Project 2025 Believes in Three Genders

Two pronouns, three titles

Tucker Lieberman

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Project 2025 website screenshot. Policy Agenda. This book is an invitation for you the reader — Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith — to come to Washington or support those who can. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.
Project 2025, screenshot taken July 5, 2024

I’ve heard these three gendered titles before, of course, and I’ve seen Project 2025’s near-term agenda for the United States, but I didn’t make this connection until I read Philip Bump’s analysis published in the Washington Post a couple days ago.

What Project 2025 wants to actualize, Bump says, is

“for ‘you the reader — Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith — to come to Washington or support those who can.’

That archaic differentiation between married and other women is obviously intentional… It is a microcosm of what the effort intends: restructuring the country so that the right — meaning primarily straight White men, as was the case 100 years ago — can decide how power and status are allocated.”

Ah. Two tiers of womanhood. Any man might insist he’s a “Mr.,” but a woman is likely told she’s a “Mrs.” if the speaker believes her to be married and considers her marriage legitimate or proper. The speaker will likely be swifter to recognize and honor her marital status if she’s married to a man and not a woman; was wed in a church; is partnered with someone of the same race; lives with him and raises children in some way that’s considered conventional; and so forth.

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