & Voci, ) and perceived typicality of the described behavior for the minority as a whole (1 item adapted from Brown et al., ) that were not employed in the design of this study.

6. When controlling for participants' sex, the pattern of results remained unchanged, with sex having no effect on participants' attitudes, V = 0.01, F(2, 212) = 0.66, p = .520.

7. The English translation of the reports from Czech and German mirrors the original reports as closely as possible, although it may compromise the way the reports sound in English.

References

Czech Statistical Office. (2017, October 20). https://www.czso.cz/csu/cizinci/number-of-foreigners-data#rok Data on number of foreigners. Retrieved from

, , , , & Vermeulen, I. E. (2009). How terrorism news reports increase prejudice against outgroups: A terror management account. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(3), 453-459. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.12.001

Eurostat. (2017). Non-national population by group of citizenship, 1 January 2015. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Non-national_population_by_group_of_citizenship,_1_January_2015_(%C2%B9)_YB16.png

(1980). Attention and weight in person perception: The impact of negative and extreme behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(6), 889-906. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.38.6.889

(2001). Defining and observing minorities: An objective assessment. Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 18, 205-216.

(2006). Media & minorities: The politics of race in news and entertainment. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Ramasubramanian, S. (2011). The impact of stereotypical versus counterstereotypical media exemplars on racial attitudes, causal attributions, and support for affirmative action. Communication Research, 38(4), 497-516. doi:10.1177/0093650210384854

Ramasubramanian, S. (2015). Using celebrity news stories to effectively reduce racial/ethnic prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 71(1), 123-138. doi:10.1111/josi.12100

Stem. (2016). What attitudes do Czech citizens have towards various nationalities and ethnic groups? Retrieved from https://en.stem.cz/what-attitudes-do-czech-citizens-have-towards-various-nationalities-and-ethnic-groups-2/

United Nations High Commission for Refugees. (2016). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2016. Retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/5943e8a34.pdf

Additional information

Funding

The research has received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship grant agreement No 703495 awarded to Sylvie Graf. Study 1 was supported by a grant 17-14387S from the Czech Science Foundation, and by RVO: 68081740 from the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences. Study 2 was supported through travel grants by the Swiss National Science Foundation (IZKOZ1_166739) and the European Association of Social Psychology.

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The effects of news report valence and linguistic labels on prejudice against social minorities

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Combating prejudice against social minorities is a challenging task in current multicultural societies. Mass media can decisively shape prejudice, because it often represents the main source of information about social minorities.

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This article's about how clothing is labeled and made differently according to someone's gender.

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One of fashion's major story lines of the last year has been the industry's sudden, widespread embrace of clothes that ignore gender lines. While cool, iconoclastic labels, such as Comme des Garçons, , and Rad Hourani, have been doing it for years, now Gucci is presenting pussy-bow blouses for guys, and Prada showed a collection last June that was simultaneously his and hers. The concept hasn't been relegated to the runways either. Fancy London department store Selfridges unveiled its Agender campaign earlier this year, and come June, thecorner.com, an online boutique, will dedicate a channel on its site to what it calls "gender-neutral" clothing and accessories that offer "an alternative to the classic 'Men's' vs 'Women's' dichotomy."

The idea that humans are either male or female is deeply ingrained in Western culture, but as research and the experiences of countless non-gender-conforming people show, sex and gender aren't perfectly binary. So, why should our clothes be? The rules that govern what men and women should wear are actually fairly arbitrary. We know that because they keep changing. In fact, men and women in Europe and other cultures wore more or less the same garments for centuries.

This new push for genderless dressing doesn't seek to erase gender from clothing, just to loosen the constraints on what people should or shouldn't wear.

Our bodies are not our selves

Plenty of people, however, don't feel themselves to be the gender that matches the sex they were assigned-reality TV personality Bruce Jenner being a famous recent example. The exact number is difficult to determine, but it's a common enough occurrence that cultures around the world recognize more than two genders and half of millennials believe that gender exists on a spectrum.

To blur the lines further, people are born with some form of intersex anatomy. The standard definitions of female or male are narrow enough that back in 1993 the Brown University biology and gender studies professor Anne Fausto-Sterling proposed that five sexes exist, not two.

One in 100 people are born with some form of intersex anatomy.

Dr. Jo Paoletti is a professor at the University of Maryland and the author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America, which examines how children's clothing became so heavily gendered in the 20th century. She says that, as children, we use clothing to play out different roles, including gender roles, with few restrictions. Girls, for instance, don't necessarily dress up as princesses because they want to be royalty. The tiara and tutu-and all that pink-are in part about embodying an idea of femininity. The same girl might well dress in sneakers and jeans the next day, and a boy might enjoy trying out that same tiara and pink tutu.

"Clothing has this interesting property that we discover as kids-that you don't have to just be something and you're always that," she says. "You can be a different thing-a different you -every day."

Clothes make the man, or woman

Clothing didn't always carry such strong gender connotations. In her book Cut My Cote, author Dorothy Burnham examines that clothing was initially based on the shapes of the animal skins or fabrics it was fashioned from.

In ancient Rome, most of the design of a cloth garment took place on the loom, which meant everyone wore what were essentially long rectangles of draped fabric.

Sexual characteristics became more important in clothes, on account of men's incredible shrinking tunics.

The dour Victorians took the distinction between men's clothes and women's still further. Before them, everyone with money wore equally elaborate, sumptuous, and colorful clothing. They put an end to that, as men's dress abandoned rich fabrics and bold colors altogether. A businesslike sobriety took hold, emphasizing practicality, that only grew more pronounced in the Industrial era, when a man's three-piece suit could be mass-manufactured.

The great differentiation between menswear and womenswear, at least in the West, was complete.

Those differences in dress came to symbolize the supposed differences in the sexes: Men, like a suit, were serious and practical; women, like a flouncy dress, were frivolous and superficial.

In the early 20th century, society considered pink the more suitable shade for boys, and blue was better for little girls.

Back in the US, color started to take on the job of delineating gender among children. In the mid-19th century, blue and pink became popular colors for girls and boys, and by the early 20th century, society had decided that the genders belonged in separate shades- only, pink was considered by some more appropriate for boys, and blue was better for little girls. Trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department declared that "pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

By the 1940s, the colors had switched genders, highlighting just how arbitrary the distinction is.

"This is a story I hear again and again and again," says Jennifer Self, director of the Q Center at the University of Washington, an advocacy and mentoring center for queer students. "These folks have felt like they've been wearing costumes. They feel like they've been in drag."

Unfinished business

In recent decades, gender-neutral clothing trends have cropped up from time to time, beginning with the rise of feminism and its questioning of gender roles. Dr. Paoletti views its latest resurgence as an extension of that conversation. She calls it "unfinished business from the 1970s."

"There were a lot of questions raised by feminism, the Civil Rights movement, the gay rights movement about gender roles, and the extent to which individuals should follow gender roles," she says. "And part of that is going to be the way you look."

Since then, Self notes, "As the gay and lesbian, bisexual, trans-movement has progressed, that has expanded into these notions of a non-binary understanding of gender."

The designers creating gender-neutral clothes today echo the sentiments of those movements, consciously or not.

"I made an observation before starting Unisex to understand who I am as a person and how to express myself," Rad Hourani told Vice. "I didn't understand who decided that a man should be dressed differently than a woman and all of these other limitations that we have in life like our age, gender, religion, nation, or any other boundaries that divide people from each other."

Prada's fall-winter 2015 menswear show came with a manifesto declaring, "Gender is a context and context is often gendered."

Of course, a handful of designers and retailers embracing gender-neutral clothing won't resolve lingering questions about gender roles, and it's debatable whether gender-neutral can ever be more than a niche market. The fact remains that we live in a very gendered society, and the bodies of men and women tend to have different shapes. To sell to the majority of customers, fashion labels have to design their clothes accordingly.

But if nothing else, this new space being carved out in the fashion world could create a slightly larger comfort zone for people who don't feel-and don't necessarily want to feel-like they fit in just one category. And that's a good thing. We're most comfortable in our clothes when they express how we feel, not hide it.

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Sex and gender aren't perfectly binary. Why should clothes be?

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Science and history show that fashion's recent embrace of gender-neutral clothing actually makes quite a lot of sense.

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This article is about labels in relation to American politics today. Most people are probably familiar with terms like "conservative" and "liberals", but there are many other terms used. These terms start to isolate groups and cause issues with individuality. Labels are also often misleading, which leads to incorrect assumptions about other people.

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By

( A version of this article was first published in the January 2001 issue of The Freeman, the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education-www.fee.org.)

When it comes to political matters, Americans are hung up on labels. Everywhere you turn, somebody is calling somebody else some name-short-hand for what the other person's political philosophy or ideological leanings are perceived to be.

If labels inform then they can be useful but when they confuse or distort, they're worse than useless. Amid the general dumbing down of educational standards in recent years and the resulting degeneration of public debate, I confess to a disillusionment with the commonly used political labels. Most have become excuses for people to stop thinking and instead, to simply pigeonhole others in a fashion that may be quick and convenient but is usually superficial and misleading.

Consider the tired, old dichotomy of "liberals" on the one hand versus "conservatives" on the other. "Liberal" was once an honorable word to describe those who put "liberty" first. Over the course of the twentieth century in America, it flip-flopped into a term for those who would gladly trade liberty for a mess of pottage from the State. Even that meaning rarely applies to any one person's view on every issue.

"Conservative" is sometimes used to describe one who wants to preserve the status quo and at other times, to describe one who wants to restore a limited role for government (at least in most economic matters), which today can hardly be a status quo posture. People are assigned the "conservative" or "liberal" labels with abandon, yet close inspection almost always yields good reasons why on at least some important issues, the moniker assigned doesn't fit at all.

The confusion only worsens when the labelers go to work on foreigners. When Mikhail Gorbachev was introducing reforms in the old Soviet Union, the American media called him a "liberal" and his old-line Stalinist opponents "conservative." American conservatives rightly wondered why their label was always attached to the figures the mainstream media could easily demonize, whether those figures were foreign communists on one end of the spectrum or homespun, budget-cutting libertarians on the other.

Quite often, somebody attaches an adjective to an already-confusing label that rarely clarifies anything. "Compassionate" conservative, for example. I know a lot of very generous, caring, self-described conservatives who routinely give far more of their own resources to worthy causes than the most sanctimonious, guilt-ridden liberals. These "conservatives" wonder why any adjective is necessary.

And how about that word, "moderate"? That's been sanctified to describe one who occupies a lofty perch of enlightened and thoughtful objectivity. Look closer and you usually find a person who hasn't done his homework and can't make his mind up. And when he finally does come to a conclusion, it's strikingly inconsistent with other half-baked views he holds.

Maybe we need a new set of labels. Or perhaps we need to recognize that short-hand just won't do the job when you're talking about how complex principles apply to current-day issues.

In any event, if we must label people as this or that, I suggest we do so in more meaningful ways, with fewer sound bites and single-word monikers. That suggests we not use one-size-fits-all descriptions, but rather, that we describe traits and tendencies as they arise. For starters: Why not differentiate between those who are satisfied with rhetoric versus those who demand results ?

People who advocate government-financed and government-directed efforts to address problems once widely regarded as personal, private, or "civil society" responsibilities almost always settle for rhetoric alone. Perhaps that's because their handiwork rarely produces results that are worth bragging about. To these people, it is usually enough for one to simply declare his concern for the poor to prove that he really cares. It doesn't matter that government programs to help the poor have decisively accomplished the very opposite, a painful fact which both experience and economics should have forecast in advance.

People who advocate nongovernmental solutions-changes in attitudes and behavior, strengthening of the family, the involvement of churches and private associations, for example-are not typically animated by rhetoric. They are focused on results, and they have the incredible story of the American experience to which they can proudly point. It wasn't rhetoric that carved a great civilization out of wilderness; it wasn't self-righteous breast-beating or mere professions of concern that fed, clothed and housed more people at higher levels than any other society ever known in history. It was a combination of strong families, rugged self-reliance, effective volunteer associations, wealth-creating private initiative and risk-taking entrepreneurship.

Here's another meaningful way to categorize people's thinking: Those who are happy with short-term answers versus those who plan for the long-run .

Some people think only of the here-and-now, what strikes the eye, the present moment. Others see further ahead and recognize that quick fixes often yield long-term disaster.

In this regard, we once again find those who favor government "solutions" to be on the short end of the stick. The primary answer they offer to problems such as poverty is to toss the poor a government check. They observe the subject spending the check on groceries and conclude that they have done good. But those who support nongovernment solutions know the meaning of the old adage, "Give me a fish and I eat for a day; teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime." They don't see today's groceries as the answer to tomorrow's hunger and they know that more fundamental things than a government check are required to prepare for a brighter future.

Yet another possible method of drawing distinctions and applying accurate descriptions: Those who exhibit little interest in liberty versus those who understand that without liberty, little else either matters or is possible .

People who push government to "tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect" (in the words of FDR braintruster Harry Hopkins) are more than willing to sacrifice a little liberty for the sake of a handout. More appropriately, they are willing to sacrifice the liberties of everyone for the sake of handouts for a few. Those who prefer private, nongovernmental measures to address problems understand 1) that government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody and 2) that government which is big enough to give you everything you want has become big enough to take away everything you've got.

Instead of settling for the standard and increasingly confusing or irrelevant labels of today's parlance, we should concentrate on explaining to people that the ideas worth supporting are those that are tested and found worthwhile because they produce results, not rhetoric; that the ideas worth supporting are those that do not mortgage the future for the sake of the present; and finally, that the ideas worth supporting are those that do not treat other people's liberty as though it were so much scrap paper waiting to be cleared away.

Surely, for reasons I've already made apparent, one who values freedom and free markets can readily embrace these new criteria for pegging political/economic tendencies. We'll probably have a very hard time, however, getting "the other side" to go along. But that fact says volumes about the merits of their positions and certainly tells us all a lot more than the old mainstream mis labels. If insisting on this approach compels a few to dig a little deeper and learn more than what can fit on a bumper sticker, public debate will thereby be, to some degree, better informed.

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Political Labels Are a Poor Substitute for Critical Thinking

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By ( A version of this article was first published in the January 2001 issue of The Freeman, the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education-www.fee.org.) When it comes to political matters, Americans are hung up on labels. Everywhere you turn, somebody is calling somebody else some name-short-hand for what the other person's political philosophy or ideological leanings are perceived to be.

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This article is about the tense relationship that is Israel and Palestine. Ever since the mid 20th century, the issue of whether Palestine should be free from Israel has been a heavily discussed topic in the region. Currently, the two most recognized solutions are the "one-state solution" or the "two-state solution". If they choose the one state solution, Palestine and Israel merge, making Israel a majority Muslim country in the process. If they choose the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine will be separated into different countries, and is the mostly preferred solution of the two.
This related to the KQ because it shows how saying Palestine is Israel is essentially putting aside so much conflict and history, and not recognizing a multi-decade conflict between a region and a country.

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A comprehensive guide to the basics of the world's most controversial conflict.

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the longest-running and most controversial in the world. Since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza, it has been in one of the bloodiest periods of its already-bloody history.

At its heart, the conflict is between two self-determination movements - the Jewish Zionist project and the Palestinian nationalist project - that lay claim to the same territory. But it is so, so much more complicated than that, with seemingly every fact and historical detail small and large litigated by the two sides and their defenders.

This guide is designed to give you an entry point into understanding this immensely complicated conflict. If you're wondering about the basics - like how the conflict got started or the role the city of Jerusalem plays in it - then you've come to the right place.

My hope is that, regardless of your view of who's right, you can read this and feel like you've gotten an honest, clear guide to the key elements of the situation. And if you don't know anything about it, then you can come away feeling like you can basically make sense of what's happening today.

-Zack Beauchamp
Editor's note: A version of this guide was originally published in 2018. Since then, some existing stories in the guide have been updated and new stories have been added to reflect the developing situation.

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Everything you need to know about Israel-Palestine

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Israel-Palestine is the world's most controversial conflict. Here's a clear, nonpartisan guide to the basics.

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This article is about division within the Democratic Party. While Bernie Sanders pushed socialist values, Joe Biden and others remained more in the center-left. This relates to the KQ question because it shows that even though a large group of people may label themselves democrats, a wide variety of conflicting political opinions can be found within the party.

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No crowd. No balloons. Almost no risk of spreading a highly contagious virus. Sounds ... thrilling, right? We break down why this year's Democratic convention could make it tougher than ever to energize viewers.

But it also became clear over the conversation that the snarling during the Democratic presidential primary was not a misunderstanding, nor a figment of social media imagination. The competing sides understand each other quite well. If Biden wins the presidency, he's going to be under formidable cross-pressures. And if he loses, the recriminations about why will be toxic. Some of the dividing lines are about ideology, and some about the practical politics of engaging voters to create a durable majority.

JAMAAL BOWMAN, who became a new hero on the left by unseating veteran Rep. Eliot Engel of New York in a June primary, said he represents Democrats who see "an opportunity for us to be bold" on universal public health care and the "Green New Deal," and who thinks Democrats undershot in their ambitions during the Obama years.

REP. CONOR LAMB flipped a historically Republican district in Pennsylvania in 2018, part of a wave that year that helped restore Democratic control of the House. He said the way to win challenging swing districts like his is for Democratic candidates to present themselves as "problem-solvers or engineers," and that his voters still want reassurance "that I am not a socialist."

