By Jonathon Van Maren

One of the transgender movement’s most significant successes in impacting the public discourse surrounding gender identity issues is the fact that they have cowed the media into referring to transgender individuals by whatever gender they choose to identify as—regardless of how confusing this might be or how much it might cloud the truth of the situation. As I noted earlier this month, reading the news might give you the impression that there has been a sharp rise in females raping other females, when in reality these so-called “females” are actually biological males.

And then there is this story from yesterday, in which a young man named Andrew Balcer who savagely murdered his parents is obediently referred to by UK newspapers as “Andrea,” and referred to as “she” and “her” in the coverage of the trial. Even the headlines seem to be slightly sympathetic to “Andrea,” who used a hunting knife on his parents for claiming—falsely, according to his brother—that his parents would not have accepted him as a female: “Transgender teen to admit murdering parents who ‘refused to accept her transition.’” From the Metro:

A transgender teen will today admit killing her parents after claiming they refused to accept her decision to transition. Andrea Balcer, 19, is set to plead guilty to plunging a hunting knife into her mom Alice’s back on the morning of Halloween 2016 at a hearing Wednesday afternoon. She will also admit killing father Antonio after he woke up to the sound of his wife’s screams, as well as the family’s pet chihuahua at their home in Winthrop, Me.

A disturbing 911 call played during an earlier court hearing last year saw Balcer laugh as she told the call operator what she had done to her father, saying ‘I stabbed the f*** out of him.’ Balcer, who is being tried under her birth name Andrew, says she ‘snapped’ because of the lack of support shown to her by her parents since telling them she was trans at the age of three or four. Recalling that conversation, she told the Kennebec Journal: ‘I wanted to grow up and be a woman.

They kind of sat me down and told me and kind of physically forced into me that that was something that was not acceptable. Balcer added: ‘I spent however many years being raised as a boy, as a man. ‘It was drilled into me what men do, what they’re supposed to be.

‘I was never raised the way I wanted to be. ‘So I am conflicted between the person that I was raised to be and the person who I want to be.’ Despite being a month shy of her 18th birthday when the killings took place, Balcer is being tried as an adult. After her arrest, a State forensic psychologist testified that Balcer had gender identity issues and that the killer ‘did not believe (her) parents would be supportive.’

You’ll notice that the narrative here is that a trans teen—“she”—snapped and killed Mom and Dad because they would not recognize him for who he was—a woman. The media has accepted the premises of this killer’s claims, and there is an unspoken indictment of anyone who would not accept such claims inherent in such coverage. That said, a brief look at Andrew Balcer’s photo shows a glowering male murderer—someone who stabbed his parents to death because he claimed that they would not affirm his mental illness. Fortunately for his case, the media will.

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For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.