Fuming

There are many things to get angry about in this article in the New York Times about Obama's upcoming health care speech. John Boehner, of course, is always worth a face-reddening rage. Olympia Snowe, as usual, remaining unique among Republicans in being open to discussion? Another signal to get mad as hell. Death panels, ditto. So, yes, I expected this article to make me angry

But here's the thing that got me mad in a totally un-expected way. I was sideswiped by

White House officials said Congress could also drop proposals requiring the government to create school-based health clinics and collect nationwide data on health and health care by race, sex, sexual orientation and “gender identity.”

Supporters of the House bill said such data would help reduce “health disparities,” but critics said they feared the government could assemble a database that posed a threat to personal privacy.

After my recent post on scare quotes, this ground my gears. "Gender identity" and "health disparities"!? Health disparities is at least in a grammatical position that might allow for it being an actual quote, but gender identity is not. It's just Sheryl Gay Stolberg (no pun intended) and Carl Hulse--or their editor--diminishing the lived experience of trans people in an all-too-common way. People of differing races, sexes, and even orientations are totally real, while trans people are something the Democrats must have just made up for this health care bill.

Let's not even address the actual issue being raised in that section of the article. I'm already angry enough.