Guest post: Belief in word-magic
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Teaching about sexual and reproductive anatomy.
Belief in word-magic is certainly alive and well in the 21st century. In my militant atheist days I frequently ran into some version of the following “argument” (this is going to be pretty philosophically sophisticated, so you better be ready):
1. The word “God” refers to X (X = Life, the Universe and Everything etc.).
2. X exists.
3. Therefore the word “God” refers to something that exists.
Of course by the time we arrived at 3, Life, the Universe and Everything had invariably mutated into a supernatural, intelligent creator of the universe who, by the way, was the father of Jesus, had authored the Bible etc. After all, we had already established that something called “God” existed, and the biblical Yaweh was indeed something called “God”. Never mind that this rather obvious redefinition directly contradicted 1, thus invalidating the argument that got us to 3 in the first place.
But this idea that you can take whatever’s applicable to X and make it applicable to Y by renaming Y as X is so ubiquitous that it’s hard to imagine how modern ideological newspeak could possibly go on without it. We see the same thing with “free will” and pretty much anything to do with “gender”. As I have previously written it’s a bit like arguing that clubs for hitting baseballs (let’s call them “bats₁”) can fly because Chiroptera (let’s call them “bats₂”) can fly. After all Chiroptera prove that things called “bats” can fly, and clubs for hitting baseballs are indeed things called “bats”.
There is a major difference between talking about a specific (kind of) thing whatever you prefer to call it, and talking about whatever it is that people call “[insert name here]”. E.g. in the case of bats₂ we’re referring to a specific order of mammals that just happens (in this particular context and for this particular purpose) to be called “bats”. They share certain anatomical and genetic features as well as a common evolutionary ancestor that they don’t share with any non-bats₂ etc. The fact that people in the English speaking world happen to call them “bats” rests on an arbitrary cultural convention and doesn’t say anything about the actual animals themselves, therefore “Fledermaus”, “chauve-souris” etc. are neither more nor less “correct” ways of referring to them. If English speakers collectively decided to start calling them “abts” or “tabs”, they would still be talking about the same creatures. And, conversely, no amount of (re)labeling other things (clubs for hitting baseballs etc.) as “bats” can turn them into instances of the kind of thing we are talking about, or even make them relevant to our topic. If you change the definition of “bats”, then a statement like “bats can fly” no longer applies. If, on the other hand, we’re referring to whatever it is that someone happens to call “bats”, then all those bets are off, and it’s hard to see how any non-circular/non-trivial statement can be generally true, or even meaningful, on the subject.
Almost all of modern gender apologetics seems to boil down to statements of this latter kind. As far as I’m concerned, being “female₁” means something like having physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers within one’s particular species, a “woman₁” is a female₁ human being, the word “gender₁ itself refers to a difference in the way women₁ and men₁ (i.e. people with physical traits more representative of sperm-producers than egg-producers) are viewed/treated in a society, and “feminism₁” is a movement that seeks to end the discrimination of women₁ based on such gender₁ differences.
In the vocabulary of gender apologists, on the other hand, being “female₂” generally means something like thinking or feeling about oneself in ways X,Y,Z etc., a “woman₂” is any person who qualifies as a female₂ (i.e. who does indeed think/feel in ways X,Y,Z etc.), regardless of physical traits, the word “gender₂” refers to a perfectly real and vitally important difference in way people think/feel about themselves, and “feminism₂” is a movement that seeks to end discrimination against “women₂” by validating all genders₂.
However, since there are no clearly identifiable “ways X,Y,Z…” of thinking/feeling that are common to all who call themselves “women” while being distinct from the way those who call themselves “men” think/feel, they might as well say that the definition of “female₂”/”woman₂” is whatever it is that people call “female”/”woman”. As I have previously pointed out, gender apologists are also faced with the awkward fact that there is no way of specifying “ways X,Y,Z…” without – that’s right – excluding [insert scary music] anyone who fails to think or feel the required ways about themselves, thus depriving them of a much cherished stick for beating up “TERFs” and “SWERFs” (who are supposedly alone in the exclusion business).
As I have commented on elsewhere, the real problem arises when some people insist on acting as if we were still all talking about the same thing and demand to have it both ways. One example that strikes me as particularly revealing is the demand that women₂ be allowed to compete in sporting events that are reserved for women₁ specifically to make up for biological differences. Why women₂ would need separate sporting events from men₂ (i.e. people who think/feel about themselves in the unspecified ways P,Q,R… rather than the equally unspecified ways X,Y,Z…) is unclear to say the least. And even if one managed to come up with a reason, it would no longer be true that women₁ were automatically qualified to compete, and we would need some kind of screening process to make sure that only people who really did think/feel the required ways about themselves were allowed to participate.
