The president-elect’s Cabinet picks may be drawing the headlines, but the real question on the minds of political insiders is: What happened to AOC’s pronouns?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no longer displaying her preferred “she/her” pronouns from the biography on her X account, spurring speculation that the New York Democrat may have decided to moderate her “woke” stance on gender ideology in the wake of the Nov. 5 election blowout.
“2 years ago, AOC posted an apology for forgetting to put pronouns in her bio,” the End Wokeness account said in a Thursday post. “She just removed them on X.”
Other comments included “Woke is dead!” and “Trump bringing reality back,” as well as observations on the effectiveness of the Trump campaign’s ads on gender identity.
“If you’re wondering why AOC ditched her pronouns in her bio, it might have something to do with the massive exodus from the Democrat Party by Hispanic voters,” the Laughing Legends account said. “Many have conservative values and aren’t thrilled with gender ideology.”
Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh declared: “They say bullying doesn’t work but we bullied people with pronouns in their bio so much that @AOC removed hers.”
Then again, a deeper dive shows there may be more to the story — or less.
A search of the Internet Archive shows that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t have her pronouns listed on her X account as far back as April 2, but she did include them on March 4.
Does that mean that she anticipated the gender identity backlash nine months before the election? Or that a tech staffer accidentally deleted her pronouns, but nobody caught it until now?
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram account still lists her pronouns as “she/her,” an indication that the lawmaker probably won’t change her party registration to Republican in the near future.
The Washington Times has contacted the congresswoman’s office for comment.
The kerfuffle comes with a few Democrats rethinking their allegiance to the transgender rights movement since the election, which saw Republicans retake the White House and Senate and retain the House.
Republican candidates blasted Democrats throughout the campaign for their support of the transgender agenda, an issue credited with helping stoke the red wave.
The Trump campaign made inroads with an ad titled “I Don’t Want” that blasted Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting biological males in female sports and taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for prison inmates.
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” said the ad.
Two Democratic congressmen — Tom Suozzi of New York and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts — backpedaled on the transgender issues days after the Nov. 5 election, saying they have problems with male-to-female transgender athletes in girls’ scholastic sports.
Mr. Moulton said in a Monday interview on Boston Public Radio that the gender issue hurt Democrats, citing an exit poll that showed “the number one issue for swing voters who chose Trump was actually the feeling that Kamala was more concerned about trans issues than the middle class.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.