Once again, journalists subvert the testimony of female victims using “wrong” pronouns in order to coddle their attacker.

For a long time now, Warner Brothers has been wrestling with what is to be done regarding performer Ezra Miller. Cast in the role of “The Flash,” Miller has been at the center of a number of anti-social episodes across the globe over the past couple of years, involving confrontations in Germany, Iceland, and Hawaii, as well as two other cases of possibly grooming younger kids in South Dakota and Massachusetts. 

Variety, in performing a lengthy investigation into some of these legal scrapes, has located a few of Miller’s alleged victims. The problem rests when the outlet takes a decidedly disturbing approach to detailing the episodes. Miller has declared being non-binary and as a result, in recounting their experiences, Variety takes pains to be sure not to misgender Miller, going so far as to alter the quoted testimony of the women when they deem it necessary. The outlet appears to be deeply worried it might offend a violent abuser.

The ridiculousness begins early, as Variety works hard to address Miller in the proper fashion, and the fractured language that follows delivers this ridiculous diction.

Miller…became a regular at bars in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, where locals came to know and even befriend them. Many recognized Miller from their earliest breakout movies, 2012’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” where they played a troubled teen.

Resorting to the they/them pronoun while describing encounters with a crowd of people leads to obtuse reporting. When it becomes unclear if you are describing the group or the preferred pronoun reference you have veered from your charged duty of providing clear reporting on a matter. It would be more concise to simply use ‘’Miller’’ to designate the actor. But then, there is a possible conflict in using the gendered term actor, so Variety has painted itself into a rainbow corner.

From here, Variety takes the position that this correct pronoun usage is the important way to cover this story. When it comes to interviewing one of the women from Iceland, who had violent encounters with Miller, the corrections to her testimony are glaring and rather offensive. Even as the entertainment outlet affirms the likelihood the woman had no idea about Miller’s pronoun preference, Variety changes her quotes to avoid offending Miller and any potential activist positioning.

“I think it’s just fun and games — but then it wasn’t,” she said. “All of a sudden, [they’re] on top of me, choking me, still screaming in my face if I want to fight. My friend who’s filming sees [they’re] obviously not joking and it’s actually serious, so he stops filming, and pushes [them] off me as [they’re] still trying to fight me. Two guy friends of mine are actually holding [Miller] back as [they’re] screaming, ‘This is what you wanted! This is what you wanted!’” (At the time of the interview, it was unclear whether the woman was aware Miller uses they/them pronouns.)

This decision by Variety echoes a recent piece I covered concerning the BBC and a report that the British outlet delivered about a sexual assault. When a lesbian woman detailed an encounter with a trans woman who was still physically male and ultimately raped her, the BBC took the steps to correct her quotes where she referred to her attacker as him, and “improperly” used the term “his penis.”

These are the inane levels the media is sinking towards where they are fearful of angering a group if they manage to use the wrong pronouns of a violent individual. The willingness to alter the quoted testimony of a victim is journalistically inept, to say nothing of violating the recent narratives we have been spoonfed from this very same journalism complex. Believe all women has now given way to Correct any women who misgender their attacker.

Our media industry has managed over these recent years to now corrupt itself further. Journalists are wandering into a realm where they now have to adhere to the rules they try forcing on society, and in the course of doing so, are forced to violate their own prior rules. 

Now, women claiming to have been assaulted are no longer blindly believed, and their words are no longer taken as unimpeachable gospel if they use incorrect labels on their attacker. Even if that attacker is shown to be a toxic transitioning biological male. We begin to wonder if this rabbit hole has a bottom.