Althouse: "[T]he 19-year-old woke up about 4 a.m. Sunday to a 'crunching sound' with his head inside the bear’s mouth."

September 10, 2020

"[T]he 19-year-old woke up about 4 a.m. Sunday to a 'crunching sound' with his head inside the bear’s mouth."

"She said the teenager punched and hit it and other staffers at Glacier View Ranch 48 miles northwest of Denver yelled and swatted at the bear, which ran away."

From "Officers seek bear that bit camper’s head" (WaPo).

Imagine being awakened by the crunching sound as opposed as opposed to the feeling of being inside a bear's mouth? The sound wakes you up, and then you realize where you are.

Also at that link: "One killed, 8 injured at gender reveal party/A 22-year-old woman was found dead at the scene of a home invasion near Cincinnati where two gunmen opened fire, wounding eight people, including three children and a pregnant woman who had revealed the gender of her fetus at a party Saturday night."

No one at a "gender reveal party" refers to the thing at the center of the revelation as a "fetus," do they? I believe they do say "gender," but if WaPo is going to correct "baby" to "fetus" — presumably to move from the language used by the participants to something journalistically neutral — then why don't they correct "gender" to "sex"?

How could anyone figure out the gender of a fetus?! What's the fetus doing in there that the sonogram is picking up? Wearing a tutu? Playing with electric trains?

56 comments:

selfanalyst said...: That link to the Cincinnati shooting is old, happened in July of 2017.; 9/10/20, 12:10 PM
Howard said...: Sex vs gender. Brilliant point, Ann. A sexxxy? reveal party sounds so much better.; 9/10/20, 12:13 PM
Greg The Class Traitor said...: How could anyone figure out the gender of a fetus?! What's the fetus doing in there that the sonogram is picking up? Wearing a tutu? Playing with electric trains?

Althouse for the win!; 9/10/20, 12:17 PM
Readering said...: Isn't it because sex reveal sounds like a strip tease? Like RGB'S secretary's thinking long ago?; 9/10/20, 12:18 PM
TomHynes said...: Nobody wants to go to a sex reveal party.; 9/10/20, 12:19 PM
Big Mike said...: @Althouse, two gunmen stage a home invasion, shoot nine people, killing one woman and wounding three children and and a pregnant woman among others, and all you care about is whether the author used the word “gender” properly!?!?! Has life become so cheap in Madison?; 9/10/20, 12:24 PM
Temujin said...: I'm caught on a second gender reveal story in a week. Also caught on just how far and how fast the Washington Post turned into junk. My God, do they just stand around high schools and ask- who wants to write for WaPo? Their 'Journalists' are abysmal. From the Christopher Steele document pushing Associate Editor, David Ignatius, to this junior brainiac who thinks people hold a gender reveal party for a fetus. How motherly of her, or fatherly of him. (I don't have the subscription to note who wrote it, though I strongly suspect it's a young woman.)

This is not only morally repugnant, it's intellectually bankrupt. You'd think people who were 'all about science' would still understand that a baby is in there. In fact, that is why the proud parents are hosting this gender reveal event. It's so that everyone close to them (as well as themselves) know the gender of their BABY. It's as if this 'Journalist!' believes that this thing inside of the mother is the property of Planned Parenthood right up to the moment the doctor allows it to be birthed. In the WaPo's view: I guess there's always hope that the parents will change their minds.

Our Journalistic class is lower than whale shit and dumber than a room full of CardB's.; 9/10/20, 12:31 PM
libertariansafetyguy said...: It’s a baby unless the women intends to kill it. Then it’s a fetus or, if she’s offended by fetus, tissue. Reproductive rights means never having an objective truth.; 9/10/20, 12:33 PM
David-2 said...: More death and destruction associated with a "gender reveal" party. Just when will our feckless government officials act and ban these dangerous activities? Govs. Cuomo, Newsom, Walz: Step up and act! Why won't you protect us before Trump kills us all?; 9/10/20, 12:36 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: FYI - Glacier View Ranch is by Ward, just East of the Peak to Peak highway that ultimately ends up in Estes Park. We all went to camp by Estes Park, as did my kid, and would very often take that route up or back (from/to Golden). I have always loved the dark brown/rock look that they have. We had it at my grandparents’ girls camp SE of Denver, as did the camp by Estes that we all attended. Likely the same conifers that we had at those camps, as well as when we iced W of Denver in the foothills, but they look like they have more Aspen than those other Front Range locations have.