FAIZ SHAKIR, former 2020 presidential campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, sees the role of party progressives as "to challenge [Biden] to go as broad as we can possibly do."

NEERA TANDEN, the influential president of the Center for American Progress who represents the progressive center as it has steadily evolved, and tilted leftward, since the Clinton and Obama administrations, thinks a new wave of educated, suburban women voters is poised to change the party.

Democratic nominee for New York's 16th congressional district.

U.S. representative for Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district

former campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders

president of the Center for American Progress

An edited transcript of our discussion, which took place over Zoom last week, is below. As it happens, the news of Biden's choice of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate came just as our time was coming to a close. See the bottom of the transcript to watch Democrats reckoning with the announcement in real-time.

JOHN HARRIS: If we look at the nature of the Democratic coalition in 2020, how is it different than, say, 2008, when Barack Obama was running to be president? What's it got more of? What's it got less of? And what do those changes really mean?

NEERA TANDEN: Well, as you know, in 2008, then-Senator Obama was able to create a very large coalition in the election against [John] McCain. In the Trump administration, the base of the [Democratic] Party has been people of color, particularly African Americans, and younger people, who came out for Barack Obama. But I think in the Trump administration, you've seen a surge of white, college-educated voters, particularly women, who've moved dramatically against the president. And they are a large-scale, impactful voice in politics writ large.

CONOR LAMB: I wasn't in office in 2008, but I've met a lot of people in the last two years around Western Pennsylvania who talk about their own evolution in voting. And I notice it especially with union men. There are a lot of them who will tell you that they voted for Obama the first time, some of them the second time, and then maybe voted for President Trump. And people have different reasons for why that was. It might have to do with the industry that they worked in or just their general feelings over time.

But there was definitely a common thread of change, where people were expressing how upset and disappointed they were with the usual cast of characters in Washington. And both Obama and Trump-obviously, in their own ways-promised to disrupt that. And I think one thing you see the Democratic Party returning to, at least in the House, is a lot more young challengers from very different backgrounds, whether it's the military or teachers or scientists. Even if our ideas are different among each other, we all pretty much agree that business as usual has not been that great. And, so, I think in some ways we're inviting a lot of these voters back in.

"People were expressing how upset and disappointed they were with the usual cast of characters in Washington. And both Obama and Trump, obviously, in their own ways, promised to disrupt that."

HOLLY OTTERBEIN: I'm curious what Faiz or maybe Jamaal has to say about that, too. Are progressives now a part of the coalition in a way that they were not in 2008, or is it the same? Or less so?

JAMAAL BOWMAN: In 2008, Barack Obama pulled me into the entire political conversation differently than anyone prior to him. As a Black man in America, to see a Black man running for president-and, as he gained momentum throughout his campaign, to really see he had a chance to win-that was very different. Obama had me listening differently and paying attention differently. And if it wasn't for that, as well as Senator [Bernie] Sanders in 2016 and the Squad winning in 2018, I would not have run for office in 2020, and I wouldn't have made myself a part of the conversation in terms of our electoral politics.

FAIZ SHAKIR: As much as there's an important political conversation here, I think that there's an important conversation about ideology and policies and the direction of the party that has occurred over the past few years. When Senator Sanders started running in '15 and '16, he was talking about, in many ways, the silent pain and suffering of many people in the working class who weren't being spoken to. So, you have ideas bandied about-more progressive taxation on billionaires, of course, but also benefits like "Medicare for All," universality approaches of canceling all student debt, free tuition at public colleges and universities for everybody-but interjecting those ideas as saying to people who are truly suffering out there that, "I hear you and I see you, and we have to do something radically different to address your particular pain because the status quo is letting you down."

"Yes, there's a constituency coalition-building that needs to occur to win elections. But more importantly, it's driving you to say, 'I have a specific solution that you can find credible.'"

The collision course with reality is that basically you have Trump come into office and you have farcical elements of inequality. It has brought what I believe was a silent pain and suffering, a suggestion or hints of that corruption, and literally hit you right in the head with it. And I think in some ways it's defining a Democratic Party that is going to have to say, "I have a specific plan for you." Yes, there's a constituency coalition-building that needs to occur to win elections. But more importantly, it's driving [Democrats] to say, "I have a specific solution that you can find credible." That, to me, is going to be the definition of this party over the next five, 10 years.

OTTERBEIN: What does it mean that there are so many more suburban voters that are now part of the Democratic Party? Many of them are well-off, well-educated. Does it change who the Democratic Party is? Is it still FDR's party?

TANDEN: I don't think these voters are necessarily supermoderate, OK? If you actually look at these voters, they're for higher taxes on rich people, even though they're wealthier. This group of voters has moved dramatically on race in the Trump era from where they were five, six, seven years ago to today. My honest view is Trump has made them understand racism is much more ubiquitous than perhaps they thought. And that's on them. I mean, racism has been ubiquitous, but now they are seeing it more. So, there are issues on which they are a moderating force, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily moderate.

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No crowd. No balloons. Almost no risk of spreading a highly contagious virus. Sounds ... thrilling, right? We break down why this year's Democratic convention could make it tougher than ever to energize viewers. But it also became clear over the conversation that the snarling during the Democratic presidential primary was not a misunderstanding, nor a figment of social media imagination.

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This article describes the importance of nutritional labeling on food products. Having accurate nutritional labels on products is important in deciding between different brands as well as knowing serving sizes, and understanding you're actually eating. This relates to the KQ topic as in this case labeling is beneficial to consumers and the general populations dietary health.

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Author: The MenuSano Team

Published: 8/21/2020 1:02:26 PM

Original Publish Date: June 1, 2018
Food labeling is one of the most essential components of any food-based industry. Beyond transparency, it allows people to determine, choose, and upkeep their dietary needs and health plans.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a proper guideline for food labeling undertaken by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The main rule is simple: all the nutritional value should be mentioned for every prepared and packed food items, including bread, canned products, frozen items, cereals, snacks, drinks, desserts, etc. The FDA also provides regular guidance to the food industry for any addition or deletion of information in the labeling, depending upon the nature of the item.

In Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is responsible for outlining food labeling regulations and additional information for Canada's labeling requirements. Adherence to these standards further helps the general public get comfortable with the nutritional facts when selecting and purchasing food items for their family.

Basic Parameters Of Nutrition Facts Labels

Nutrition facts labels help to maintain better eating habits and aid in attaining a balanced energy level.

Foods high in sugar and fat content tend to be more palatable and therefore become favorite staples, so it's even more important to be aware of their nutritional output. Choosing between these or other options to switch out for a more healthy option or to portion control is essential.

The basic importance of nutrition facts labels is to promote the selection of foods that help manage a vast array of diets and nutritional needs.

The basic parameters which are required for the use of nutrition facts labels are as follows:

Serving Size and Calorie Content

In nutritional facts labels, one of the foremost things that require a look are serving sizes, as these guide the process. This signifies the number of serving in that particular package. If the package contains multiple servings, the nutritional fact label also mentions the detailed nutritional information per serving. This makes it easy to calculate the calorie intake as well as Percent Daily Value of each nutrient. Percent Daily Value denotes per day requirement of a particular nutrient.

Calorie Sources

Calories aren't just calories, they're energy and their source matters and varies greatly. From health benefits to food allergies, whether it be protein, fat, or carbohydrates, this information is considered vital. Depending on lifestyle or diet, a body needs different caloric intakes and these may differ wildly.

Experts suggest that one should maintain total daily caloric intake that is between 20% and 35%.

Added Sugar Content

Added sugar content increases the calorie levels without adding any health benefits. It is key to check the nutritional food label for the information about any added or natural sugar levels. There are foods naturally high in sugar, foods that are expected to be high in sugar, and foods that normally should not have any but do.

Nutrition facts labels do the best job possible to alert the customer to the sugar content in the produce they're considering.

Type of Fat Present

The chemical nature of fat is varied and how it is metabolized changes depending on many factors. A food label will allow you to understand if the fat is good, healthy fat or saturated or trans fat.

Any food items which contain more than 20 Percent Daily Value or higher are considered a high-fat food, whereas 5 Percent Daily Value or lower are considered low-fat foods.

Sodium Intake

High Sodium intake i.e. more than 2,300 milligrams (almost one teaspoon of salt) increases the risk of hypertension. Processed food items are often a rich source of sodium, so the nutritional information assists in calculating the exact sodium value for the day.

Importance of Nutritional Facts Labels

Nutritional facts labels provide information on the food we choose to eat and feed to others. Their importance stems from everyday people being able to make educated choices on their own health and tailor their options to fit their needs and desires.

In a restaurant setting, it's very much a similar tone. Customers pick and feel good about their choices based on the given information. Today, finding a menu without a calorie count is not only hard, but frowned upon by patrons. Transparency is important now more than ever.

Nutrition Facts Label Software

As the public understanding of health and food grows, so too does the need for labels on what people eat. Health is a growing concern in this generation, and control over what is being consumed and how people choose to nourish their bodies is becoming evidently standard.

Menusano is a tool designed to do exactly what your customers crave; a meal that begins with their health in mind. Generating nutrition facts labels for your food has never been simpler. Try it now free.

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Off The Shelf Food Products and Nutrition Facts: Always Read the Labels

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Author: The MenuSano Team Published: 8/21/2020 1:02:26 PM Original Publish Date: June 1, 2018 Food labeling is one of the most essential components of any food-based industry. Beyond transparency, it allows people to determine, choose, and upkeep their dietary needs and health plans.

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This article is about the barrier created by labels starting when we are children. how the uniqueness of an individual is lost when we apply simple labels to them. how pride is take in the label "Black" yet those who live with that label must watch what they do and say in am effort to no conform with the labels stereotypes. also how the label is placed upon any individual with a darker skin tone making this a very broad label. for example both people from the US and people from Haiti for example are both refereed to a black.

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The Labels We Carry
As human beings we naturally categorize and label things in order to understand them. Young children in the process of learning language will learn that a 'car' has wheels and for a while anything with wheels is labeled a 'car,' whether it is a firetruck, bus, or bike. This is a natural part of learning and occurs until there is more specificity in language development. Unfortunately, as a society, we often get stuck in that stage of finding a label for someone and overgeneralizing that label or term to anyone that may be similar or look like the original term.

The uniqueness and complexity of the individual can get lost in the application of a label. Whether it is race, age, religion, sexual identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or mental health and well-being... our brains tend to label others in order to give language and understanding. Comments such as "She's old," "He's a Muslim," "She's Mexican," "He's from the ghetto," and "She's trans" can all be used to explain away the identity of someone. To extend the metaphor a bit: It is our responsibility to deepen that understanding and go beyond certain types of people as being 'cars' in order to appreciate the different make and models that reflects the variety of vehicles that exist. That being said I would like to put this deepening into practice as I discuss my own identity as a Black person.
What does it mean to be Black?
I will admit that I wholeheartedly embrace this label. I love being Black (some might prefer the term African American). More specifically, I love the color of my skin and the resulting culture that has manifested from that reality. Yet, I have to be careful that what I say, what I do, and what I feel does not get portrayed as something that is automatically true and universal for every Black person. I do not speak for my entire race. There is no way that I can represent every Black person's viewpoint or perspective. While being 'Black' can be like that metaphor of the 'car,' the other complexities that make up the multicultural make-up of a person create the more adequate language of specificity that honors the uniqueness of each person. Unfortunately, in America, most persons labeled 'Black' are treated the same way... as if we were all the same.
What does it mean to be Black in America?
Being Black in America has come with generational trauma as well as generational survival and thriving. I recognize that there have been hardships birthed from others' prejudice against people with brown skin color. I also recognize that these hardships have formed a resilient mindset of people filled with creativity, faith, and determination. We are a people who have had to deal with oppression.

Whether someone was brought to the States as a slave or immigrated from the regions of the Caribbean or Central America, the label of 'Black' is often applied to all once one is on American soil and the treatment is usually the same: ranging from microaggressions, outright racism, mistrust, and intrigue, to cultural appropriation and modern segregation (or acceptance, but at a distance). Yet, within America there are so many different Black experiences, whether it is distinguished by religion, nationality, region, education, or access to opportunity. Personally speaking, my faith in God has been an anchor and source of light and life that has enabled the ability to survive in 2 worlds (that of main stream White America and that of Black America) as W.E.B. Dubois discussed in his book The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. My deep spirituality and faith in Jesus has allowed me to bear the injustices that have occurred in the past and that still occur today.
What does it mean to be Black in America Today?
Today's American culture for the Black person, while not the same as the cruel days of slavery or the terrorizing days of Jim Crow, still contains the element of danger, oppression, and injustice. It also includes an openness to embrace, love, and treat Black people equally. This can appear confusing, as there has been both real and apparent progress made in race relations, in interracial relationships, and in the fields of education and work. From the exterior, this progress has been seemingly disrupted by disturbing racial incidences such as White Nationalist Rallies, the deaths of Black men and women, and the lack of conviction of those responsible for those deaths.

From the interior, while heartbreaking to have happen, it often is not surprising for many Black people because the insidious, subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) prejudice is still a part of everyday life. One major difference in today's time is that there is technology available that not only captures the violence that occurs, but also is something that can be easily and freely publicized. Videos taken on someone's phone provide a sense of empowerment to document events that have historically been hushed, hidden, or denied. In addition, recent documentaries, television shows, and movies have been created that are not only entertaining, but are also highly educational as they pull in research and expertise from those involved in the thick of injustice.

Personally speaking, at times there can be an underlying fear of not just those who partake in explicit racism, but also a trepidation of the hidden others who commit microaggressions that reflect secretly held racist beliefs. On the other hand, I am also greatly encouraged by those who do not look like me, who stand with the cause of justice, equality, peace, and love (such as those who were counter-protestors in Charlottesville, VA in August of 2017). It warms my heart to engage with those who are willing to participate in social justice and shine a light on dark places. I am also super proud to be Black when I witness the richness of the talent, faith, intelligence, wisdom, and cultural giganticness that we, as Black people, offer and continue to expand upon. The diversity in the gifts that individual persons bring to the table, helps us as a society to move beyond generalized labels, and challenges each person to inspire others to embrace genuinely being themselves.
What does it mean to simply Be (more than just a label)?
If I were to simply be me, of course it would include my racial experience as a Black person, but my identity would also be richly deepened by the meaning that comes along with the other multicultural factors of who I am. As children of God, we are combinations of our genetics, our environment, and our spiritual experiences/blessings. This combination informs the decisions we make which further shape who we are and makes us unique. At the basic level, we are human beings who want the freedom to simply be ourselves: to be known, heard, loved, appreciated, gently challenged to grow, held accountable, celebrated, valued, and given the gift of opportunity to offer all those same things to others (to know, hear, see, love, appreciate, and gently challenge growth in others).
Questions for Further Reflection: What does it mean to be you? What forces or components have come together to create who you identify as in this day and time? What labels have defined you? Which do you choose to accept or reject?
Dr. Awa Jangha is Assistant Professor of Counselor Education at Seminary of the Southwest. She earned a PhD from Loyola University Maryland in Pastoral Counseling (a Counselor Education and Supervision program). Before moving to Austin, Dr. Jangha served in private practice in Washington DC, where she integrated art therapy with pastoral counseling. Her research interests include multicultural competency, counselor training and supervision, identity development, and arts based research.

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To Be Black in America Today: The Labels We Carry - Seminary of the Southwest

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The Labels We Carry As human beings we naturally categorize and label things in order to understand them. Young children in the process of learning language will learn that a 'car' has wheels and for a while anything with wheels is labeled a 'car,' whether it is a firetruck, bus, or bike.

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How do we label things as "good" or "bad"? This article questions why we feel the need to label our behaviors as "good" or "bad" and how we decide what feelings to accept. It discusses the development on one's identity through change.

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"The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom." ~Tara Brach
I was in the heart of my Ph.D. program when I received the diagnoses: OCD, depression, and binge eating disorder.

It explained a lot, of course. All those years of anxiety, self-doubt, and intrusive thoughts were not normal after all. Eating to the point of gaining forty pounds in a few months was foreign to most people.

I wanted an explanation. Why me?

I had done everything right: I made a decent living, I was kind to everyone, and I was presenting my scientific research at international conferences. Why was I being punished?

I turned to my past and looked for an explanation-something I could pin the blame on. Was it my parents? Had years of moving from place to place as a military child scarred me?

What about my peers? Those uncomfortable years of being teased and bullied for my grades and general good-girl behavior must have led to this.

Perhaps I was to blame? Had I overachieved my way to a mental health breakdown? Had I failed myself?

Those first few months of therapy were the most difficult. I was forced to face all these questions and more, digging into my past and present with both fervor and hesitation. What if I didn't like the person I found underneath all these layers of expectations?
As I stripped away the beliefs I held about myself, I watched as my worst fears came to life. It appeared that I was to blame after all. I had allowed myself to take on everyone else's feelings about me and make them my own.
My self-identity was a conglomeration of things I had been told over the years. I was smart, I was capable, I was good, I was bossy, I was sweet, I was stubborn, and I was so many other adjectives.

There was nothing inherently wrong with these descriptors, particularly the positive traits, but I didn't necessarily relate to all of them.

My family saw me as "a sweet girl," when I felt more tart than saccharine.

People told me I was book smart, when I knew that I was a good mix of both academic intelligence and common sense.

Some who were uncomfortable with women in power called me bossy, when really I was assertive.

I had brought this breakdown on myself, I thought. How could I have let others define who I would become? Why was I so weak?

It was around this time that one of my therapists introduced me to the idea of radical acceptance.

