Military Rape Crisis Center

The Trump administration issued a list of words federal agencies were discouraged from using—words like “victim,” “diversity,” “advocates,” “racism,” and “women.” Officials claimed this was about messaging, about neutrality. In reality, it was about control. When words disappear, so does accountability.

It starts small.

A directive. A memo. A quiet shift in language.

Words like “victim” and “gender” disappear from official reports. “Racism” is no longer an approved term. “Diversity” is edged out. The explanation is bureaucratic—just a refinement of language, they say. Just a way to make things clearer, more neutral.

But clarity is the first casualty.

A sailor raped by a shipmate finds her case stalled. The report must be rewritten. “Victim” is not allowed. “Gender-based violence” must be reworded. The language bends, contorts—until it means nothing at all.

A DoD study on racial disparities in the Army grinds to a halt. “Racism” is no longer an acceptable explanation. The researchers rewrite, dilute, avoid. The truth becomes harder to find beneath the layers of euphemism.

Investigations slow. Cases go cold.

If we cannot name the problem, how do we fight it? If we cannot say “discrimination,” how do we prove it exists? If “gender identity” is erased, how do we defend the rights of those who are targeted because of it?

Funding dries up next.

Without the right words, grants cannot be written. Proposals are rejected. Programs that once served survivors, marginalized communities, and service-wide initiatives find themselves defunded, not because the need is gone—but because the words to describe that need have vanished.

Reports are scrubbed. Training materials are revised. A slow, systematic erasure of the language that names injustice, that acknowledges harm, that validates lived experiences.

And when the words are gone, the problems remain—unspoken, unaddressed, unseen.

It starts small.

And then, one day, the silence is complete.