Unfortunately, they need to find the bear that chomped down here, because the rule is that bears that have come in that close to humans are dangerous, and those who have tasted human flesh are shoot on sight. I expect that when the dust settles, we will find that the recipient of the chomping was violating the basic rules of living in bear country - such as not leaving food within reach of bears.; 9/10/20, 12:37 PM
Joe Smith said...: "Wearing a tutu? Playing with electric trains?"

Very cis-normative and hurtful assumptions AA.

: )

Btw, these are stories from 2017...; 9/10/20, 12:43 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/10/20, 12:48 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: oops
Bear.

lol... nte; 9/10/20, 12:49 PM
Paul Zrimsek said...: I fully expect to read, one of these days, about six million Jews being gassed at a gender reveal party.; 9/10/20, 12:51 PM
RobinGoodfellow said...: “ Blogger TomHynes said...
Nobody wants to go to a sex reveal party.”

Speak for yourself, fella!; 9/10/20, 12:55 PM
n.n said...: Fetal-American. Also, sex, yes, and gender: mental and physical sex-correlated attributes. The sexual orientation may change with environment, perhaps indoctrination, but that is unlikely to happen during a normal evolutionary process and social state in a stable society.; 9/10/20, 12:57 PM
rhhardin said...: If the parents are talking gender, it's a baby, not a fetus. The designation differs as to having social relations to others. A baby has them. Look at the parents, not the baby. Wapo would want to avoid using baby for dogmatic reasons, just as anti-choice people want to avoid fetus so as to stress social relations at any number of cells, even just one. Both sides use the distinction but neither wants to compromise on a natural place mid-pregnancy.

Gender is used to avoid alternate meanings of sex that would otherwise lurk in play and need to be suppressed with careful context.; 9/10/20, 12:58 PM
traditionalguy said...: Thats an easy question. The fetus was making a gun pointing hand gesture. He was all male and wanted to defend his mother. See, Charles Bronson flics.; 9/10/20, 12:58 PM
n.n said...: It’s a baby unless the women intends to kill it.

Exactly, it's to socially distance the mother, and particularly, peculiarly abortionists ("Planners"), scientists (e.g. vaccine makers), doctors, judges, advocates, and activists from the consequences of reproductive rites.; 9/10/20, 1:02 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: It's bear season. They trickle down to the front range to eat prior to their big winter nap.

Very rare will a bear eat your head. They prefer berries.; 9/10/20, 1:05 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: “ I expect that when the dust settles, we will find that the recipient of the chomping was violating the basic rules of living in bear country - such as not leaving food within reach of bears.”

Noticed that the Vic was a 19 year old female. Another rule for living with bears, beyond not having food in your tent, is for women not to camp out in bear country while they are on their periods.; 9/10/20, 1:11 PM
Original Mike said...: Not a bear, but I woke up one night in my tent (door was open) in Yoho National Park when something (a mouse?) bit my thumb. WTF? What did I do to deserve that?

Possible, I suppose, we set up on its nest. That's what we guessed happened winter camping in northern Wisconsin. We ended up with an aggressive mouse in the tent. Bit my companion twice, I chased him outside, where he charged me! I'm standing up and this mouse charged me. We spent the night sleeping in the car.; 9/10/20, 1:36 PM
Paul Zrimsek said...: Last week I went to a riot and a gender reveal party broke out.; 9/10/20, 1:38 PM
Tom T. said...: I saw something on Twitter recently where a guy mentioned that his elderly mother told him that she'd been invited to a sex party for the first time, and she wanted to know if she should bring a gift. Some questioning revealed that she had in fact been invited to a gender-reveal party.; 9/10/20, 1:45 PM
mikee said...: Words mean things. Changing what those things are is considered by some to be okie dokie.
These people should be hit with large salmon, and by large salmon I mean more than 20 pounds.; 9/10/20, 1:49 PM
Birkel said...: It is a baby.
And unless and until Leftists twist the baby's mind around backward, sex and gender are the same thing.

Correcting one thing while making a similar error on another.
Being a Leftist is hard wit so many rules.; 9/10/20, 1:56 PM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: selfanalyst said...

That link to the Cincinnati shooting is old, happened in July of 2017.

No dates anywhere on that page. Interesting post. One wonders if Althouse and Meade had just finished sharing 'a big fat Austin torpedo' before posting it!; 9/10/20, 2:02 PM
Charlotte Allen said...: I think people say "gender reveal" instead of "sex reveal" because "sex" sounds too much like...sex, and they don't want to sexualize a baby. Most people nowadays think the word "gender" is a more refined way of referring to one's sex, just as in Victorian days people said "limbs" instead of "legs."

