Guest post: When he’s talking about definitions, and when he’s talking about frames
Originally a comment by What a Maroon on What is wrong with this guy?
He needs to clarify when he’s talking about definitions, and when he’s talking about frames. For example, he claims that “your definition of what “big” means might not be the same as mine,” but I very much doubt that his definition of “big” matches my definition of, say, “green” or “lawn mower”. I suspect that we would all agree that “big” means something like “substantially larger than normal”. How we apply that definition, though, depends on the frame of reference: what’s big for a dog may be small for a horse. And when there’s a mismatch in our frames, we may disagree on whether an exemplar of a category is big or not (think of Europeans and Americans discussing cars).
You can say much the same about his other examples. Something that is wrong goes against the established norms of a frame (2+2=5 in arithmetic; eating pork among Orthodox Jews); we may have different frames, or disagree about the norms within the frame, but we generally understand what someone is trying to say when they say something is wrong.
But there’s really only one relevant frame for the word “woman”, and that’s the human species. Everyone agrees on that frame (how could it be otherwise?), so we are arguing about definitions. What we say a woman is (adult human female) is not what they say, but they haven’t come up with a coherent definition, and they tacitly acknowledge the need for a word or phrase that covers the same semantic ground when the say things like “people with uteruses”.
I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he’s trying to justify his stance and playing the “reasonable man” who knows nothing of the social implications, but thinks he has found a Third Way that has not occurred to anyone else.
He’s trying to win a popularity contest by expressing an unpopular opinion. It’s twitter stuff.
It’s the word games people always play in order to hide their lack of logic, evidence, and reason.
Just as asking for a definition of a god results in responses of increasing vagueness instead of clarity, asking for a definition of woman which includes men results in responses which make less and less sense, but we have to remember that it isn’t the questioner to whom they are directing their responses. They are hyper aware of the social consequences of giving an unapproved answer, and will say anything that will keep them out of the sights of the unhinged cult mob.