It's a concept based in Buddhist philosophy that is used by psychologists to help their clients heal and accept challenges in their lives.
Rather than encouraging us to decide whether something is good or bad, as we often do automatically, radical acceptance encourages us to simply accept that things are.
We have a tendency to apply labels to things. In my story, I had been labeled as smart, an overachiever, a worrywart, and other things. In turn, I labeled my newfound mental health situation as a misfortune, a major obstacle, a life changer, and other (mostly negative) things.

Imagine how much more freeing it would be to live a life apart from labels! The key to this mindset, of course, is to realize that your feelings about an event do not change the event itself.

Let's say you got into a car accident. You may feel angry, hurt, frustrated, and many other emotions. Those are all valid feelings, and you have a right to experience them.

But your anger won't undo the accident. The accident happened. The accident is.

Let's take this one step further, however.

After the accident you become angry that you have become frustrated. How could you allow yourself to get worked up over something that you can no longer control?
You can also attempt to radically accept your feelings.
Your emotional reactions are natural, and it's counterintuitive to get worked up over what you "should" be feeling. What you are feeling is neither a bad nor a good thing, it simply is.

What situations might you apply radical acceptance to in your daily life?

You wake up later than you planned to.

Your cat throws up on your new rug.

You fail a test that you prepared for extensively.

Your partner overdrew the checking account.

You didn't get the raise you were expecting at work.

Imagine accepting each of these events as something outside your control and training yourself to not get worked up over unexpected circumstances.
This is not an easy task, and it will take time to incorporate the practice into your daily life. Be gentle to yourself.

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I dropped out of my Ph.D. program after my first year of therapy. My journey into my brain showed me that I was heading down a path that others had set for me, one that I had not bothered to ask myself about.

This major change in my life was labeled by others. To outsiders, I was a quitter, I couldn't handle the pressure of academia, and I was not living up to my potential.

But for me, this was simply a change. It was neither good nor bad, it was merely different.

Since my mental health breakdown, I've experienced a lot of changes, both in my life and in my career. Some of them have been good changes, and some of them have been bad.

But I don't allow myself to fall into that black-and-white thinking as easily anymore.

I have learned to own my story and my circumstances, and I love myself more because of it.

Change can be good; change can be bad. But, most often, change simply is.
Peaceful woman image via Shutterstock
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Radically Accept What Is Instead of Labeling it "Good" or "Bad"

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"The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom." ~Tara Brach I was in the heart of my Ph.D. program when I received the diagnoses: OCD, depression, and binge eating disorder. It explained a lot, of course. All those years of anxiety, self-doubt, and intrusive thoughts were not normal after all.

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This article discusses how 20% of seafood is mislabeled and how dangerous it can be to both the consumer and the fish. For instance, markets would cater to the growing demand for more popular fish by substituting with less popular and lesser quality fish. According to National Geographic, "some substitutes were fish that contain higher mercury levels or come from less sustainable fisheries." This relates to the KQ as people can abuse the act of labeling to provide different items, and how gullible consumers can be when it comes to recognizing labels.

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If you order a filet of snapper at a restaurant, you probably expect to be served snapper. But a new report suggests there's a strong chance you'll be getting something else.

Oceana, a marine conservation nonprofit with a recent history of studying seafood mislabeling, today published a new report on the state of seafood fraud in the U.S.

They found that 20 percent of the 449 fish they tested were incorrectly labeled. Orders of sea bass were often replaced by giant perch, Alaskan halibut by Greenland turbot, and Florida snapper by lavender jobfish, to name a few.

Oceana made headlines in 2016 by publishing a report finding massive seafood fraud on a global scale. Since then, NOAA created the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), to track 13 species deemed at high risk of being fraudulently sold or sourced illegally.

None of the 13 SIMP monitored species were sampled.

"We wanted to highlight that there are other species other than the high-risk species," says Kimberly Warner, a senior scientist at Oceana and one of the report's authors.

To get a snapshot of how widespread the issue is, Oceana's employees and volunteers took fish samples from 24 different states and the District of Columbia. Fish came from restaurants, seafood markets, and large grocery stores. Samples were then sent to a lab where DNA was analyzed.

Sea bass and snapper were the most commonly mislabeled species, and fish ordered at restaurants were more likely to be mislabeled than fish bought at markets or grocery stores. Mislabeling also occurred when cheaper, imported fish were sold as local catch and when farm-raised fish were marketed as wild caught.

"What we saw is that we still have a problem," says Warner. "It's a concern for everyone who eats seafood."

A 2013 Oceana study sampled more species and found mislabeling happened at a higher rate, 33 percent. The environmental group is one of many organizations looking at mislabeling.

Last December, the New York state attorney general issued a report on "disturbingly" high rates of fraud in New York supermarkets. It found that one in four fish sampled were mislabeled. Cheaper, less desirable fish were often sold in the name of more popular fish. Particularly concerning was the report's finding that some substitutes were fish that contain higher mercury levels or come from less sustainable fisheries.

Last September, a crab vendor in Virginia pleaded guilty to conspiring to pass off foreign crab meat as Atlantic blue crab. Local news reports alleged more than 180 tons of falsely labeled crab meat was sold at large grocery chains like Harris Teeter.

In 2017, a study published in the journal Conservation Biology by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles found that half the sushi sold in L.A. restaurants was actually not what was listed on the menu.

Marine ecologist Erin Spencer recently received a National Geographic Society grant to study how widely red snapper is mislabeled in southeastern U.S. states. She took samples sold at seafood markets, grocery stores, and sushi restaurants from North Carolina to Florida and found that most of her samples were not labeled correctly. Some of that may stem from confusion or miscommunication, she notes.

"Part of that is because the FDA says there's only one species that can be called red snapper, but there are lots of other snappers that are red in color," she says, noting that many species beyond snapper look similar, especially when cooked.

She also notes that red snapper is both commercially sold and recreationally fished, making it a coveted species. Though she wasn't involved in the Oceana study, she says the group's findings are consistent with her own research.

Not knowing what fish is on your plate may present a health risk, says Warner.

Catfish farm-raised in Asia, for instance, isn't subjected to the same chemical and handling regulations as domestically sourced catfish.

"You're exposing your family to unknown risks from a health perspective," she adds.

Of the seafood consumed in the U.S., more than 90 percent is imported. In some cases of seafood fraud, consumers trying to support local fishers were instead served fish from a foreign country. In Chicago, one commonly fished Great Lake species is the walleye. But instead of walleye, tests showed some consumers were served a freshwater species called zander commonly found in Europe and Asia.

"There's a huge movement to eat sustainable seafood and as a consumer you're trying to make really informed decisions," says Spencer. "That only works if the fish are what they say they are."

Understanding why a fish was mislabeled is difficult to quantify, Warner notes. Confusion of labeling laws, using common vernacular, or misidentifying a fish all likely contribute to some of the fish that are mislabeled.

"What we found time and again is most often what is substituted is something of less value," she says, providing an economic incentive for illegally substituting fish.

The U.S.'s SIMP tracking program ends at the border-once the imported fish enters the U.S. it has little oversight. Warner says mislabeling is happening throughout the supply chain, but pinpointing exactly where is information they are still searching for.

In their report, the environmental group states: "Oceana recommends that all seafood-both domestic and imported-must be tracked from the fishing boat or farm to the plate."

In Europe, where nearly a third of all seafood was once mislabeled, stricter labeling laws and consumer awareness has made that rate drop to just four percent. A number of groups and companies in the U.S. are trying to build out similar end-to-end tracking supply chains.

For consumers who want to ensure they aren't eating mislabeled seafood, Spencer recommends learning more about where a fish is sourced, saying, "Take the time to learn what fish are in season in your area."

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What is seafood fraud? Dangerous-and running rampant, report finds

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If you order a filet of snapper at a restaurant, you probably expect to be served snapper. But a new report suggests there's a strong chance you'll be getting something else. Oceana, a marine conservation nonprofit with a recent history of studying seafood mislabeling, today published a new report on the state of seafood fraud in the U.S.

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This article Talks about the large and very religiously diverse middle east that is often summed up as also muslim except for Isreal which is obviously Jewish.

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The majority of the Middle East's population today is Muslim, as it has been for centuries. However, as the place of origin of a range of world religions - including Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and many lesser-known faiths - it remains a region of remarkable religious diversity. This article considers the place of religious minorities in the modern Middle East from three angles: their distinctive religious and communal identities, their place in the major transformations of the region's political landscape from the nineteenth century to the post-World War I era, and the challenges of contemporary political conditions.
Who Are the Religious Minorities of the Middle East?
When we label certain religious communities "minorities," we characterize them in terms of demographics: we highlight the fact that they make up only small percentages of the populations of the states in which they live. In some Middle Eastern states, like Bahrain, Iraq, and Iran, Sunni Muslims, who are the majority of the region as a whole, are themselves demographic minorities. Other than these cases, however, it is useful to think of the region's religious minorities in terms of three broad categories: Christian denominations, Shiite Muslim groups, and a variety of smaller, unrelated traditions.

A considerable number of denominations make up the indigenous Christian population of the Middle East. Each of them has a distinct identity rooted in the region's pre-Islamic past (the Middle East was mostly Christian at the time of the Muslim conquests of the seventh century). Today, adherents of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt are likely the Middle East's largest non-Muslim ethno-religious group. Coptic Christians comprise approximately 10% of Egypt's population. Christian Egyptians speak Arabic as a first language like their Muslim fellow citizens, but the Coptic Church is distinctive in that much of its liturgy is performed in Coptic, a Christian version of the ancient Egyptian language. In other words, Egyptian Christians continue to worship in the language that millennia ago was written in hieroglyphics.

Jordan, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are home to a further variety of Christian communities. Among the larger ones are Arab Orthodox and Catholics who are in communion with the wider Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, but who use their native Arabic for their religious life. Lebanon and northeast Syria, southeast Turkey, and northern Iraq are home to communities of the Syriac Christian traditions. Syriac is an Aramaic dialect that was used widely in the Middle East before Arabic supplanted it. The Maronite, Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Assyrian, and Chaldean churches still use Syriac in their ritual life, and many Christians in Turkey and Iraq speak modern dialects of the language in their daily life. The religious identity of these Middle Eastern Christians, in other words, revolves around a language closely related to what Jesus spoke two thousand years ago.

Cities in Syria and Lebanon are also home to communities of Armenian Christians. Many of these came to these regions after being forced out of their homeland in eastern Turkey during the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

In addition to Christians, Shiite Muslims constitute significant minorities in several Middle Eastern states. The Sunni-Shiite divide is a foundational denominational sectarian division within Islam. Historically, it arose from divergent opinions on who the leaders of the Muslim community should have been after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Some at the time favored a number of his closest companions; others gave priority to Muhammad's family, especially his son-in-law (and cousin) Ali and his children. Those Muslims who assert that special authority lies with Muhammad's descendants through Ali came to be known as Shiites. Generation by generation, the number of Muhammad's descendants increased dramatically, and as a result a variety of distinct Shiite traditions took shape around particular lineages and distinctive beliefs.

The largest Shiite denomination (and the one that we almost always hear about when popular media mention Shiites) are the Twelver Shiites, so called because they recognize twelve individuals from the early centuries of Islam as Imams, or authoritative religious leaders: Ali and eleven of his direct descendants. Twelver Shiites make up the overwhelming majority of the population in Iran, solid majorities in Iraq and Bahrain, a plurality in Lebanon, and much smaller minorities elsewhere. The Zaydis and the Ismailis are two other Shiite groups that formed around different lineages among Muhammad's descendants. Zaydi Shiism is one of the major religious traditions in Yemen, and predominates in the north of the country. Ismaili Shiism has a small presence in Syria and Lebanon.

Several other Middle Eastern religious communities have roots in Shiite Islam and venerate Muhammad's family, but have adopted distinctive theological ideas, rituals, and scriptures in addition to the Quran that make them different from "mainstream" Shiism. These communities include especially the Druze, the Alawites, and the Alevis. The Druze form significant minorities in modern Israel, the Golan Heights, Lebanon, and Syria. The Alawites' historical homeland is northwest Syria, and they have been especially prominent in modern Syrian politics - the Assad family that has ruled Syria since 1970 is Alawite. The Alevis constitute a significant proportion of the population of Turkey.

Finally, it is important to mention several smaller religious communities that maintain a presence in the Middle East. The Yezidis of northeast Iraq form a distinct ethno-religious community with a religious tradition that mixes elements of Islam and ancient Iranian religion. A small number of Zoroastrians, followers of the pre-Islamic religion of Iran, remain in the Islamic Republic (much larger Zoroastrian communities are found today in India). Through the first half of the 20th century, indigenous Jewish communities lived in most states of the Middle East. In the decades following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, however, the vast majority left (often forcibly) for Israel, the United States, or Europe, leaving very small Jewish communities today mainly in Morocco, Turkey, and Iran.

Even this is only a partial picture of the Middle East's varied religious landscape, which should remind us that the region has always been home to a considerably diverse array of peoples.

Religious Minorities from the Ottoman Empire to the Mid-20th Century

From the 19 th century to the present day, the political landscape of the Middle East has transformed drastically. The multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire gave way after World War I to the modern system of nation-states; more recently, radical Islamist groups like ISIS have challenged the legitimacy of those national borders and the states that they define. How have these transformations affected religious minorities, and how have they sought new political identities in a transformed region?

A fundamental change in the political status of non-Muslims in the modern Middle East is their transformation from subjects of Muslim empires to citizens of modern nation-states. Until the period of the Ottoman reforms of the 19 th century, non-Muslims in the Middle East were protected subjects of the Muslim-ruled states in which they lived. They paid special taxes, owed obedience to the ruler, and were subject to a variety of restrictions related mainly to maintaining the predominance of Islam in the public sphere. In this system, non-Muslims were "protected persons" differentiated from other subjects on the basis of religion; religious belonging defined legal status, and different religious groups had differential rights. Perhaps the most conspicuous was the jizya, the special tax required of non-Muslims.

The Ottoman reform movements of the 19 th century, the spread of new ideas of popular sovereignty, and the creation of the modern state system after World War I drastically transformed this state of affairs. In schematic terms, religious minorities went from being the protected subjects of Muslim rulers to citizens of modern states, with rights commensurate with those of their fellow citizens of other religions. What new forms of political identity did religious minorities engage with amidst this changing landscape?

We can examine mid-20 th century Syria for examples of religious minorities embracing broader political identities that stretched beyond their own religions. One exemplary figure is a Christian native of Damascus who became a highly influential Arab political thinker: Michel Aflaq (1910-1989). Aflaq was one of the principal architects of Ba'athism, an Arab nationalist political movement that stressed the unity of the Arab people and promoted the idea of a pan-Arab national state. Arab nationalism offered a political identity that cut across religious divisions, and in this respect it proved attractive to many members of minority religions like Aflaq as a platform to assert belonging to national communities. Urban, educated Christians like Aflaq were far from the only religious minorities conspicuous in Arab nationalist ranks. In Syria, Ba'athism also attracted many Druze and Alawite military officers who came from poorer, rural backgrounds. In 1963, a cell of Ba'athist officers in the Syrian military espousing a revolutionary program took control of the state. By 1970 one of those officers, Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000), had outmaneuvered his peers and installed himself as the ruler of Syria. His family has ruled the country down to the present-day civil war. Assad hailed from an impoverished Alawite community in the country's mountainous northwest; for someone from that marginal, minority background, the pan-religious character of Arab nationalist politics (combined with the military) provided a path into Syria's political mainstream. Under the Assads' authoritarian rule, however, Arab nationalist ideology did not translate into inclusive, participatory politics for the majority of Syria's population. We will consider some of the consequences of that fact below.

Michel Aflaq and the Assads are examples of religious minorities who embraced broader, Arab nationalist political identities that stretched beyond their own religious affiliations. Other minorities in the post-World War I Middle East opted to eschew the ideal of a transreligious Arab nation and assert more particularist identities. As an example of this trend, we can consider the history of the Maronites in Lebanon. Lebanon owes its status as an independent state separate from its big neighbor Syria to a local, particularist national vision that took shape especially among a large constituency of Maronite Christians from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. This view held that that the Christians of Lebanon were different from the Arab and Syrian worlds around them, a difference that should be embodied in a sovereign Lebanese state. Several factors made the development of this view possible. The Maronites had long been concentrated geographically in and near Mount Lebanon. They also had a unique relationship with powers outside the Middle East. The Maronites had recognized the authority of the Catholic Pope as early as the 12 th century, and Maronite priests frequently studied at the Vatican. Partly because of their shared Catholicism, France cultivated close relationships with the Maronites in its dealings with the Ottoman Empire, using Maronites as translator diplomatic aides, and considered itself a protector of their interests. These factors contributed to the development of a Maronite particularism distinct from the broader pan-Syrian and pan-Arab identities that were also in the works toward the end of the Ottoman period. In time, that particularism would undergird the foundation of Lebanon as an independent state.

In the aftermath of World War I and the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, France was granted a "mandate" for the Ottomans' Syrian provinces (other than Palestine). Notionally, France was supposed to oversee those territories' preparation for future independence, but it treated them much like any other colonial possession. A basic tool of French imperial rule was to patronize certain religious minorities as governing or military elites. This would keep the indigenous population divided against itself and ensure the loyalty of those favored groups to French interests. In certain parts of Syria, for example, France made a point of recruiting Alawites and Druze into its mandate armies. Mount Lebanon had had a special administrative status under the Ottomans, but France expanded its territory and ultimately created Lebanon as a separate state to serve the interests of its Maronites allies. After achieving full independence in 1943, Lebanon's status as an independent country was founded on the particularist identity embraced by many among its Christian population.