As for "fetus," no one says "fetus" instead of "baby" except for: 1) the abortion industry; 2) medical professionals in technical contexts; and 3) the woke and the wannabe woke. The Washington Post falls into the last category.; 9/10/20, 2:03 PM
bagoh20 said...: It used to be that you celebrated the sex of your new baby with cheap cigars. Now you get a free bullet. Come back next time, y'all.; 9/10/20, 2:06 PM
Rory said...: "Very rare will a bear eat your head. They prefer berries."

Could have been a strawberry shampoo.; 9/10/20, 2:30 PM
Owen said...: Bruce Hayden @ 12:37: I know that stretch of road and the terrain (I once biked from the valley up to Ward: whew). It is sobering to think of it with bears roaming around. There is plenty of human settlement within range; and, yes, once a bear has discovered how tasty we are, you aren't safe until the matter has been definitively resolved.

Remind me to tell you someday about being chased by a grizzly...; 9/10/20, 2:47 PM
Richard said...: I bet that gal's hair smelled like honey. Mmmmm.; 9/10/20, 2:50 PM
chuck said...: A fellow around here who was attacked by a bear also spoke of the "crunching" sound when it bit his skull. But he didn't wake up with his head in the bear's mouth. OTOH, there was an abalone fisherman in California who told me of finding his head in the mouth of a great white. He beat on it's snout and it backed off. Maybe I should have asked for more details :); 9/10/20, 3:03 PM
YoungHegelian said...: She said the teenager punched and hit it and other staffers at Glacier View Ranch 48 miles northwest of Denver yelled and swatted at the bear, which ran away.

Wazzit just me or did it take a re-read to understand that the teenager didn't hit the bear AND the other staffers, but only the bear, while immediately subsequent to the head-munching incident the other staffers at the Ranch then proceeded to harass the bear?

Not a clearly composed sentence, by any standards.; 9/10/20, 3:40 PM
pdug said...: Because a "Sex Reveal Party" sounds dirty

Ginsburg says she only started writing "gender" in legal docs because she thought talking about sex all the time was sounding weird.; 9/10/20, 3:53 PM
john burger said...: Re: The Gender Reveal Melee:

Apparently, the "gender reveal" wasn't really a thing. The supposedly blushing mom-to-be wasn't really a mom-to-be. She wasn't in a family way at all, meaning she had no fetus whose gender she wished to reveal. Oh, and apparently, the party poopers have been arrested:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6530653/3-men-arrested-2017-mass-shooting-gender-reveal-party.html

jvb; 9/10/20, 3:56 PM
Original Mike said...: This was helpful. I've never taken the time, until today, to figure this out.

Sex is the real thing, gender is the made up thing.

Got it.; 9/10/20, 4:34 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: ""[T]he 19-year-old woke up about 4 a.m. Sunday to a 'crunching sound' with his head inside the bear’s mouth.""

If you think that's bad imagine the horror of wokeing up to systemic racism and white supremacy.; 9/10/20, 4:39 PM
Iman said...: When I was crowned a mummy's boy by friends I didn't like
I made a meal of trips to school upon my father's bike
I used to sit between his legs, perched on a piece of wood
If it ever rained on us, I'd slip beneath his hood
And at home the radio was on
From Julie Andrews to Jerry Garcia
Life was all fun and games
I was out of my head and underneath my bed
Playing with electric trains
At home the stereo was on
My head was filled with rock
I played a willow cricket bat guitar
And soloed round the clock
My records stacked up in a pile
Collected from the charts
And Top of the Pops
Kneeling with torchlight shining
Before me in my bed
My eyeballs stuck in readers wives
Pubic hairs proudly counted everyday
Manhood took me slowly
Out into the milky way
I chased the girls and made them cry
My hair grew down my back
The passing of my teenage years
Were spent down in the sack
I played guitar and formed a band
I puked up all night long
As people came to sit and stare
While I raced through my songs
The sound of music passed by me
Just like the Grateful Dead

https://youtu.be/QfujmqNIEaQ; 9/10/20, 4:47 PM
Jamie said...: Nobody wants to go to a sex reveal party.

Does anyone want to go to a gender reveal party?; 9/10/20, 5:00 PM
Fernandinande said...: The 22-year-old has been identified as Autum Garrett, of Huntington, Ind.

She white.

"More than a year after a mass shooting in Colerain Township, police announced the arrests of three men who have been charged in the July 2017 killing of Autum Garrett and the shooting of eight others, including three children."

They BLACK.; 9/10/20, 5:27 PM
Fernandinande said...: How could anyone figure out the gender of a fetus?!

