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Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)

California Lawmakers Eradicating State Code of Male References

The ‘equity package’ of bills replaces ‘he’ and ‘him’ and ‘his’ with gender-neutral terms

By Katy Grimes, June 25, 2021 8:00 am

The legislative effort to remove male gendered language in California law is on its way to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, because state law “contains outdated terminology and gendered terms.”

AB 378, sponsored by the Lieutenant Governor, Eleni Kounalakis, updates woefully outdated, and gender specific codes sections. It systematically goes through laws related to the offices the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Controller, Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and Board of Equalization to make all references to the gender of the officer gender neutral. Currently, in many parts of our code these constitutional office holders are only referred to as ‘he’ or ‘him,’says California Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan on her website, who calls the legislation her “equity” package.

However, bill analyses do not specify what gender-neutral words will replace “he” and “him” and “his.”

Bauer-Kahan is also the chairwoman of the nation’s first and only Select Committee on Women’s Reproductive Health. She says “reproductive health care is under attack across the nation,” therefore “the California legislature continues to demonstrate its commitment to protecting and expanding access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care.”

In 2019, Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) said because of President Trump, “all of our reproductive rights are under attack.”

At the 2019 hearing by the Committee on Women’s Reproductive Health, the “Reproductive Justice Movement” representatives discussed the importance of protecting a “safe environment” for “reproductive autonomy.” 

“Reproductive health care needs to be considered health care, not as a different type of health care,” said a doctor from the University of California, San Francisco. The discussion moved on to discuss the importance of allowing 12 and 13-year old girls to be able to “speak to a doctor alone” and how they can “access health care outside of the family.”

“Reproductive health care” is now used as the accepted language for abortion, despite that the goal is the death of an unwanted, unborn baby.

The 2020 Select Committee on Women’s Reproductive Health Informational Hearing on Barriers to Providing Care was held virtually.

Now, Bauer-Kahan’s mission is to eradicate from the California state code references to “he” and “him” and “his” when referring to the attorney general and other statewide elected officials. Notably, Legislative Counsel has already been removing gendered terms from the California Codes.

According to Bauer-Kahan, “By removing the gendered language, this bill successfully updates our laws to be accurate and inclusive.”

The AP reported Friday:

A California law passed two years ago requires school districts to reissue high school diplomas to update a person’s name and gender if it is different since graduation. This year, lawmakers are considering a bill by Assemblyman David Chiu that would do the same thing for college diplomas.

“We have women serving in our highest offices, and the (sections) of the code referring to them only in the male pronoun was pretty shocking to me,” said Bauer-Kahan. “It doesn’t represent where California is and where California is going.”

In 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Sen. Toni Atkins’ SB 179, to add a non-binary gender marker option for driver’s licenses, birth certificates, identity cards and gender change court orders. The bill is the first of its kind in the nation, also allows minors to apply for a gender change on their birth certificate.

This is the other gender legislation the California Legislature has prioritized in 2021, listed on the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus website:

AB-439 (Bauer-Kahan) – Certificates of death: gender identity
This bill codifies inclusive language to allow nonbinary and gender non-conforming Californians to be correctly identifies on their certificates.

AB-1094 (Arambula) – Sexual orientation and gender identity data collection pilot project
Provide California with much-needed data to track violent deaths among the LGBTQ community to help shape policies to reduce the number of these preventable deaths in the future.

AB-218 (Ward) – Change of gender and sex identifier
This bill will help to protect the privacy of transgender people and prevent discrimination when a transgender person enrolls their child in school, applies for a loan, or seeks to make medical decisions on behalf of an incapacitated spouse.

AB-1084 (Low) – Gender neutral retail departments
This bill would require a retail department store with 500 or more employees that sells childcare items, children’s clothing, or toys, to maintain a gender neutral section or area, to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer.

SB-225 (Wiener) – Medical procedures: individuals born with variations in their physical sex characteristics
This bill would prohibit a physician and surgeon from performing certain sex organ modification procedures on an individual born with variations in their physical sex characteristics who is under 6. 12 years of age unless the procedure is a surgery required to address an immediate risk of physical harm.

SB-272 (Laird) – State government: gender-neutral terms: California Conservation Corps
Promotes diversity and inclusivity by updating archaic gender-specific pronouns referencing the California Highway Patrol (CHP) Commissioner.

