Why is the United Nations pushing woke speech policing?

Surely, this proud internationalist body, formed in the ashes of World War II for the sole purpose of averting further global barbarism, has more pressing matters to attend to. After all, we are dealing with a pandemic and rising tensions between the global community and that pandemic’s source: China. It leaves one wishing that in 2020, there existed such an international forum in which matters such as war and peace, plague, and public health, could be discussed between nations. Sadly, what we have is just the U.N.

“What you say matters” reads a tweet from the U.N.’s Twitter account. “Help create a more equal world by using gender-neutral language if you’re unsure about someone’s gender or are referring to a group.” It goes on to share the following:

It’s a puzzling proclamation. Is the official position of the U.N. that its “global citizens” no longer use gendered language in polite company? Is the U.N. Women initiative suggesting that the world will truly be made more equal if we all speak in some kind of disjointed, literalist, and aloof dialect like that of Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek?

On Twitter, there are about 350,000 thoughts jettisoned into existence every minute, and there is some merit in not getting all worked up about one random tweet from the U.N. On the other hand, the U.N. is an organization with a founding idea that seems worthy of defending. After two world wars, it makes intuitive sense you would have an international body dedicated to maintaining worldwide peace and security, developing relations among nations, fostering cooperation between nations in order to solve economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian international problems, and providing a forum for bringing countries together to meet the U.N.’s purposes and goals.

Of these, the entire agenda of the U.N. hinges on the third item, solving economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian international problems. Who determines social and cultural problems? The push toward gender-neutral language is obviously a political fault line, and it’s not exactly a veiled effort to push the world’s many cultures toward a certain uniformity.

While the U.N. wrings its hands over the rhetorical deployment of “fireman,” its own World Health Organization is being run into the ground by corruption and mismanagement that threatens global stability and peace. And for what?

A little more than half of the people in the United States are comfortable using gender-neutral language when asked by their fellow citizens to do so. The Pew Research Center tracked this back in 2019, and if you’re someone who is passionate about seeing the end of “boyfriend/girlfriend” used as the default to describe significant others, it turns out most individuals are happy to adjust accordingly. This goes straight to heart of the matter. When a broadly unpopular and politicized entity such as the U.N. tweets unto the universe its recommendation for genderless “newspeak,” it’s actually a set back for that cause.

One can put aside the radical foundations of the U.N.’s language guide and simply acknowledge that most people want to act in good faith and respect their neighbor’s preferences when it comes to titles. But if you have to wonder if the U.N. even considers or covets its own potential to add value to international affairs in the 21st century. The post-World War II order is coming apart more with each passing day, and like its predecessor in the League of Nations, the U.N. is squandering its opportunity to foster real global cooperation. Instead, it is prioritizing divisive positioning on the culture war.

The U.N. itself puts it nicely: “What you say matters.” And at this rate, the more the U.N. says, the less it matters.

Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is a contributor for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.