Lebanon and the Maronite constituencies who were the biggest proponents of Lebanese particularism represent another path that religious minorities took to stake a claim in the political landscape of the post-Ottoman Middle East. Rather than a trans-religious pan-Arab or Syrian nationalism, they opted for a national identity rooted much more closely in ethno-religious affiliation. In fact, Lebanon institutionalized religious difference as an official legal status in a particularly notable way. Despite the leading role of its Christian communities, Lebanon was and is highly diverse, with a mixed population of Christians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and Druze. Ever since its independence, its political system has been confessionally based. This means that all the seats in parliament are allocated to specific confessions - Maronites get a certain number, Shiites get a certain number, Sunnis get a certain number, etc. The highest executive positions in the state are allocated along confessional lines as well. This system was ostensibly meant to ensure equality among citizens: it recognized religious differences, but it allowed proportional representation for each group in the government. In practice, however, it was intended to maintain the continued dominance of France's allies: based on a census of the Lebanese population taken in 1932, Christians were given 6 parliamentary seats for every 5 Muslim ones. (The agreement that ended the Lebanese Civil War in 1990 altered the ratio to 1:1.) In Lebanon, religious difference was enshrined in the institutions of the state.

There are two further broad points to make on the basis of this overview of the different ways that religious minorities in Syria and Lebanon sought new political identities in the mid-20 th century. One is that sectarian violence between religious groups is not the inevitable outcome of ancient hatreds. Rather, it occurs often when religious differences get hardened by their association with the institutions of modern states. Lebanon, for example, was engulfed by a bitter civil war from 1975 to 1990 that broke down largely along sectarian lines, pitting Christian militias and factions against Muslim ones. The immediate causes of conflict, however, were the pitfalls of Lebanese politics rather than immutable religious divisions. The system of confessional government gave Lebanese a stake in politics based primarily on their religious affiliation, and the makeup of the confessional parliament was never altered to reflect demographic changes - which included a shrinking Christian population and the presence of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Confessionalism turned religions into political factions, and so they fought a war along those lines when the balance of power in the state was destabilized and up for grabs. Religious difference had been a feature of the Middle East for centuries, and so had violence between religious groups. But modern sectarian conflict - when religious affiliation becomes the rationale for partisan political goals and the use of violence to achieve them - is a product of the institutionalization of religious difference in modern states. This is evident as well in the current civil war in Syria. Although the Assads promoted an Arab nationalist ideology that downplayed religious difference, their authoritarian rule never allowed for inclusive, popular political participation. Instead, the Assads ruled Syria through allies in the state's political and military institutions who had close ties to the ruling family and were often, though not only, Alawite. It is important to emphasize that there was no Alawite ideological program behind this method of rule. But its effect has been to institutionalize religious difference de facto by slotting members of certain religious communities into certain roles. As a result, after protests against the Assads in 2011 were met with violent repression by the state, it became easy for radical Islamists to portray the conflict as one of Sunnis vs. Alawites rather than the Syrian people vs. an authoritarian government. As in Lebanon, sectarian violence was enabled by the specific way that religious difference had been wedded to politics - in this case, as a result of the Assads' method of rule.

Finally, it is important to emphasize the long-term effects that western imperial interests have had on religious minorities in the modern Middle East. From the time of the Ottomans to the mandate period, western powers frequently pursued their interests in the region by treating religious minorities as favored middlemen, local clients, or recruits for colonial armies. France did this with the Maronites in Lebanon and the Alawites and Druze to a certain extent in Syria; the British had a similar experience with Assyrian Christians and the Sunnis of Iraq. Imperialism is not the whole story; religious minorities had their own interests in seeking autonomy or guarantees of rights from foreign powers. But when western powers granted imperial favor to some religious groups, it hardened lines between them and their fellow citizens of other affiliations. This has been a long-term contributing factor to the sectarian strife that has afflicted former mandate states like Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq.
Contemporary Conditions
Few would argue with the observation that recent history has been dire for many religious minorities in the Middle East. This holds true especially for the region's Christian populations, whose numbers have been declining through emigration for decades. Many Christians have looked with apprehension on the rise of Islamist politics and parties since the 1970s, wary of the potential danger they pose to minorities' rights of full citizenship. In the midst of political instability or war, moreover, religious minorities have been caught between larger forces, and have tended to emigrate in higher numbers - or, in the worst circumstances, been actively targeted and their cultural heritage destroyed. Civil war and radical jihadi groups in Syria; the American invasion, subsequent civil war, and the rise of ISIS in Iraq; violence between the government and Kurdish separatists in Turkey; life under Israeli occupation in Palestine - these and other factors have continued to squeeze the indigenous religious minorities of the Middle East and encourage emigration to diaspora communities in Europe, North America, and Australia. The Middle East has been a region of remarkable religious diversity for thousands of years, but contemporary political conditions make the future of that diversity highly uncertain.

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Religious Minorities in the Modern Middle East - Foreign Policy Research Institute

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The majority of the Middle East's population today is Muslim, as it has been for centuries. However, as the place of origin of a range of world religions - including Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and many lesser-known faiths - it remains a region of remarkable religious diversity.

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This article is specifically adressing the issue of labeling certain food products as having zero calories. According to the article, "The FDA legally allows manufacturers to label anything with less than five calories as having zero calories." This raises the interesting question as to whether or not those 5 calories are negligable. If we assume that the people buying 0 calorie products are attempting to lose weight, does the lie make a difference in their weight loss plan? This relates to the KQ because it shows an example of how labels may not be useful in describing the world around us. If some labels are false and others are not, it can become difficult to tell which are true. If people distrust all labels, the ones that are factual become insignificant.

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Get 15% off Domain.com's domain names and web hosting when you use coupon code DNEWS at checkout!

The bottom line: Aside from water, no truly calorie-free food or drinks exist. Why do so many things say they have zero calories, then? The FDA legally allows manufacturers to label anything with less than five calories as having zero calories. (For example, the "No Calorie Sweetener", Splenda, really has 3.4 calories per packet.)

Shocked? Well hopefully you're sitting down, because "negative-calorie foods" are also a myth. The thinking behind negative-calorie foods like celery or cucumbers, is that you expend more calories digesting them than they contain, hence, you'll burn calories merely by consuming them. Unfortunately, there's no science to back this up. A single stalk of celery actually has about six calories, but you only burn about a half a calorie digesting it, meaning its net caloric value is around five-and-a-half calories.

Ice water is the only exception. Water has no calories, but since your body has to expend energy to keep at a constant 98 degrees, you do end up burning about eight calories per eight-ounce glass of ice water. If you drank eight of them per day, this would translate to a total loss of about six pounds ... in a year.

Are there any food misconceptions you'd like us to help try to clear up? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below!

Read More:
The Truth About Zero-Calorie Food (EverydayHealth.com)
"Are there foods so low in calories that it takes as many (or more) calories to digest them as they contain?"

Misleading Labels: How 'Zero' Calorie Foods Contain Hidden Calories (HRMDiet.com)
"We were having green beans and mushrooms with dinner the other night - one of my favorites. As usual, we had the no-calorie spray butter on the table and I noticed it was getting a little low."

Watch More on TestTube
What's the Deal with Genetically Modified Food?
TestTube Wild Card
Diet Myths Debunked

____________________
DNews is dedicated to satisfying your curiosity and to bringing you mind-bending stories & perspectives you won't find anywhere else! New videos twice daily.

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Get 15% off Domain.com's domain names and web hosting when you use coupon code DNEWS at checkout! The bottom line: Aside from water, no truly calorie-free food or drinks exist. Why do so many things say they have zero calories, then? The FDA legally allows manufacturers to label anything with less than five calories as having zero calories.

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This article is about gluten-free food labels, and their general accuracy. It was discovered that some "gluten-free" foods were actually made with gluten-containing ingredients. This was caused by a lack of research within the companies producing these foods. This relates to the KQ because food labels are intended to be useful, and aid people with dietary restrictions, but, the labels are only as useful as they are accurate.

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Can you trust your gluten-free label? Not often enough.

A surprising number of foods - from cookies to salads to sauces - are misbranded as gluten-free when they contain ingredients not permitted under that label by the Food and Drug Administration, according to dietitian Tricia Thompson, founder of the advocacy group Gluten Free Watchdog.

For instance, Thompson has identified supposed gluten-free products containing barley malt (barley is a gluten-containing grain), sauces with wheat-based soy sauce and cookies with spelt (a wheat flour).

"There is so much misunderstanding out there," Thompson told HuffPost. "The store selling [that] cookie initially and mistakenly responded that spelt is a grain but not wheat." (It turned out that the cookie did not contain spelt, and that the label itself was wrong, which is another problem in itself.)

Mislabeling is so pervasive that in August 2017, Gluten Free Watchdog filed a citizen petition with the FDA. The petition, coauthored by Thompson and attorney Kaki Schmidt, asks the regulator to allow direct, electronic consumer reporting of deceptive labels and to routinely issue warning letters to companies violating gluten-free rules. In the last two years, Gluten Free Watchdog said it has reported over 30 mislabeled products that violate FDA regulations.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm screaming into the wind," said Thompson, who had been on the phone with a manufacturer until 9 p.m. the night before. "I'm exhausted from talking to so many manufacturers and trying to educate them."

Take the case of couscous, a semolina wheat-based grain. Cedarlane Foods, established in 1981 by Robert Atalla, offers a popular gluten-free line carried in supermarkets across the United States. Its organic salad line includes a product labeled gluten-free that contains couscous, veggies, chickpeas and a citrus dressing.

"I emailed and spoke with the company four or five times in late August," said Thompson. "At first they informed me by email that their ingredients were classified information. In our final phone conversation they confirmed that indeed, their couscous was made from wheat." Though the company promised to contact the FDA and recall the nearly 600 cases in the marketplace, Thompson said she hasn't received confirmation. Cedarlane Foods didn't respond to HuffPost's request for comment.

Misbranding can have serious consequences for 3 million people in the U.S. who have celiac disease, an autoimmune illness triggered by gluten, the protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The only cure is a gluten-free diet. An additional 18 million Americans may have gluten sensitivity, a less-serious condition in which gluten gives rise to symptoms ranging from bloating and nausea to brain fog and joint pain.

The global gluten-free products market soared to nearly $15 billion in 2016, and is still growing. In 2013, the FDA issued a set of rules that defined a "gluten-free" food. Manufacturers had one year to bring their labels into compliance.

The gluten-free diet is now so popular, said pediatric gastroenterologist Alessio Fasano of Massachusetts General Hospital, "that it presents a unique business opportunity. I believe manufacturers are making mistakes simply because they haven't done the homework to educate themselves."

Fasano is especially concerned because studies show that up to 40 percent of celiac sufferers on a gluten-free diet may be inadvertently exposed to gluten, often due to contamination from other products. "The gluten-free diet is not the panacea we once thought," he said. "Too many on this diet still have intestinal inflammation."

Chef Myron's soy sauce, for example, contains water, soybeans, wheat and salt. "The verbiage on their gallon jugs, which are used widely in the food service industry, state that the wheat has been processed to allow this food to meet the FDA requirements for a gluten-free food," Thompson said.

Indeed, according to Chef Myron's explanatory statement, the fermentation process breaks down gluten so that "the trace remaining is less than ten parts per million." Chef Myron's salesperson Alyssa Baleno confirmed this to HuffPost.

But Thompson said the FDA does not allow any wheat-based soy sauce to be labeled gluten-free. Period.

"In order to make the gluten-free claim the manufacturer of the soy sauce would have to make sure all the ingredients meet the definition of gluten-free before fermentation," Thompson said the FDA clarified to her in 2017. She said testing of fermented or hydrolyzed foods is less reliable than for products with intact gluten.

Also of concern are claims by purveyors of wheat-based sourdough breads that the sourdough starter has hydrolyzed and therefore has "neutralized" the gluten.

A 2011 study followed six patients with celiac disease for 60 days, and found that those eating baked goods made from wheat flour that had been hydrolyzed by sourdough lactobacilli and fungal enzymes did not have symptoms or intestinal inflammation. To make the bread, however, the flour had to be "supplemented with gluten-free structuring agents."

This is not the case with commercial sourdough breads, said Thompson, who has had three artisanal sourdough breads tested. A product must be below 20 parts per million to be labeled gluten-free, and the breads she tested ( PurBread, Leaven Bread and Dan the Baker Sourdough) ran as high as 100,000 ppm.

The good news, said Thompson, is that the FDA has responded to her emails, noting that they take food labeling issues very seriously and that they would like to meet with her.

"The FDA would never approve an insulin substitute that had intrinsic danger to diabetics," said Fasano. "A gluten-free diet is for celiacs what insulin is for diabetics. The FDA has to approach this issue with the same stringency."

A representative from the FDA sent HuffPost a statement on the matter:

"Last year, the FDA released a sampling assessment of food products labeled 'gluten free' and found that 99.5 percent were in compliance with FDA's requirements that such foods have less than 20 ppm of gluten. The finding indicates that there is likely to be a high rate of compliance with FDA's gluten-free labeling requirements. The Celiac Disease Foundation continues to recommend that people with celiac disease check the ingredients list. Gluten-containing ingredients include wheat, barley, rye, malt and Brewer's yeast."

This article has been updated to include a statement from the FDA.

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Can you trust your gluten-free label? Not often enough. A surprising number of foods - from cookies to salads to sauces - are misbranded as gluten-free when they contain ingredients not permitted under that label by the Food and Drug Administration, according to dietitian Tricia Thompson, founder of the advocacy group Gluten Free Watchdog.

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The article I found goes into detail about the legal repercussions of lawyers consistently and deliberately misgendering transgender plaintiffs. I feel this relates to the KQ because people with gender dysphoria today are able to properly be able to live in the bodies they want with the pronouns they'd like, and directly misgendering/mislabeling them as something they're very apparently not is an issue is finally being addressed.

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Abstract

As litigation regarding the civil rights of transgender persons blossoms, a curious trend has emerged: In briefs, pleadings, and motions advocating anti-trans positions, attorneys have addressed trans parties with language at odds with their gender. Through a close review of the language in briefs for three recent Supreme Court cases, this Article exposes the extent to which intentional misattribution of gender has developed into a strategy to intimidate and harass transgender persons within the legal system.

Critically unaddressed by courts and legal scholarship, this Article argues that, because bar associations are best positioned to address discriminatory attorney behavior, the Rules of Professional Conduct have a central role to play in ending this practice. Specifically, the Article proposes that as objectively offensive conduct, misgendering might be addressed as attorney misconduct under Rule 3.4, which requires fair treatment of opposing parties and counsel; Rule 4.4, which protects the rights of third parties; and Rule 8.4, which prohibits conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, as well as harassment or discrimination. From there, it closes by defending the proposal against the expected First Amendment counterarguments. Ultimately, the Article concludes that the Rules of Professional Conduct offer a practical and constitutionally-permissible solution to attorney disparagement of transgender persons within their filings.

Introduction

Lawyers must regularly toe the line between zealous advocacy and incivility. Quite often the division is a hazy one.[1] With increasing frequency, misgendering-the assignment of a gender with which a party does not identify-has been positioned at this conflux of strategy and discourtesy. In recent litigation involving the civil rights of transgender persons, advocates of anti-trans positions have incorporated these misidentifications into their legal filings. This development should give pause, and too, raise concern. Unlike a slip of the tongue at oral argument,[2] the intentionality inherent in writing indicates this is calculated, rather than careless.

Take the 2017 lead up to Grimm v. Gloucester School Board, for instance. There, despite Gavin Grimm being male both medically and legally, the authors of three amici went as far as to revise the case captions to read "G.G. by her next friend and Mother, Deirdre Grimm."[3] By some accounts this was strategic. Lawyers have claimed these alterations were necessary since referencing transgender parties with the appropriate titles, pronouns, and honorifics would be "antithetical to the[ir] legal positions."[4]

Whatever the truth of these arguments, at a minimum, intentional misgendering is generally considered a demeaning act. As Julia Serano reminds us, "[c]onsidering how big of a social faux pas it is in our culture to misgender someone, and how apologetic people generally become upon finding out that they have made that mistake, it is difficult to view . . . the deliberate misgendering of [transpersons]-as anything other than an arrogant attempt to belittle and humiliate."[5] Given this, courts addressing the issue have almost uniformly found the practice hostile, objectively offensive, and degrading,[6] and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has repeatedly held that purposeful misgendering constitutes harassment actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII).[7] Moreover, a growing body of research evidence finds the practice inflicts measurable psychological and physiological harms.[8]

The distance between lawyers' accounts and the lived reality of transgender persons raises an immediate puzzle: Should misgendering in filings and court documents be considered simply a feature of rhetoric and advocate strategy, or as improper derision and invective?

This Article offers both an answer and a path forward. It argues, first, that misgendering in court documents should be disallowed as an offensive ad hominem attack. Then, assuming that court-initiated reprimands will likely be disharmonious and slow-moving,[9] the solution advanced is that bar associations can address the practice of misgendering as attorney misconduct.

I develop the argument in three steps. First, the Article seeks to balance the division between misgendering as a legal strategy and as verbal misconduct. Using the language in the amicus briefs of three recent U.S. Supreme Court cases as a point of departure, Part I entertains five defenses typically offered for the misidentifications. Through critical scrutiny, it will show that the justifications are all ultimately untenable.