They didn't. It was fake and she wasn't pregnant.; 9/10/20, 5:31 PM
Iman said...: Cranium Crunchies®

They’re beartastic!!!; 9/10/20, 5:37 PM
The Godfather said...: It wasn’t very long ago that “gender” and “sex” meant the same thing— and both were immutable. It was a bit longer ago that “fetus” and “unborn child” meant the same thing, and there was no open season on either.; 9/10/20, 5:43 PM
wildswan said...: "How could anyone figure out the gender of a fetus?! What's the fetus doing in there that the sonogram is picking up? Wearing a tutu? Playing with electric trains?"

Good point. Can a fetus have a gender? Not unless it can choose. Parents can't choose gender for their children - why can they choose death?; 9/10/20, 5:47 PM
rcocean said...: Ever eat a human? many parts are edible.; 9/10/20, 6:34 PM
Big Mike said...: What's the fetus doing in there that the sonogram is picking up? Wearing a tutu? Playing with electric trains?

There's nothing wrong with girls playing with electric trains. My wife, who is all woman had a better Lionel train set when she was young that I had at the same age.; 9/10/20, 6:38 PM
elkh1 said...: The fetus self-identifies as gender X to the person in whose womb the fetus temporarily resides.; 9/10/20, 7:08 PM
Hey Skipper said...: A couple years ago, some friends of ours suffered a miscarriage.

Sheesh, for all their grief, you’d have thought it was a baby.; 9/10/20, 8:10 PM
tommyesq said...: More death and destruction associated with a "gender reveal" party. Just when will our feckless government officials act and ban these dangerous activities? Govs. Cuomo, Newsom, Walz: Step up and act! Why won't you protect us before Trump kills us all?

"How many more must die, Mr. Speaker? How many more?"; 9/10/20, 8:45 PM
The Godfather said...: I've said it before: The terminology is the problem. When we say "transgender man" we are referring to a woman, and when we say "transgender woman" we are referring to a man. But suppose we reverse that, and say that a woman who identifies as a man is a "transgender woman", that is, she's a woman but thinks of herself as the other gender; and a man who identifies as a woman is a "transgender man", that is, he's a man who thinks of himself as the other gender. That way, men who identify as women would be less likely to take college athletic scholorships away from my granddaughters.; 9/10/20, 9:44 PM
MarKT said...: I hate it when that happens.; 9/10/20, 10:01 PM
Crypto said...: My advice to anyone in that situation: grin and bear it.

Except if it happens at a sex reveal party. In that case, grin and bare it.; 9/10/20, 10:45 PM
Rusty said...: First off it's a baby.
" What's the fetus doing in there that the sonogram is picking up? Wearing a tutu? Playing with electric trains?"
That would be AWSOME!
" Here hon. I got an 'N' scale train set and an engineers hat for the baby. See if that will fit up there."; 9/11/20, 5:42 AM
Anonymous said...: Right-wing = Baby

Journalistically neutral = Fetus

Left-wing = ????; 9/11/20, 10:13 AM
Anonymous said...: Althouse,

You may or may not know this, but the NYT has an editorial policy to never use the word "baby" in any article that references an unborn child. The rule is always to use the word "fetus." And you especially do this in any article about abortion. (That's why the NYT came up with the rule). It is of course very awkward in non-abortion articles. But the NYT doesn't care about this. They just want to make sure the word "baby" is kept out of the public mind.

It's not a neutral choice. Medical doctors (and lawyers) often use Latin. Why do doctors and lawyers use Latin, when English works just as well? Mainly, to impress people with your knowledge and authority ("I know Latin!"). And, in the case of doctors, to create emotional distance. Doctors often use the word "gravida" to describe a pregnant woman. So it's a gravida and her fetus, if you're trying to talk like a doctor. And a pregnant woman and her unborn child, if you're using English.

It would be quite absurd for the NYT to say, "And a gravida was killed today." Would it not? There's nothing neutral about that choice of language. Always saying "fetus" is a propaganda-move, common on the left, to intentionally use words and rhetoric to shift thinking.

The NYT also has a rule that the words "pro-life" and "right-to-life" are never to be used. This rule only applies to the pro-life movement. Even National Socialists get to call themselves National Socialists. The Ku Klux Klan gets to name itself. Would it not be absurd for the NYT to rename these political movements on their news pages? Would it not be ridiculous for the NYT to say, consistently, over and over, "National Not-Socialists" or the "Coo Cluck Clan"?

It's a propaganda move to rename pro-lifers "anti-abortionists" and to never use the words "pro-life." It's bad journalism. It's dishonest. So quit trying to save the NYT's reputation by pretending this language choice is "neutral." It's cruel, yes, you got that part right. But there's nothing neutral about it.; 9/12/20, 5:39 AM