The LGBTQ Caucus also lists its Priority Budget Requests here.

Ironically, the LGBTQ Caucus website photo has the rainbow flag hung above the recently removed statue of Christopher Columbus with Queen Isabella, the centerpiece of the Capitol rotunda since 1883. The statue was  removed after legislative leaders decided it was out of place “given the deadly impact his arrival in this hemisphere had on indigenous populations.”

LGBTQ Caucus website photo. (Photo: https://lgbtqcaucus.legislature.ca.gov/)
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15 thoughts on “California Lawmakers Eradicating State Code of Male References

  1. These buffoons are actually placed into office by taxpayers. Only in CA. How about dealing with homelessness, mental illness, bankrupt businesses due to the governor’s lockdowns, rising crime, businesses leaving CA by the tens of thousands, high gas taxes, high utility taxes, the drought, clearing forests of dead brush, and millions of other MORE IMPORTANT ISSUES TO CALIFORNIANS.

  2. This is dangerous stuff that looks like trivia. What’s chilling is that none of this is actually about LGBTQ “tolerance” or “rights” or anything else that most Americans might typically want to sign on to. The ultimate goal of legislators like Rebecca Bauer-Kahan and her clones everywhere — whether they are useful idiots or downright diabolical — is to replace the American flag and what it symbolizes with rainbow and BLM flags that symbolize shutting down American values and replacing them with the nihilistic “values” of a totalitarian state. Please excuse what may seem like hyperbole, but this chillingly reminds me of no less than planting the ISIS flag.
    One thing we are going to have to do, unfortunately, is get in the faces of our nicey-nice friends and relatives who want to avoid conflict and be seen as “tolerant,” and speak up as persuasively as possible to help them understand what this is really all about and how destructive it is to our country, never mind obviously to California. It’s going to get ugly personally but it has to be done. Remember, this is not about “tolerance” for those who have been described as marginalized. It’s NOT about LGBTQ+.

    1. Well said showandtell! I am so sad that we are even having these conversations. Reading what you wrote is sadly right on.

    2. What you’ve described is delusional, not based in fact and could also hint at violence, nothing you said is based in a demonstrable reality and that’s what’s the risk to this country:
      the fervent false claims from willful ignorance based on delusions pushed by people like yourself

      No demonstrable evidence exists to support any of your claims, and some of your rants actually describe Christian extremism being experienced within the US since the late 60’s

  3. Orwell quotes that reflect what this is all about:

    “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

    “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

    “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

    “There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language”

    “Political chaos is connected with the decay of language… one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”

    “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
    and finally

    “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
    ― George Orwell, 1984

  4. Both these “wish my husband/boyfriend would stand up to my ridiculous ideas, and demonstrate their masculinity I so naturally desire and crave, and stand up to me, instead of cowering and agreeing to energize I say” deeply crave a strong, confident male in their lives. MEN: be the MAN to your woman. CONFIDENT STRONG KIND AND COMPASSIONATE Stop being a doormat to women. They are hard wired to respond to MASCULINE ENERGY, and any woman reading this knows it’s true.

  5. Here is an idea: enact a State Code that eradicates “whiny leftist liberals” in the Legislature!

  6. Why are we SO focused on the tiny minority of people who are affected by gender dysphoria or whatever the underlying issue is here???

    California has SO many serious, pressing problems to solve and these social justice warriors waste all of our time basically “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”…

    It’s SO frustrating to see the waste of time and energy on issues that are only problems for a small subset of our economy….

    I could understand this if all the other problems had been successfully taken care of, but no, reservoir water is still being flushed out to sea, pensions are soaking up too much money, and our electrical grid and energy infrastructure is still insufficient and inefficient….

    CA governance is a complete sh*t show….

    1. The Dem legislative mega-majority love to rub your nose in it, that a teeny-tiny subset can command all their consideration and could conceivably rule you. They love ignoring and abandoning everything of actual importance to do this. They love shoving it in your face, making you talk about it, watching you abandon your common sense, having contemptible idiots reign. They get off on it. They are not interested in serving you. They don’t ask (as they should) “what is good for California?” They are depraved and malevolent people. As you know…

  7. “The discussion moved on to discuss the importance of allowing 12 and 13-year old girls to be able to “speak to a doctor alone” and how they can “access health care outside of the family.” Isn’t this separating children from their families? Democrat politicians are doing the Devil’s work!

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