Next, the reality that little has been done to prevent the premeditated disrespect of gender minorities within the legal system suggests that courts are not particularly moved to address this form of verbal violence. For this reason, Part II rethinks the source of redress. Because this kind of demeaning language is as equally discriminatory as it is unprofessional, and because it reflects negatively on the legal profession as a whole, state-adopted professional conduct rules might provide a viable intervention. Specifically, by using the example of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC), the Part shows how misgendering in court and court documents can be addressed under MRPC rules 3.4, 4.4., and 8.4-and their state-adopted counterparts.

Last, like all prior attempts to curtail language that harms subordinated communities, I suspect my proposal will face resistance on First Amendment grounds. To preempt this, the Article closes in Part III by anticipating and responding to two likely critiques: that the proposal (1) unconstitutionally restricts lawyer speech; and (2) unconstitutionally compels speech. To the first, I will demonstrate that lawyer speech, and particularly speech which takes place within the practice of law, has always been subject to restrictions, and that the limitations on misgendering proposed here are not qualitatively different from those generally accepted without opposition. At the same time, the second objection fails since, quite simply, the proposal compels no speech. In total, then, the Article concludes that the First Amendment does not provide constitutional cover to willful misgendering in court documents.

I. Evaluating Common Justifications for Misgendering
in Filings

As a vehicle to investigate justifications for misgendering, this Part evaluates the language of amici briefs in three recent cases: Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.,[10] Kenosha Unified School District v. Whitaker,[11] and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC.[12] Between the three cases, amici submitted a total of 146 briefs. From there, each brief was classified based on whether the language aligned with the transgender party's identity; used a nongendered stand-in term (i.e. "Respondent," "Petitioner," or the party's last name); misgendered the party; or did not discuss the party in sufficient detail to qualify for analysis.

In the first case, Grimm v. Gloucester, the Court considered whether Title IX required schools to "generally treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity."[13] The facts in Grimm arose in 2014, after fourteen-year-old Gavin Grimm came out as transgender.[14] Initially, when Gavin[15] informed Gloucester High School officials of his legal name change and social transition, he received permission to use the male restroom.[16] But that led to outcry from adults in the community, and as a result, the Gloucester County School Board voted to restrict Gavin to using only the school's private or single-stall facilities.[17] In response, the American Civil Liberties Union initiated a suit under Title IX, alleging the school's policy preventing Gavin from using the boys' bathroom discriminated on the basis of sex.[18] The case was ultimately appealed up to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2016. Following the Trump administration's rollback of the Obama-era trans-protective interpretation of the statute, however, the Supreme Court remanded the case for consideration under new Department of Education (DOE) guidance.[19] Before remand, amici filed a total of sixty-one briefs. Of them, 54 percent of the amici filed in support of the School Board (that is, opposed to trans-inclusive bathroom policies) refer to Gavin without gender appropriate language.[20]

The second case, Kenosha Unified School District v. Whitaker, considered the same Title IX questions sidestepped in Grimm, as well as whether requiring students use bathroom facilities in line with their sex triggered heightened Equal Protection scrutiny.[21]There, Ashton Whitaker began the process of social transition in 2013, and legally changed his name in the fall of 2016.[22] During that time, Ash and his mother met with school administrators to request that he be permitted to use the boys' restrooms.[23] Reasoning that Ash was still listed as female in official school records, however, the school administration restricted Ash to using only the girls' or gender-neutral restrooms.[24] Subsequently, Ash commenced a lawsuit alleging the restriction violated Title IX, and the Equal Protection Clause.[25] The case was ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2017. As in Grimm, however, the questions posed by Whitaker remained unanswered, since the Court denied the petition for certiorari. Before this, though, amici filed nine briefs in support of the School District, 89 percent of which refer to Ash without gender appropriate language.[26]

The third and only case in which the Court will actually publish a decision, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC, considered Title VII applicability to transgender employees.[27] In Harris Funeral Homes, two years after Aimee Stephens began working for Harris Homes, she began to live her life consistently with her gender.[28] As a part of that process, Ms. Stephens sent a letter to her employer and co-workers, informing them of her social transition and her intention to begin wearing "[gender-]appropriate business attire."[29] Two weeks later, Harris Homes terminated Ms. Stephens, in part because she "wanted to dress as a woman."[30] Ms. Stephens filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC who, in turn, filed a complaint alleging Harris Homes had violated Title VII by firing Ms. Stephens.[31] The case was ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2018, and the petition for cert granted in the spring of 2019. Of the eighty-six amicus briefs filed at the Supreme Court level, nineteen briefs against Ms. Stephens's position (or 22 percent) refer to her without gender appropriate language.[32] These results are even more stark when juxtaposed with those filed in her favor: 100 percent of the supporting amici use language consistent with Ms. Stephens's gender.

Reviewing the briefs submitted in transgender rights cases finds amici regularly provide a justification for their use of misgendering language. These defenses largely fall along five lines: (1) that gender-appropriate language is a concession antithetic to advocates' positions; (2) that pronouns are strictly tied to biological sex; (3) that misgendering is not meant to be disrespectful; (4) that misgendering is acceptable since the trans parties' gender is "at issue" in the case; and (5) (a) that trans parties have no right to be addressed as they wish, or (b) if they did, it would trigger a slippery slope of increasingly ridiculous modes of address in court. Let us explore these in order.

A. Appropriate Language is a Concession Antithetical
to Anti-Trans Positions

The most popular argument offered to support misgendering is that doing so concedes trans parties' gender identities.[33] It submits that to refer to a transwoman by the pronouns or honorifics corresponding with her gender, (that is, using she/her/hers pronouns or the titles Mrs. or Ms.), is to acknowledge and affirm that she is, in fact, a woman.[34] Because amici do not want to affirm parties' gender or otherwise give that impression, they do the opposite by choosing to use inappropriate pronouns.

The flaw here is obvious: The justification is overly simplistic. By that logic, nothing can be said without expressing some element of support or approval. And that is certainly not true. To the contrary, many everyday interactions call for agreeable behavior, without expressions of underlying agreement. By addressing a judge as "Your Honor," for instance, we do not normally mean to convey any messages about the honorability of the individual we address. Instead, the honorific is merely used to denote respect or courtesy.[35]

The same is true of pronouns and gendered titles. Ordinarily, they say very little.[36] Functionally and semantically, these terms do not have distinct messages-they are only meant to signal the replacement of a noun or name, and are used to identify, address, or refer. Indeed, as sociolinguist Sally McConnell-Ginet rightly points out: "[P]ronouns do not standardly have content in the same way as ordinary common nouns do. . . . [R]ather than characterizing, they indicate a person or group."[37] Given the semantic emptiness of pronouns, then, it is difficult to make the argument that their use is intentionally meant to signal acknowledgement, affirmation, or agreement. To do so is to suggest that every time a speaker uses these words, they consciously intend to express messages about sex, gender, and the immutability of either. Viewed thus, respecting persons who are trans is one thing, while affirming their gender is another.

The number of briefs capable of taking anti-transgender positions but avoiding misgendering confirms this point. In all three cases, amici contested Stephens's, Grimm's, and Whitaker's position, even while addressing them appropriately.[38] To take one notable example, a Harris Funeral Homes brief authored by Ryan T. Anderson, renowned for taking anti-LGBT positions, vehemently argued that Ms. Stephens "is not a woman."[39] And yet, Anderson deliberately chose to refer to Ms. Stephens with she/her/hers pronouns throughout his brief.[40] This and other similar briefs testify that, at a minimum, even those who oppose the equal citizenship of gender minorities are capable of maintaining a necessary modicum of respect.

B. Pronoun Use is Strictly in Reference to "Biological Sex,"
and Therefore, Using Appropriate Language is Incorrect

Other amici offer justifications rooted in history. Traditionally, the argument goes, pronouns have always referred to the "biological sex" of the person being discussed.[41] To use them otherwise, some argue, is to "sacrifice[] the plain meaning of the English language on the altar of political correctness."[42]

Though attractive at first blush, on closer inspection, this account is incorrect on at least three fronts. In the first place, how language has been used in the past cannot obligate its use today. Language is, and has always been, remarkably dynamic. Usage at one time can, and does, change quickly to accommodate cultural shifts and other newly developed understandings. To see this, one need only consider how commonly-accepted terms or labels for racial and ethnic minorities, women, or lesbians and gay men have changed over the past century.[43] And, from a wider view, similar traditionalist arguments unsurprisingly fall heaviest on those who have been traditionally oppressed.[44] Arguments rooted in history, then, must ring especially hollow in the context of modes of address for minority groups.

Secondly, somewhat ironically, the argument is patently ahistorical. Suggesting tradition and biology strictly dictate language usage, overlooks how gendered language has been used historically. For centuries, masculine language has been used to generically represent both men and women.[45] Today, no one suggests the Declaration of Independence's pronouncement that "all men are created equal," applies strictly to men.[46] Similarly, precedent using male pronouns and titles has never been read literally:[47] Courts have not declined to apply the "reasonable man" or "prudent man" standards in cases involving women,[48] nor has statutory language written in masculine form been interpreted so narrowly.[49]

Third, the argument misses the mark because, typically, pronoun use corresponds not to sex but instead to the appearance of it. Put a different way, in ordinary use, we refer to others by pronouns related with the sex (or gender) they appear to be. Take the all too common experience of shorthaired women being addressed as "Sir," or when strangers misclassify babies since, barring overtly gendered clothing, their sex is usually not readily apparent. In both instances, the use of gendered language has nothing to do with biological characteristics; rather, it relies on assumptions made based on appearance. Precisely because of this, even persons who subscribe to the logic that pronouns are strictly determined by sex, will correctly address trans persons who "pass."[50]

At bottom, the argument that the sex of the addressee is dispositive is wrong for failing to recognize these realities: The ways language use changes, the wealth of ways in which gendered language has been applied and interpreted, and the ways it is actually used in everyday life.

C. Misgendering is Not Intended to be Disrespectful, or, Respect Should Have No Bearing on How to Refer to or Address Parties

Another justification turns on intent. Some amici justify their language by claiming they do not intend their language to offend. One brief in G.G. v. Gloucester made such a claim, suggesting its use of female pronouns was "not intended to be provocative or disrespectful."[51]

This reasoning should be easily dismissed. Intention is irrelevant when the conduct is, as a general matter, known to be offensive.[52] Consider a scenario in which someone addresses male colleagues by their professional titles, but strictly addresses female colleagues by informalities like "sweetie," "honey," and "darling." What credence would we give to the excuse that this behavior was not offensive since the speaker did not intend to be disrespectful or misogynistic? None. Because this disparate mode of address is obviously offensive, intention cannot dictate interpretation. The same is true of misgendering in legal filings.

Other amici admit that misgendering is insulting but, peculiarly, argue that respect is irrelevant. A brief in Harris Funeral Homes, for example, made the argument that the authors did not have to use appropriate pronouns, since the case was clearly "not a social event, in which '[i]t's important to be polite and respectful,' but a lawsuit between two contending parties."[53] Roughly put, the logic finds that the context of litigation allows (or even compels) parties to display less respect than they would otherwise.

With this, I cannot agree. What is clear is that an adversarial system need not be an antagonistic one. Quite simply, the argument is discredited by the great weight of authority finding professionalism and courtesy to be paramount in litigation.[54]

D. Misgendering is an Acceptable Convention Because Trans Parties' Gender is "At Issue" in the Case

Another account states that trans parties' gender is a disputable point in the case. Accordingly, to prevent misgendering would hamper advocates' ability to advance their position on a "central issue" in the case; namely whether the Plaintiff is a male or female.[55]

The argument is too clever by half. The sexes of the parties in Grimm, Harris, and Kenosha were never issues requiring a judicial determination. Nor should they be. To be clear, the questions before the Court in those cases, were whether Title IX and Title VII cover discrimination against transgender persons, or, more directly, whether discrimination on the basis of gender identity constitutes sex discrimination. Determining the issue of the plaintiffs' sex does nothing to answer these questions. Instead, the answers lie in an ontological inquiry as to the nature of transphobic discrimination: Whether persons who discriminate against trans persons do so based on their targets' sex, take their targets' sex into account, or otherwise make some sex-based evaluation. Understanding the essence of the discriminating actors' motivations-and not the targets' sex or gender is therefore the central issue in the cases.

Just as importantly, the justification that transgender persons' sexes are determinable trial issues fails in cases beyond the limited scope of those evaluating the statutory coverage of the term "sex." Even in more general cases, courts need not adjudicate parties' sex to identify transgender discrimination. An analogous illustration will make this clear: Imagine a case of employment discrimination, in which the targeted employee identifies as Native American, but their supervisor perceives them as Black. Imagine further that the supervisor has no animosity towards Native persons but is deeply prejudiced against Black people. As a result of their bias, the supervisor regularly treats the employee less favorably and regularly invokes invidious stereotypes about Black persons. In such a case, must the court make a determination that the target is, in fact, Black (or, for that matter, make any determination of the target's race)? Absolutely not.[56] The supervisor's misperception does not alter the fact that harmful racial discrimination has taken place.

Similarly, in cases of transphobic discrimination no "gender determinations" need occur for a court to determine the discriminating party's motivations. Seen in this light, even from a wider view, the argument must fail.

E. There is (a) No Right to Be Addressed as One Wishes;
and (b) If There Were, It Would Open a Slippery Slope

Next comes the argument that persons have no right "to be called what they choose to be called."[57] The thought is that, because such a right does not exist, lawyers can freely misgender transgender persons without consequence.

As an initial matter, this argument conflates the lack of an affirmative right to be free from harm with an invitation to inflict it. It does not follow, obviously, that the absence of a right to be free from blatant disrespect allows it: Societal rules of common courtesy say the opposite. More fundamentally, though, the argument rests on the nonexistence of such a right. Whether or not that is true-at least, in the limited context of trial-remains an open question, however.[58]

The 1964 case Hamilton v. Alabama[59] suggests the answer is at best unclear. Hamilton involved a state's attorney's insistence on addressing a Black witness by her first name, as was customary in the then-existing Southern racial etiquette system. When Hamilton refused to testify so long as she was addressed as "Mary" rather than "Miss Hamilton," she was held in contempt of court.[60]On appeal, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld Hamilton's contempt charge, reasoning that the form of address was appropriate.[61] Then, without much by way of explanation, the U.S Supreme Court reversed in light of Johnson v. Virginia, a case finding segregated courtroom seating unconstitutional.[62]

Hamilton's reticence invites various interpretations. Read broadly, the case could, in fact, stand for the proposition that parties do have a right to dictate how they are addressed in court. Which is to say, Mary Hamilton had the right to be addressed as she wished. If this holds, the proffered justification for misgendering must fail.

I will admit that reading might be a stretch. A narrower, more plausible reading finds that, at a minimum, Hamilton compels lawyers' equal treatment of parties as it relates to titles and honorifics, or at least prohibits disrespectful modes of address.[63] Importantly, if the wrong in the case was the refusal to address Black persons with courtesy titles while granting White persons that respect, then, for this independent reason as well, Hamilton instructs against misgendering: Refusing to address transgender persons by pronouns and titles in line with their gender, while doing just that for cisgender persons, is to treat trans persons unequally, in a manner akin to the way Hamilton was accorded less respect than White witnesses.

A corollary argument is that using appropriate language in reference to transgender persons opens a slippery slope.[64] The account states that once trans parties are addressed as they wish (by pronouns and titles in-line with their gender), there is no principled way to avoid having to address other litigants in the (less serious) ways they may wish to. For example, one brief pondered how courts would distinguish between litigants being allowed to choose their own pronouns and a request to be addressed as "His Majesty."[65]

Despite these warnings, the camel's nose needn't enter the tent.[66] Like many slippery slope arguments, this one seeks to say too much: Assuming the right to be addressed as one wishes exists, is it difficult to formulate a nonarbitrary dividing line? Not particularly. One possible rule might be that persons may choose how they wish to be addressed, unless the mode of address term undermines the trial or otherwise interferes with the administration of justice. Under such a rule, a transman would be addressed by his correct titles and pronouns, while a litigant who wants to be referred to by a crude name, slur, expletive, or an unpronounceable symbol would not.[67] Another, perhaps more straightforward, rule might be that persons can choose to be addressed by whatever ordinary terms of respect they wish.[68] Ordinarily, we refer to persons by the names they wish to be called, and pronouns in line with their gender.[69] We do not ordinarily refer to persons with royal titles if they are not in fact royalty, or with professional titles unless they have earned them. It seems to me, to be addressed by gendered titles and terms in line with gender identity easily falls on one side of that distinguishing line, and "His Majesty" on the other.