Great guest post, Bjarte!
Thanks, Jennifer. I know I keep repeating myself in making distinctions like “women₁” vs. “women₂”, or substituting “women” for “people with innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers” etc., but I hope my reasons are clear enough.
First, I want to make it absolutely clear that when I’m talking about “women”, I’m thinking about a specific subset of people (those with innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers), and not just anyone who is referred to by that particular label. Even if the people I call “women” were called something else (“nowem”, “wemon” etc..), I would still be talking about the same people, and no matter how hard gender apologists try to co-opt the word “women” to refer something else (people who think or feel some unspecified way about themselves etc.), it doesn’t change what I am talking about. This doesn’t mean that women₂ are less important, or that the discrimination they do face is less of a problem, but it’s not the same problem, and I honestly don’t think anyone (including trans women) is served by acting as if it were. If gender apologists had their way, and woman₂ became the standard definition of “woman”, we would need to find a new and separate word for talking about women₁.
Second, if a word carries real content, it should be possible (albeit slightly cumbersome) to point directly to the content without using the word itself (i.e. without resorting to tautologies and circular logic). So, once again, my working definition of a “woman” is a “person with innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers”. I have yet to hear any gender apologist give a clear, non-circular answer to the following question:
“Exactly what are you saying about a person by calling her a woman?”
For every other comparable label (“black”, “white”, “rich”, “poor”, “young”, “old”, “gay”, “straight”, “disabled”, “able-bodied”…) it is pretty clear what is being said about a person by applying these labels to him/her. Only in the case of “man” and (especially) “woman” is it impossible (in Genderspeak) to point to any specific content. Apparently saying that having innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers makes you… a person with innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers (which, after all, is all it means to be a “woman₁”) is the worst kind of bigotry, while making unspecified claims about what’s going on inside other people’s heads (as you have to do to call them “women₂” – or “men₂” for that matter – in Genderspeak) is “progressive”. Go figure…
Bjarte #2,
Yes – and once that new and separate word had been in use for a while, the gender apologists would start appropriating that word too, so we’d have to find ANOTHER word, which again we would be prohibited from using, and on and on. Another reason this whole conversation is so ridiculous.
Cressida, it’s funny, isn’t it. These are the same people who keep telling us that the thing they claim to be has nothing to do with physical traits. If they really meant it, you wouldn’t think that being called by a different name than the people with innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers would be such a problem. But of course they don’t mean it. Being called the same as people with such physical traits matters to them precisely because they want everybody to accept that they are the same.
However, since they don’t in fact have innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, they have to argue that something else makes them the same as women₁, or – more precisely – that something else makes women₁ the same as them, hence the strong insistence on “male” and “female” ways of thinking/feeling (that women₁ supposedly share with them, thus making them the same kind of people). So when these people ask women₁ to accept their own account of who they are, they are actually asking them to accept their account of who women₁ are. These implicit claims about what’s going on inside other people’s heads is precisely the part that I have the greatest problem with.
This is the kind of thing that makes my head explode. I’m a genetic epidemiologist (amongst other things) and what I care about is the factors that make individuals in a population more or less likely to develop a disease. In that context, I couldn’t give a fig what you think you are and protestations that sex is less binary than is often made out to be is next to useless even if broadly true. We know that you have to have a prostate to get prostate cancer. You have to have ovaries to get ovarian cancer. So yes, sometimes I do have to reduce people down to their biology, because that tells me whether or not you’re at risk for a particular disease.
But it’s not just the obvious diseases, such as cancers of various reproductive organs. Women die because most of the research into cardiovascular disease has been done in men (and white men at that, but that’s a problem for another time). Women often present quite different symptoms clinically and because they’re not clutching their chest or complaining of a shooting pain down their left arm, doctors frequently miss the fact that they’re having a heart attack. And we all know that rapid diagnosis and treatment is essential to survival.
So to Bjarte’s point, I need to know whether you are a woman1 (sorry can’t figure out the subscript). I don’t care if you identify as woman2, and by all means use whichever restroom makes you comfortable etc. I care about people dying needlessly because they can’t get diagnosed and treated on time, no matter who they are or how they identify.