II. The Rules of Professional Conduct as a Site of Intervention

Judicial responses to modes of reference and address for transgender persons are mixed. In their own writing, many courts defer to individuals' chosen titles and pronouns.[70] To their credit, a few courts have gone even further, preventing opposing litigants from misgendering trans parties. In Private First-Class Chelsea Manning's 2015 trial, the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals granted a motion requesting the court and government attorneys refer to Manning with female pronouns and precluding the use of her former name.[71] The order required the government address Manning with "either . . . neutral [terms] . . . or [by] employ[ing] a feminine pronoun."[72]

Even so, many courts have dismissed similar requests for proper address. Consider Howard v. Georgia Department of Corrections, denying a transgender plaintiff's "Motion for Recognition."[73] There, a federal magistrate judge not only failed to order the defendants to respect plaintiff's gender identity, but he also refused to do so himself. Deferring to the plaintiff's classification by the Georgia Department of Corrections, the court held it would "not use female pronouns . . . [or] order that defendants refer to plaintiff as 'Ms.' and use just female pronouns when referring to plaintiff."[74]

All too frequently, the Howard judge is not alone. For every court that respects transgender parties, several others do not.[75] This inconsistency complicates the possibilities for individual judicial interventions. It suggests that, realistically, a farreaching solution to misgendering in legal filings will not be court-initiated. Perhaps just as importantly, state bar associations are better positioned than individual courts, to address the discriminatory behavior of legal professionals; indeed, the regulation of attorney conduct is one of their central roles. With these two points in mind, this Part offers an alternative solution. Bar associations should, I propose, address the practice through the Rules of Professional Conduct. In particular, Rules 3.4, 4.4, and 8.4 are relevant. Discussion and application of each follows.

A. Model Rule 3.4: Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel

Model Rule 3.4(e) states: "A lawyer shall not: . . . in trial, allude to any matter that the lawyer does not reasonably believe is relevant . . . ."[76]When a case does not involve transgender issues or similar questions, a party's gender identity cannot reasonably be described as relevant.[77] Accordingly, in those instances intentional misgendering should be viewed as violative of Rule 3.4(e).

As a case in point, take a 2017 civil suit filed in the wake of the Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally.[78] Christopher Cantwell, a rally participant who pleaded guilty to assault and battery for pepper-spraying counterprotestors, sued Emily Gorcenski, a witness in the criminal charges against him, for malicious prosecution, abuse of process, and false imprisonment.[79] Throughout Cantwell's complaint and subsequent filings, his attorney repeatedly referred to Gorcenski with male pronouns and honorifics, as well as by her birth name, despite her legal name and gender marker changes.[80] Further, in a motion responding to Gorcenski's request that the court recaption the case to reflect her current name, Cantwell's attorney included the following unwarranted, if not vastly inappropriate, statement:

Despite his [sic] efforts to the contrary, Gorcenski is not in fact a female human being, having been born with and retaining the XY chromosome . . . . Further, Gorcenski's presenting himself [sic] as a female is untruthful, mendacious, and deceptive. He [sic] is free to suffer the consequences of his [sic] decision, but has no right to force others to condone his [sic] lie. He [sic] further has no right to ask a court of law to condone his [sic] lie, nor to ask that court to force others to condone it. The United States District Court exists to determine the truth, not to condone falsehoods nor encourage or force others to do so. A United States District Court Judge is not a "transmagistrate;" the magistrate judge is not a "transjudge" any more than counsel for Plaintiff is "transthin," "transyoung, or trans-not-balding." Convicted criminals are not "translawful." Cars with rolled back odometers are not "transmileage;" and perjury is not "transtruth,["] except to used car salesmen and perjurors [sic]. . . . This motion should not be transdenied, but rather granted.[81]

Reasonable minds can, of course, disagree. But given the nature of the claims and the fact that Gorcenski's gender played absolutely no role in them, this tangential diatribe as well as the other misgendering cannot be said to be relevant for Rule 3.4 purposes.[82] Rather, they must be considered inappropriate allusions prohibited by Rule 3.4(e).

B. Model Rule 4.4: Respect for the Rights of Third Persons

Misgendering in filings seems to violate the Model Rule 4.4 bar against lawyers' use of "means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden."[83] As an initial point, research evidence and the firsthand reports of trans persons finds that experiencing misgendering causes measurable psychological and physiological harms. Misgendering, these sources find, is a critical stressor that is experienced as humiliating, stigmatizing, psychologically distressing, and dehumanizing.[84]

Simultaneously, reports find that persons actually deliberately misgender trans persons in an effort to embarrass and harass them.[85] This behavior also manifests at trial, where intentional and repeated misgendering is used to intimidate and harass.[86] Viewed in light of the above, it cannot be said that the use of inappropriate language in filings is meant to accomplish anything other than to disrespect, embarrass, and burden trans parties. Quite the contrary: Misgendering must be seen as a method deployed simply to badger litigants, with no underlying intent to advance a client's position.

Consider the example of Rodgers v. State, a still-pending appeal in the Supreme Court of Florida, in which government lawyers repeatedly misgendered the appellant, a transgender woman.[87] The State's move was curious since at no time did the State contradict the appellant's gender and, in fact, conceded her gender dysphoria diagnosis.[88] More strikingly, the state misgendered her in a responsive motion objecting on procedural grounds. As the appellant correctly replied: "Making legal arguments about the timeliness of Appellant's claims and about her prior waiver does not justify the State intentionally misgendering Appellant and, by extension, harassing her."[89] Together, these factors suggest the misidentifications serve no purpose in advancing the State's argument, but rather only serve to embarrass and burden the appellant.

C. Model Rule 8.4: Attorney Misconduct

The relevant sections of Model Rule 8.4 and the attendant comment read:

It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: . . . (d) engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice; . . . (g) engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of . . . gender identity . . . in conduct related to the practice of law . . . .[90]

Rule 8.4: Misconduct-Comment

[3] Discrimination and harassment by lawyers in violation of paragraph (g) undermine confidence in the legal profession and the legal system. Such discrimination includes harmful verbal or physical conduct that manifests bias or prejudice towards others. Harassment includes sexual harassment and derogatory or demeaning verbal or physical conduct. Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other unwelcome verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. The substantive law of antidiscrimination and antiharassment statutes and case law may guide application of paragraph (g).[91]

Model Rule 8.4 offers multiple avenues for addressing misgendering in filings. As a start, under subpoint (d), misgendering can constitute misconduct as being prejudicial to the administration of justice. It does this in at least three ways. First, it injects extraneous prejudice in decisionmaking, thereby threatening objectivity.[92] To see this, one need look no further than how it is used in court. Misgendering has most frequently been used as a tactic in hate crime cases involving transgender victims; highlighting targets' gender incongruence in order to elicit animus towards the victims, and ultimately, leniency towards defendants.[93] For example, in the 2019 trial of Edward Thomas, charged with felony aggravated assault for an attack on a Black transgender woman, Muhlaysia Booker, misgendering formed a critical part of Thomas's defense.[94] Initially, the defense argued that listing Muhlaysia's correct name and gender in Thomas's indictment was prejudicial, writing "Pierre Booker is legally a male by gender. To name him 'Muhlaysia' Booker could have the jury wrongfully conclude that Pierre is female."[95] Then, during medical testimony the defense asked a testifying doctor whether Muhlaysia had "male anatomy,"[96] and as the prosecutors read Booker's medical records to the jury, the defense interrupted by demanding: "Read the sex. What does the sex say?"[97] In another instance, the defense went as far as to tell the jury that the attack should be considered "mutual combat"[98] and as "a fight between two men, rather than a man assaulting a woman."[99] Clearly, through misgendering, deadnaming, and otherwise portraying Booker as male, the defense sought to suggest that Thomas's assault was less egregious. Ultimately, the jury convicted Thomas of the lesser charge of misdemeanor assault.[100] By inflaming prejudice in jury or judicial decisionmaking, then, this form of misidentification can inappropriately influence case outcomes, which in turn compromises the administration of justice.

Second, misgendering in filings reflects poorly on the legal profession. Persons who witness these transphobic hostilities may question the impartiality of the legal system[101] or lose confidence in the legal profession,[102] neither of which bode well for the administration of justice. Worse, when these behaviors are unchecked, they give the appearance that the legal community itself countenances bias against gender minorities.

Third, misgendering undermines the administration of justice by challenging the legal system's authority. In one sense, name and gender marker changes and other similar judicial orders are legal conclusions. For this reason, when an advocate misgenders a party despite legal gender and name changes, advocates flagrantly disregard judicial determinations.[103] Failing to recognize a litigant's gender when the legal system itself does defies the authority of determining bodies and suggests that these legal processes are meaningless. Viewed in this light, misgendering in filings disrespects both the individual party and the legal system as an institution.

Next, Rule 8.4(g)'s prohibition on "harassment or discrimination" on the basis of gender identity is relevant. Plainly said, it is fairly obvious that intentional misgendering in legal documents constitutes harassment. Return for a moment to the earlier employment discrimination illustration-this time with the supervisor discriminating against an employee who has recently converted to Rastafarianism. For the supervisor to repeatedly tell the employee that they "are not a real Rastafarian," and otherwise make light of their religious beliefs would clearly make a case for religious discrimination. Moreover, if litigation ensued, for the supervisor's attorney to refer to the plaintiff as "a fake Rastafarian," or "not Rastafarian" or "not really a Rastafarian" in reply briefs and filings would be worthy of condemnation, if not judicial reprimand. These expressions of the supervisor's views, even if sincerely held and genuinely believed, would constitute further religious harassment. The same is true of intentional misgendering in filings.

Finally, looking to Rule 8.4's comments confirms the rule's applicability. The practice of intentional misgendering is, unequivocally, designed and deployed to express prejudice against transgender persons. More tellingly, comment [3] notes that substantive antidiscrimination and antiharassment statutes and case law may be instructive as to 8.4(g)'s application. This is most damning. Statutes or regulations in California, New York, Washington D.C., Colorado, and Washington state find misgendering can constitute harassment.[104] By the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights's own guidance, refusal to use a transgender student's pronouns may constitute "gender-based harassment" actionable under Title IX.[105] Case law[106] and EEOC decisions find the same.[107] If substantive antidiscrimination and antiharassment statutes instruct, 8.4(g) squarely applies to attorney misgendering in court documents.

III. Anticipating and Refuting First Amendment Counterarguments

As with all previous attempts to curtail damaging speech towards minorities and women, the approach advocated here will likely face First Amendment pushback. Harms to the victims notwithstanding, in the past, free speech absolutists have taken aim at restrictions on hate speech against racial and ethnic minorities, as well as laws restricting sexual and antireligious harassment in the workplace. By preemptively responding to two possible arguments, this final Part shows that the present proposal's narrow scope, concerning only lawyers within the course of legal representation, insulates it from similar criticisms. In particular, it addresses one argument frequently used to undermine remedies for harmful speech-that they are unconstitutional restrictions on speech, and one argument more recently introduced in conversations around rules requiring proper address of trans persons-that they unconstitutionally compel speech.

A. The Proposal is an Unconstitutional Restriction on Speech

As a general matter, the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on speech. I will not detail here the minutiae of the doctrine, but suffice it to say, with a few narrow exceptions, actions suppressing private individuals' ability to say or express whatever they want will be struck down as unconstitutional.[108]

Lawyer speech is different, however. For one thing, it has always been subject to more restrictions than that of private citizens. Think, for example, of how the Rules of Professional Conduct have long prohibited lawyer communication with jurors, opposing parties, and members of the judiciary, as well as some communication with the press.[109] Lawyers' speech about judges, and advertisements have also been heavily restricted.[110] Further, rules of evidence and civil procedure also place limitations on lawyers' speech.[111]

Context also matters. Whereas lawyers' speech as private citizens is squarely within the protection of the U.S. Constitution, speech within the legal process is necessarily circumscribed.[112] Courts cite the need to maintain a neutral environment, the fact that the legal process is not a public forum, and the necessity of judicial control over proceedings to justify these restrictions.[113] Most recently, this has been demonstrated by judges' restrictions on lawyers' symbolic speech during trial. Courts have forbidden attorneys from wearing pro-LGBT buttons and #BlackLivesMatter lapel pins despite the messages they were meant to express.[114] And yet, under existing free speech doctrine, these symbolic expressions would be permissible if worn as private citizens.

Taken together, these two factors suggest a First Amendment distinction for attorney speech. The proposal advanced here capitalizes on both of these qualitative differences. First, I offer no opinion on how to address misgendering by parties who are not lawyers. Thus, a pro se defendant who misgenders another litigant in a complaint or other filing will not face sanction under the rules of professional misconduct. Second, I express no opinion on how bar associations should address misgendering beyond the context of legal documents. Lawyers aggrieved by their newfound inability to verbally harass transgender persons within their filings may, under my proposal, do so outside the scope of their representation.

B. The Proposal Unconstitutionally Compels Speech

A second potential criticism is one particularly targeted towards the movement for gender-inclusive language: The argument is that requiring appropriate language is an unconstitutional speech compulsion.[115] As it relates to the rule I propose here, however, this challenge must also fail. After all, a compelled speech challenge cannot hold when absolutely no speech has been compelled. Which is to say, preventing attorneys from misgendering parties is not the same as affirmatively requiring they address parties with language in line with their gender.[116]

This final point is worth highlighting further. Lawyers who wish to avoid the appropriate language have a range of alternatives that still avoid misgendering transgender persons. For starters, those who take the view that gender appropriate language expresses support for transgender persons might consider using appropriate language with a caveat.[117] This approach is not particularly novel; for decades brief-writers and courts have used this convention to balance stylistic choice, courtesy, and lucidity.[118] In this way, lawyers would be able to clarify and specify what their language is, and is not, meant to express.

Less desirably, lawyers may choose to address the trans parties only by name (in lieu of titles or pronouns), or by the gender-neutral role in the litigation (Plaintiff, Defendant, Respondent, Appellant, etc.). Though, to be sure, some might find this approach problematic, it seems preferable to misgendering.[119] Moreover, this approach is most closely aligned with Supreme Court precedent. Twice, now, when discussing transgender persons the Court has avoided misgendering through the use of such gender-neutral language.[120] Taking this cue, the Department of Justice's Harris Funeral Homes brief assiduously used Ms. Stephens's name rather than pronouns.[121] In another example, an amicus brief in Kenosha revised the case caption from "Whitaker, by his Mother and Next Friend, Melissa Whitaker" to the gender neutral "Whitaker ex rel Whitaker."[122] To sum up, misgendering in filings can easily be avoided.

Conclusion

Pronouns, honorifics, and other such gendered modes of address, are quickly becoming the latest flashpoint in the movement towards social equality for transgender Americans. Even while transgender persons and those who support them have welcomed increased awareness of gender appropriate language, others have harshly criticized the movement for gender-inclusive language and refused to use language in line with the gender of persons who are trans. These latter contentions have spilled over into legal practice in which they have taken the form of misgendering language in legal filings. Yet, as this Article has shown, under scrutiny the justifications typically offered for doing so are ultimately unsustainable. We are left, then, with the conclusion that these designations are done simply to insult, disrespect, and antagonize. If this is so, then the practice cannot be allowed to continue.

At the same time, never has it been more obvious that solutions will not be court-initiated. Indeed, as recent opinions have demonstrated, courts themselves have increasingly been the perpetrators of this harmful language.[123] Still, something must be done: To fail to address lawyers' misgendering is to ignore blatantly unprofessional behavior, and worse, gives the appearance of countenancing and encouraging transphobia within the legal system. The Rules of Professional Conduct provide a practical and, equally important, constitutionally permissible solution. By recasting misgendering as attorney misconduct, state bar associations can begin the necessary work of addressing the wanton disrespect of gender minorities by members of the profession.

Appendix

Table 1: Language in G.G. Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board Amicus Briefs Filed in Support of the School Board

Table 2: Language in Kenosha Unified School District v. Whitaker Amicus Briefs Filed in Support of the School District

Table 3: Language in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC Amicus Briefs Filed in Support of Both Parties With References to Ms. Stephens
[1]. See Charles F. Edgemon, Verbal Misconduct in the Courtroom-Are Attorneys Immune?, 11 Santa Clara Law. 125, 125 (1970) (surmising "the line between verbal misconduct and statements within the bounds of legitimate argument is not a line at all: it is at best an unpredictable and erratically defined gray area"); Ty Tasker, Sticks and Stones: Judicial Handling of Invective in Advocacy, Judges' J., Fall 2003, at 17, 17 (2003) (noting the lack of "a bright line between ethically zealous argument and improper vituperation"). [2]. For example, while posing a hypothetical during the Harris Funeral Homes oral argument, Chief Justice Roberts misgendered a hypothetical trans woman, but quickly corrected the mistake. See Transcript of Oral Argument at 5, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC, No. 18-107 (U.S. Oct. 8, 2019) (asking "[i]n other words, if the objection of a transgender man transitioning to [a] woman is that he should be allowed, he or she, should be allowed to use the women's bathroom, now, how do you analyze that?" (emphasis added)). [3]. Mark Joseph Stern, SCOTUS Reprimands Anti-LGBTQ Groups for Misgendering Trans Student Gavin Grimm, Slate (Feb. 24, 2017, 7:08 PM), https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/02/supreme-court-reprimands-groups-for-misgendering-gavin-grimm.html [https://perma.cc/EG8T-KNVN] (emphasis omitted and added). [4]. Ed Whelan, Supreme Court Clerk's Office as Pronoun Police?-Part 1, Nat'l Rev. (Feb. 27, 2017, 3:48 PM), https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/caption-pronouns-gg-gloucester-county-clerks-letter [https://perma.cc/GXJ4-28PE]. Based on Whelan's own characterizations, the legal positions seem to be that Gavin Grimm was a girl, since transitioning is not "even biologically possible." Ed Whelan, Supreme Court Clerk's Office as Pronoun Police?-Part 2, Nat'l Rev. (Feb. 27, 2017, 6:37 PM), https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/caption-pronouns-gg-gloucester [https://perma.cc/W4H4-9FM5]. [5]. Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity 185 (2007). [6]. E.g., G. G. ex rel. Grimm v. Gloucester Cty. Sch. Bd., 822 F.3d 709, 716 (4th Cir. 2016) (finding misgendering "display[s] hostility"), vacated, 137 S. Ct. 1239 (2017) (mem.); Hampton v. Baldwin, No. 3:18-CV-550-NJR-RJD, 2018 WL 5830730, at *2 (S.D. Ill. Nov. 7, 2018) (quoting medical testimony that "misgendering transgender people can be degrading, humiliating, invalidating, and mentally devastating"); Prescott v. Rady Children's Hosp.-San Diego, 265 F. Supp. 3d 1090, 1096 (S.D. Cal. 2017) ("For a transgender person with gender dysphoria, being referred to by the wrong gender pronoun is often incredibly distressing."); Rumble v. Fairview Health Servs., No. 14-CV-2037, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31591, at *71 (D. Minn. Mar. 16, 2015) (rejecting defendant's characterization of misgendering as a "perceived slight[]" and instead concluding it was "objectively offensive behavior"); Doe v. City of New York, 976 N.Y.S.2d 360, 364 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2013) (concluding purposeful misgendering as "not a light matter, but one which is laden with discriminatory intent"). [7]. See, e.g., Jameson v. Donahoe, EEOC Appeal No. 0120130992, 2013 WL 2368729, at *2 (May 21, 2013) (advising "[i]ntentional misuse" of gendered language "may constitute sex based discrimination and/or harassment"); Lusardi v. McHugh, EEOC Appeal No. 0120133395, 2015 WL 1607756, at *11 (Apr. 1, 2015) (same). [8]. See, e.g., Kevin A. McLemore, A Minority Stress Perspective on Transgender Individuals' Experiences with Misgendering, 3 Stigma & Health 53, 58 (2018) [hereinafter McLemore, A Minority Stress Perspective] (noting transgender individuals find misgendering stigmatizing and psychologically distressing); Kevin A. McLemore, Experiences With Misgendering: Identity Misclassification of Transgender Spectrum Individuals, 14 Self & Identity 51, 60 (2015) [hereinafter McLemore, Experiences With Misgendering] (finding a correlation between frequency of misgendering and negative views of self). [9]. Compare Lynch v. Lewis, No. 7:14-CV-0024-HL-TQL, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63111, at *4 n.3 (M.D. Ga. Mar. 24, 2014) (granting in part a trans plaintiff's "Motion for Feminine Form of Address and Use of Female Pronouns" requiring defense use female pronouns in court and filings), and Qz'etax v. Ortiz, 170 Fed. App'x. 551, 553 (10th Cir. 2006) (upholding pro se trans appellant's "motion for the continued usage of proper female pronouns"), with Howard v. Ga. Dep't of Corr., No. 5:10-CV-207 (MTT), 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93173, at *2 (M.D. Ga. July 7, 2010) (denying plaintiff's "Motion for Recognition" and refusing to order defendants use female pronouns). [11]. 138 S. Ct. 1260 (2018). [12]. 139 S. Ct. 1599 (2019) (mem.). [15]. I refer to the parties as they refer to themselves in their briefs. See Brief for Respondent, Gloucester Cty. Sch. Bd., No. 16-273 (U.S. Feb. 23, 2017) (referring to Gavin Grimm as "Gavin" throughout); Brief of Plaintiff-Appellee, Whitaker ex rel. Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified Sch. Dist., 858 F.3d 1034 (7th Cir. 2017) (referring to Ashton Whitaker as "Ash" throughout); Brief for Respondent Aimee Stephens, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC, No. 18-107 (U.S. June 26, 2019) (referring to Aimee Stephens as "Ms. Stephens" throughout). [27]. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC, 139 S. Ct. 1599 (2019) (mem.). [33]. E.g., Brief Amicus Curiae of Public Advocate of the United States et al. in Support of Petitioner at 5, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, No. 18-107 (U.S. Aug. 23, 2019), 2019 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 3633 (arguing that using Ms. Stephens's personal pronouns is a pro-trans concession); Amicus Brief of Free Speech Advocates in Support of Petitioner at 2, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, No. 18-107 (U.S. Aug. 22, 2019), 2019 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 3458, at *7 ("To refer to respondent Stephens with female pronouns is to prejudge a basic question at issue, namely, whether Stephens, despite his [sic] biology, is actually female."); cf. Brief for Amicus Curiae Center for Arizona Policy in Support of the Petitioner at 13, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, No. 18-107 (U.S. Aug. 20, 2019), 2019 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 3413, at *13 ("The use of particular pronouns expresses a reality underlying those words. Words are never 'mere words.'"). [36]. In saying this, I acknowledge what might appear to be an apparent inconsistency between the point that pronouns are typically semantically empty, and the Article's broader argument that the use of (correct) pronouns is meaningful and that pronouns can carry heavy personal significance. But I do not view the points as contradictory. To my mind, terms of reference and address-pronouns, honorifics, titles, names, and the like-are ordinary signs of respect. That is to say, they are widely used, commonplace, and generally thought of as inconsequential. Conversely, we might think of withholding these terms as disrespectful: Doing so says, in effect, that the person we are referring to or addressing does not deserve the ordinary respect given to all other citizens. Importantly, in the case of persons from groups that are discriminated against, the misuse or absence of these ordinary signs of respect takes on an even greater significance. To see this, consider that addressing professionals with titles like "Doctor," "Judge," "Sergeant," "Officer," etc. is ordinary. To specifically fail or refuse to use these terms with a Black person, though, would be considered discriminatory, because the context and history of discrimination against Black people matters. Recall that for decades, withholding the ordinary signs of respect-through a failure to use titles or by addressing Blacks persons by only their first names-was an integral part of the social practices that symbolized Black persons' purported inferiority. Thus, it is the deviation from ordinary treatment, against a backdrop of existing social discrimination that, when taken together, makes the conduct both meaningful and condemnable. The same reasoning applies to pronouns, gendered titles, and the names of transgender persons. To fail to use these ordinary signs of respect by itself would be disrespectful. But the backdrop of widespread societal transphobia is what makes a deviation from the ordinary especially egregious. For instance, normally, using persons' preferred names-whatever they want to be called-is accepted. (We might, for example, refer to a person by their preferred name "Bob," when in actuality their legal name is "Robert.") And yet, to refuse to use a transgender person's preferred name or to deadname them, is a deviation from the ordinary, that takes on a new significance because of the social context of discrimination against transfolk. See generally Sandy E. James et al., Nat'l Ctr. for Transgender Equality, The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey 4 (2016), https://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/USTS-Full-Report-FINAL.PDF [https://perma.cc/594T-6W63] (finding "disturbing patterns of mistreatment and discrimination" against transpersons in every dimension of social life). Likewise, ordinarily, we use gender pronouns that are in line with the person we are referring to or addressing (it just so happens that most people we discuss or address are cisgender). To fail to do so with transgender persons, however, is to deviate from the ordinary in a way that is especially meaningful. [41]. E.g., Brief of Amicus Curiae Alliance Defending Freedom in Support of Petitioners at 2 n.4, Kenosha Unified Sch. Dist. v. Whitaker ex rel. Whitaker, 138 S. Ct. 1260 (2018) (No. 17-301), 2016 WL 7449301; Amicus Brief of Free Speech Advocates in Support of Petitioner, supra note 33, at 3; cf. Brief of Amici Curiae Dr. Judith Reisman & the Child Protection Institute in Support of Petitioner at 47-48, Gloucester Cty. Sch. Bd. v. G.G. ex rel. Grimm, No. 16-273 (U.S. Jan. 10, 2017), 2017 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 107, at *55-56 (suggesting using "names and pronouns that . . . do not correspond" with "physical characteristics," id. at 47, denies "biological reality," id. at 48). [43]. Importantly, changes in the ways historically marginalized groups are addressed, are frequently a part and byproduct of movements led by these very same groups. For scholarship on the movement to change terms of address for Black persons, see generally Tom W. Smith, Changing Racial Labels: From "Colored" to "Negro" to "Black" to "African American", 56 Pub. Opinion Q. 496, 496 (1992). For scholarship on women's work towards launching the title 'Ms.', see David W. Dunlap, 1986: 'Ms.' Joins the Times's Vocabulary, N.Y. Times (Apr. 6, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/insider/1986-ms-joins-the-timess-vocabulary.html [https://perma.cc/JWP4-QDGJ]; Ben Zimmer, Ms., N.Y. Times Mag. (Oct. 23, 2009), https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25FOB-onlanguage-t.html [https://perma.cc/4ZMW-YKRB]. For work on the decline of the term "homosexual" in favor of "gay," see Jeremy W. Peters, The Decline and Fall of the 'H' Word, N.Y. Times (Mar. 21, 2014), https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/fashion/gays-lesbians-the-term-homosexual.html [https://perma.cc/5RUF-4Z4K]. [45]. See, e.g., William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style 59 (4th ed. 2000) ("The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language." (emphasis omitted)); Lani Guinier, Of Gentlemen and Role Models, 6 Berkeley Women's L.J. 93, 93 (1990) (relating an instance of the term "gentlemen" to address female students); see also generally Anne Pauwels, Linguistic Sexism and Feminist Linguistic Activism, in The Handbook of Language and Gender, supra note 37, at 550 (documenting linguistic androcentrism and feminist reaction). [46]. The Declaration of Independence para. 2 (U.S. 1776). [47]. E.g., Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 345 (1963) ("Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of law." (emphasis added)); United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617 (1954) ("The constitutional requirement of definiteness is violated by a criminal statute that fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute. The underlying principle is that no man shall be held criminally responsible for conduct which he could not reasonably understand to be proscribed." (emphasis added)); Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 163 (1803) ("The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men." (emphasis added)). [48]. Naomi R. Cahn, Looseness of Legal Language: The Reasonable Woman Standard in Theory and in Practice, 77 Cornell L. Rev. 1398, 1404 (1992). [50]. See Roberto Lopez, Preferred Pronouns Laws and the First Amendment: When Transgender Activism Clashes With the Prohibition on Compelled Speech,FIU L. Rev. Online (Jan. 2, 2019), https://law.fiu.edu/2019/01/02/preferred-pronoun-laws-and-the-first-amendment-when-transgender-activism-clashes-with-the-prohibition-on-compelled-speech [https://perma.cc/YFP2-SVXU]; see also Jae Alexis Lee, What Does "Passing" Mean Within the Transgender Community?, Huffington Post (June 10, 2017, 11:13 AM), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-does-passing-mean-within-the-transgender-community_b_593b85e9e4b014ae8c69e099 [https://perma.cc/8K4N-RXUJ] (defining passing as being "correctly perceived as the gender they identify as and beyond that, . . . not be[ing] perceived as transgender"). [51]. Brief Amicus Curiae of Public Advocate of the United States et al. in Support of Petitioner at 2 n.4, Gloucester Cty. Sch. Bd. v. G.G. ex rel. Grimm, No. 16-273 (U.S. Jan. 10, 2017), 2017 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 114, at *7 n.4. [54]. See, e.g., Warren E. Burger, The Necessity for Civility, Litig., Winter 1975, at 8, 10 (explaining that "good manners, disciplined behavior and civility . . . are the lubricants that prevent lawsuits from turning into combat" and "civility is to the courtroom and adversary process what antisepsis is to a hospital and operating room"); Sandra Day O'Connor, Professionalism, 76 Wash. U. L.Q. 5, 8 (1998) ("When . . . lawyers themselves generate conflict, rather than focusing on the dispute between the parties they represent, it distorts our adversarial system. More civility and greater professionalism can only enhance the pleasure lawyers find in practice, increase the effectiveness of our system of justice, and improve the public's perception of lawyers."); Thomas M. Reavley, Rambo Litigators: Pitting Aggressive Tactics Against Legal Ethics, 17 Pepp. L. Rev. 637, 643-44 (1990) (writing abusive and unprofessional behavior "makes life and the practice of law unpleasant and unhealthy," id. at 644 (footnote omitted)). [56]. See D. Wendy Greene, Categorically Black, White, or Wrong: "Misperception Discrimination" and the State of Title VII Protection, 47 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 87, 153 n.312 (2013) (collecting cases allowing discrimination claims based on misperceived racial identity). Analogous cases, allowing claims based on misperceived sexual orientation or religion, similarly exist. See, e.g., Ellingsworth v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co., 247 F. Supp. 3d 546, 546 (E.D. Pa. 2017) (upholding Title VII claim brought by a heterosexual woman perceived as a lesbian); Dallan F. Flake, Religious Discrimination Based on Employer Misperception, 2016 Wis. L. Rev. 87, 117-24 (collecting cases allowing employment discrimination claims based on misperceived religion). [58]. And, even accepting the absence of such a right as true, beyond being uncouth to flagrantly and unwarrantedly disrespecting other persons, other duties may compel courtesy to other parties. See In re Snyder, 472 U.S. 634, 647 (1985) ("All persons involved in the judicial process-judges, litigants, witnesses, and court officers-owe a duty of courtesy to all other participants."). What's more, the Rules of Professional Conduct, as well as the Code of Judicial Conduct actually impose affirmative obligations on lawyers and judges, respectively, to be courteous to others. See Model Rules of Prof'l Conduct Preamble & Scope 9 (Am. Bar Ass'n 2018) (stating lawyers have the obligation of "maintaining a professional, courteous and civil attitude toward all persons involved in the legal system"); Model Code of Judicial Conduct Canon 2 r. 2.8(B) (Am. Bar Ass'n 2020) ("A judge shall be patient, dignified, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, court staff, court officials, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity, and shall require similar conduct of lawyers, court staff, court officials, and others subject to the judge's direction and control."); see also Code of Conduct for United States Judges Canon 3(A)(3) (2019) (stating judges "should be patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous" and "should require similar conduct by those subject to the judge's control, including lawyers to the extent consistent with their role in the adversary process"). [63]. See Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 247-49, 248 n.4 (1964) (Douglas, J., concurring) (characterizing Hamilton's mistreatment as "a relic of slavery" that infringed on Fourteenth Amendment equal citizenship); State v. Bright, 916 P.2d 922, 926 n.23 (Wash. 1996) (en banc) (reading Hamilton to stand for the principle that "[p]articipants in all court proceedings are entitled to be addressed with courtesy titles"); Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Racism in American Courts: Cause for Black Disruption or Despair?, 61 Calif. L. Rev. 165, 191 (1973) (reading Hamilton to have "set a minimal standard of courtesy for black litigants"); Steven J. Eagle, The Really New Property: A Skeptical Appraisal, 43 Ind. L. Rev. 1229, 1274-75 & n.338 (2010) (interpreting Hamilton to stand for "the universal entitlement to be called by an honorific in judicial proceedings," id. at 1275); A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Racism in American and South African Courts: Similarities and Differences, 65 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 479, 527 (1990) (suggesting the case stands for treating Black persons with the same dignity accorded White persons). [64]. E.g., Brief for Amicus Curiae Center for Arizona Policy in Support of the Petitioner, supra note 33, at 7 (stating the slippery slope will extend to "newly invented gender-neutral pronouns"); Brief Amicus Curiae of Public Advocate of the United States et al. in Support of Petitioner, supra note 51, at 35 n.52 (arguing the slippery slope will extend to being called royal titles). Interestingly, the argument ignores the underlying question of what anyone-trans or not-could possibly gain to be sufficiently motivated to lie about their pronouns or preferred terms of address. And, quite ironically, the only examples of persons exploiting or mocking policies allowing them to choose their personal pronouns or preferred modes of address, all involve persons who are not gender minorities. See, e.g., Conor Thompson, Op-Ed: An Open Letter to His Majesty, Mich. Daily (Oct. 13, 2016, 6:50 PM), https://www.michigandaily.com/section/viewpoints/op-ed-open-letter-grant-strobl [https://perma.cc/54VX-KDNL]. [66]. It is also important to recognize that these slippery slope arguments are trotted out and redeployed at every pit stop on the journey towards progress for minority groups. Recall the predictions that school desegregation would lead to racial mixing and miscegenation, and same-sex marriage would soon invite bestiality and polygamous marriage. For literature on the former, see Serena Mayeri, The Strange Career of Jane Crow: Sex Segregation and the Transformation of Anti-Discrimination Discourse, 18 Yale J.L. & Human. 187, 192-201 (2006), and for literature on the latter, see Dale Carpenter, Bad Arguments Against Gay Marriage, 7 Fla. Coastal L. Rev. 181, 208-19 (2005). [67]. Cf. Julia Shear Kushner, The Right to Control One's Name, 57 313, 313-15, 334 (2009) (collecting examples of name change denials for offensive or obscene references or incitement of violence). [69]. Courts very commonly refer to persons by names they wish to be called, even though they may differ from their legal names. E.g., In re Brackens, No. 18-11125, 2019 Bankr. LEXIS 691, at *1 n.1 (Bankr. W.D. La. Feb. 26, 2019) ("At trial, Ms. Gordon indicated that her preference was to be referred to by her married name, Cheynita Sneed. . . . This Court is happy to oblige and will refer to her as Ms. Sneed throughout this Memorandum of Decision." (citation omitted)); Ramirez-Vera v. State, No. 19A-CR-1368, 2020 Ind. App. LEXIS 102, at *1 n.1 (Ind. Ct. App. Mar. 17, 2020) ("At the beginning of her bench trial, Ramirez-Vera indicated that her preferred name is Ramirez. . . . Accordingly, we will refer to her as Ramirez throughout this opinion." (citation omitted)) . [70]. E.g., Lesperance v. Manning, No. 2:16-CV-0764 JAM AC P, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 150710, at *4 n.2 (E.D. Cal. July 30, 2019) ("Although the instant order uses masculine pronouns when referring to plaintiff, the court will use other pronouns in the future upon plaintiff's request."); Lewis v. Mullens, No. 2:16-CV-2607 AC P, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 42204, at *1-2 (E.D. Cal. Mar. 14, 2018) (granting trans plaintiff's "motion for documented gender identity acknowledgement" and stating "[g]oing forward, the court will use female pronouns when referring to plaintiff"); Doe v. Fedcap Rehab. Servs., No. 17-CV-8220 (JPO), 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71174 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 27, 2018) (adopting they/their/theirs pronouns for a genderqueer plaintiff). [71]. Francesco G. Salpietro, R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Transgender Pronoun Preference and the Application of the Model Code of Judicial Conduct, 53 Ct. Rev. 162, 162-63 (2017). [72]. Order at 2, United States v. Manning, 78 M.J. 501 (A. Ct. Crim. App. 2018) (No. ARMY 20130739). [73]. Howard v. Ga. Dep't of Corr., No. 5:10-CV-207 (MTT), 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93173, at *1 (M.D. Ga. July 7, 2010). [75]. Compare, e.g., Keohane v. Jones, 328 F. Supp. 3d 1288, 1292 n.1 (N.D. Fla. 2018) ("Out of respect for Ms. Keohane, this Court uses female pronouns when referring to her-a courtesy not all of Defendant's agents have extended . . . ."), and Supre v. Ricketts, 792 F.2d 958, 964 n.1 (10th Cir. 1986) (using female pronouns for transgender plaintiff "as a matter of courtesy"), with United States v. Varner, 948 F.3d 250, 252 (5th Cir. 2020) (misgendering petitioner throughout, based on arguments discredited in Part I, supra), and Gibson v. Collier, 920 F.3d 212, 217 n.2 (5th Cir. 2019) (rationalizing the majority's misgendering on a mistaken conflation of gender and sex, and citing to a 1994 case misgendering a transgender party as precedential justification). [76]. Model Rules of Prof'l Conduct r. 3.4(e) (Am. Bar Ass'n 2018). [79]. Complaint, Cantwell v. Gorcenski, No. 3:17-CV-00089 (W.D. Va. Dec. 28, 2017). [80]. Discovery Letter from Sandra C. Freeman, Attorney for Ms. Gorcenski, to Honorable Norman K. Moon, Senior U.S. District Judge, Cantwell, No. 3:17-CV-00089 (W.D. Va. Feb. 27, 2018), ECF No. 15; Ian Shapira, He Once Defended the Poor in Court. Now He Defends White Supremacists., Wash. Post (July 2, 2018, 7:34 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/he-once-defended-the-poor-in-court-now-he-defends-white-supremacists/2018/07/01/0c7bfa6a-6901-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html [https://perma.cc/6AYL-GUPA]. [81]. Motion for Enlargement of Time at paras. 9-10, Cantwell, No. 3:17-CV-00089 (W.D. Va. Feb. 27, 2018), ECF No. 17. [82]. In a later response, Gorcenski's counsel made this very point. See Amended (First) Counterclaims of Defendants at 30 & n.17, Cantwell, No. 3:17-CV-00089 (W.D. Va. Mar. 20, 2018) (stating Cantwell's attorney's statement "had no bearing whatsoever on the merits or procedure of the litigation," id. at 30, and that the statement "did not even serve the functional purpose of actually opposing Ms. Gorcenski's request to have [the] case recaptioned under her true name, as the reason not to do so was nowhere actually offered, and no objection to the requested relief was made by counsel," id. at 30 n.17). Beyond violating Rule 3.4, Woodward's representation also appears to violate Rule 8.4(g), discussed below, see text accompanying infra notes 90-101, and the Rule's Preamble, which notes lawyers have an obligation to maintain "a professional, courteous and civil attitude toward all persons involved in the legal system." Model Rules of Prof'l Conduct Preamble & Scope 9 (Am. Bar Ass'n 2018). [83]. Model Rules of Prof'l Conduct r. 4.4(a) (Am. Bar Ass'n 2018). [84]. E.g., Brief of Amicus Curiae Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund in Support of Respondents at *18-21, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colo. Civil Rights Comm'n, 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018) (No. 16-111), 2017 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 4216 (collecting firsthand narratives describing misgendering as an embarrassing and threatening "hostile act"); McLemore, Experiences With Misgendering, supra note 8, at 52; McLemore, A Minority Stress Perspective, supra note 8, at 58. [85]. See, e.g., Damien W. Riggs, Working With Transgender Young People and Their Families: A Critical Developmental Approach 109-11 (2019) (documenting instances of intentional misgendering to assert control of targets); Abbie E. Goldberg, Katherine Kuvalanka & Lore Dickey, Transgender Graduate Students' Experiences in Higher Education: A Mixed-Methods Exploratory Study, J. Diversity Higher Educ. , July 2018, at 1, 9 (describing instances of "consciously deploy[ed]" language used to negate or challenge trans persons' gender identity); Leigh Goodmark, Transgender People, Intimate Partner Abuse, and the Legal System, 48 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 51, 63 (2013) (recording intentional misgendering as a form of emotional abuse among abusive relationships that include transgender partners); Kei Graves, Typing My Way Out of the Cisheteronormative Closet at Community College, in Trans People in Higher Education 69 (Genny Beemyn ed., 2019) (documenting misgendering as means of deliberate humiliation). [86]. See Goodmark, supra note 85, at 81-82 (documenting the "intentional[] and repeated[]" use of the wrong pronouns as "a tactic to break a witness down"); Abbe Smith, The Complex Uses of Sexual Orientation in Criminal Court, 11 Am. U. J. Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 101, 110 (2002) (telling of an instance in which defense counsel repeatedly addressed a transgender woman as "sir" during cross examination). [87]. Appellant's Reply Brief at 1-3, Rodgers v. State, 288 So. 3d 1038 (Fla. 2019) (No. SC19-241), 2019 FL S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 617. [90]. Model Rules of Prof'l Conduct r. 8.4(d), (g) (Am. Bar Ass'n 2018). [92]. See Seth Hemmelgarn, Misgendering in SF Trans Case Criticized, Bay Area Rep. (Dec. 6, 2015), https://www.ebar.com/news/news//190177?ch=news&sc=news&sc2=&id=190177 [https://perma.cc/DT9Z-5D48] (linking the strategy of misgendering to eliciting bias against transgender parties). [93]. See, e.g., Jordan v. State, No. 01-14-00721-CR, 2015 WL 6768497, at *5-6 (Tex. App. Nov. 5, 2015) (arguing introducing a victim's gender identity would make a defendant's conviction less likely, since it would have rebutted "the prosecution's painting of the complainant as a 'damsel in distress,'" id. at *5); E. Cram, "Angie Was Our Sister:" Witnessing the Trans-Formation of Disgust in the Citizenry of Photography, 98Q.J. Speech 411, 420-21 (2012) (detailing the use of misgendering by the defense in the murder of Angie Zapata). The motivation of misgendering in hate crime cases appears to be the portrayal of trans victims as deceptive, and thus held morally accountable and less sympathetic. For examples and explanations of these invidious stereotypes see Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie & Kay Whitlock, Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States 76 (2011) (documenting a case in which the prosecution stated: "How can you trust this person? He tells you he is a women; he is clearly a man."); Talia Mae Bettcher, Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion, Hypatia, Summer 2007, at 43, 43 (documenting the stereotype of trans people as "deceivers" and detailing its relationship to promoting transphobia and transphobic violence); Cynthia Lee & Peter Kar Yu Kwan, The Trans Panic Defense: Heteronormativity, and the Murder of Transgender Women, 66 Hastings L.J. 77, 113-19, 113 n.206 (2014) (documenting the stereotype and its consequences). [94]. Stephen Young, Man Who Beat Muhlaysia Booker in Viral Video Convicted of Assault, Dall. Observer (Oct. 22, 2019, 4:00 AM), https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-man-convicted-in-muhlaysia-booker-assault-11785268 [https://perma.cc/XV49-3WA7]. [95]. Judge to Rule Whether Muhlaysia Booker Will Be Identified as Man or Woman During Trial, FOX4 KDFW (Aug. 23, 2019), https://www.fox4news.com/news/judge-to-rule-whether-muhlaysia-booker-will-be-identified-as-man-or-woman-during-trial [https://perma.cc/L3LM-NATQ]. [101]. See Carla D. Pratt, Should Klansmen be Lawyers?: Racism as an Ethical Barrier to the Legal Profession, 30 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 857, 880 (2003) (arguing that "[d]iscriminatory conduct by a lawyer is prejudicial to the administration of justice because it causes the public to lose confidence in the system and it renders the system unfair"); Akshat Tewary, Legal Ethics as a Means to Address the Problem of Elite Law Firm Non-Diversity, 12 Asian L.J. 1, 31 (2005) (arguing that when lawyers engage in "practices that are of questionable fairness," they diminish the profession's credibility, and thus, prejudice the administration of justice). [104]. See, e.g., Cal. Health & Safety Code § 1439.51(a)(5) (West 2019); Colo. Code Regs. § 708-1:81.6(A)(4) (2014); D.C. Mun. Regs. tit. 4, § 808.2 (2006); Wash. Admin. Code § 162-32-040 (2015); NYC Comm'n on Human Rights, Legal Enforcement Guidance on Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression: Local Law No. 3 (2002); N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 8-102, at 4-5 (2018), https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/CCHR%20Gender%20Guidance-December%202018.pdf [https://perma.cc/2TLR-E3MD] (interpreting N.Y.C., N.Y., Admin. Code § 8-102 as prohibiting misgendering). [105]. See Letter from Candice Jackson, Acting Assistant Sec'y for Civil Rights, Office for Civil Rights, Dep't of Educ., to Regional Directors, Office for Civil Rights, Dep't of Educ. (June 6, 2017), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3866816-OCR-Instructions-to-the-FieldRe-Transgender.html [https://perma.cc/Q2VT-XKZ7]. [106]. E.g., Renee v. Neal, No. 3:18-CV-592-RLM-MGG, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 137025, at *1-2 (N.D. Ind. Aug. 13, 2018) (finding correctional officers' refusal to use female pronouns constituted "verbal harassment"); Holub v. Saber Healthcare Grp., No. 1:16-CV-02130, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35458, at *2, *6 (N.D. Ohio Mar. 2, 2018) (upholding a sexual harassment claim against a motion to dismiss in which a trans woman was intentionally and repeatedly referred to as "'he,' 'him' and 'mister'"). [109]. Model Rules of Prof'l Conduct r. 3.5(b) (Am. Bar Ass'n 2018); see also Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030 (1991) (upholding the constitutionality of limited restrictions on attorney communication with the press). [112]. Eugene Volokh, Will Lawyers Be Punishable for Using the "Wrong" Pronouns to Refer to Transgender People in "Social" or "Bar Association" Activities?, Volokh Conspiracy (May 21, 2018, 4:04 PM), https://reason.com/2018/05/21/will-lawyers-be-punishable-for-using-the [https://perma.cc/NN2L-7E9K] (stating if a rule "only aimed at restricting lawyer speech . . . in the courtroom . . . it would certainly be constitutional as part of the court system's power to control speech in the courtroom"); cf. United States v. Jones, 978 F. Supp. 1459, 1460 (N.D. Ala. 1997) (finding the AUSA's behavior unprofessional, but finding that the court could not address the conduct because it "did not occur in the presence of the court, or, indeed, within the confines of the courthouse"). [115]. See Josh Blackman, The Government Can't Make You Use 'Zhir' or 'Ze' in Place of 'She' and 'He', Wash. Post. (June 16, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/06/16/the-government-cant-make-you-use-zhir-or-ze-in-place-of-she-and-he [https://perma.cc/J7KA-QJV7]; Peter Hasson, Legal Experts: Transgender Pronoun Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Daily Caller (June 30, 2016, 3:09 PM), https://dailycaller.com/2016/06/30/legal-experts-transgender-pronoun-mandates-are-unconstitutional [https://perma.cc/4EGQ-WWXJ]. But see Tyler Sherman, Note, All Employers Must Wash Their Speech Before Returning to Work: The First Amendment & Compelled Use of Employees' Preferred Gender Pronouns, 26 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 219, 219-20 (2017) (concluding "pronoun laws"-those "requir[ing] private employers to use the preferred [sic] gender pronouns of their employees," do not unconstitutionally compel speech). [116]. Cf. Meriwether v. Trs. of Shawnee State Univ., No. 1:18-CV-753, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 151494, at *1, *53 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 5, 2019) (reasoning that a university policy preventing a professor from misgendering a student did not violate the First Amendment since it did not force "him to espouse or express a view that plaintiff disagreed with or found objectionable"). [117]. E.g., Brief of Amicus Curiae Professor W. Burlette Carter in Support of Petitioner at *12 n.3, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. EEOC, No. 18-107 (U.S. Aug. 22, 2019), 2019 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 3867; Brief of Amicus Curiae Foundation for Moral Law in Support of Petitioner at 2 n.2, Calgaro v. St. Louis County, No. 19-127 (U.S. Aug. 16, 2019) ("Out of respect for the Court and in accordance with the Petition, Amicus will refer to the child as E.J.K. [her preferred name.] However, despite using the feminine initials or pronouns, Amicus does not concede that E.J.K. is the child's correct name or that the child is now of the female sex."). Courts have done the same. E.g., Pinson v. U.S. Dep't. of Just., 199 F. Supp. 3d 203, 207 n.1 (D.D.C. 2016) (addressing plaintiff with female pronouns but "caution[ing] that its use of feminine pronouns is not intended to confer any substantive or legal characterization concerning [Plaintiff's] gender identity"); Wilson v. David, No. 9:08-CV-618, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13825, at *2 n.1 (N.D.N.Y. 2010) ("The Court will refer to Plaintiff using female pronouns, but makes no judgment or opinion considering Plaintiff's [gender] identity."). [118]. E.g., Brief Amici Curiae of Council for Secular Humanism & International Academy of Humanism in Support of Respondents at *6 n.1, Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997) (No. 96-110), 1996 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 792 (indicating the brief would use both gender pronouns as "a stylistic choice that carries no further significance"); Brief of Amicus Curiae the Coalition for the Restoration of Parental Rights at *2 n.1, Harris v. Harris, 96 P.3d 141 (Cal. 2004) (No. S101836), 2002 CA S. Ct. Briefs LEXIS 182 (clarifying the brief would use male pronouns to refer to parents and children, "but obviously, all such references apply to both mothers and fathers, daughters and sons"). [119]. See Susan Stryker, Transgender History 22 (2008) (pointing out "[s]ome transgender people-often those who have worked very hard to attain a gender status other than the one assigned to them at birth-take offense when gender neutral pronouns, rather than the appropriate gendered ones, are applied to them because they perceive this usage as a way that others fail to acknowledge their attained gender"); see also Rachel L. Harris & Lisa Tarchak, I'm With 'They', N.Y. Times (July 12, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/opinion/gender-neutral-pronouns.html [https://perma.cc/PZ49-F6R6] (capturing the opinion that using gender neutral pronouns for binary trans persons is "linguistic erasure"). But see Robin Dembroff & Daniel Wodak, The Problem With Pronouns, Philosopher (June 23, 2017), https://politicalphilosopher.net/2017/06/23/featured-philosophers-robin-dembroff-daniel-wodak [https://perma.cc/LAH4-YAZ8] (making the argument that gender neutral address does not "semantically convey misinformation about gender identities" (emphasis omitted)); Robin Dembroff & Daniel Wodak, He/She/They/Ze, 5 Ergo 371, 382-88 (2018) (presenting the argument that affirming gender identity through gendered pronouns, and denying it through misgendering are qualitatively distinct). [120]. See Burt v. Titlow, 571 U.S. 12 (2013) (using the gender neutral "respondent"); Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994) (using the gender neutral "petitioner"). But see Burt, 571 U.S. at 24 (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (using female pronouns); id. at 26 (Ginsburg, J., concurring) (same); Transcript of Oral Argument, Farmer, 511 U.S. 825 (No. 92-7247) (all using female pronouns for transgender inmate, with the exception of Scalia and Thomas-who did not speak). [121]. Mark Sherman & Jessica Gresko, Supreme Court Notebook: Gender Pronouns Part of LGBT Fight, AP (Aug. 20, 2019), https://apnews.com/cd658b2da9da44989ab585db559e4058 [https://perma.cc/MR3D-EJBV]. [122]. See Brief of Amici Curiae Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence & National Organization for Marriage in Support of Petitioners, supra note 55, at 2-3 n.2 (explaining "Amici have chosen to utilize a time-honored [L]atin phrase, ex rel. (meaning, on behalf of), that is gender neutral"). [123]. See Elie Mystal, This Trump Judge Tormented a Trans Woman-Because He Could, Nation (Jan. 31, 2020), https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-judge-duncan-trans [https://perma.cc/J6GS-XB3S] (documenting Fifth Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan's repeated misgendering of a transgender woman in a January 2020 case, United States v. Varner, 948 F.3d 250 (5th Cir. 2020)).
About the Author

B.A., Franklin & Marshall College; J.D., Cornell Law School.

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Misgendering as Misconduct - UCLA Law Review

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Abstract As litigation regarding the civil rights of transgender persons blossoms, a curious trend has emerged: In briefs, pleadings, and motions advocating anti-trans positions, attorneys have addressed trans parties with language at odds with their gender. Through a close review of the language in briefs for three recent Supreme Court cases, this Article exposes the [...]