The Language Wars
One of the most provocative manifestations of the culture wars around sex and gender is the battle over the operative words—what they are, what they mean, how they can and can’t be used, and whether they can be said at all. I introduce this topic in the beginning of On Sex and Gender:
[i]f you’re reading this book, you already know that the words we use to talk about sex and gender are contested, starting with sex and gender themselves—but also woman and female, man and male, transgender, and so on. Because language—the words we have and how we define them—affects what we can communicate and ultimately what we understand, the people who run movements understandably want to control it. The left is much more aggressive and organized about this, but the effort is made on both sides.
In this book, I try to define the words as I go and explain how I’m using them, but in general, my goal is neither to be disrespectful of nor to pander to one side or the other. Rather, it’s to speak freely and honestly; to communicate not to obfuscate; and to reach people who want to learn and to engage.
The battle over the words runs throughout the book but the focused discussion is in Chapters Three and Eight.
Chapter Three is on the answer to the question “What is sex?” from progressive advocacy. It features the story around Senator Marsha Blackburn’s now infamous question to then Judge Ketani Brown Jackson, “Can you please provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” In that context, I summarize the trans movement’s goals and discuss its strategies, which include changing the definition of sex. I explain that,
[h]owever they’re ultimately motivated, to take down the traditional biological definition of the word sex, progressive advocates working in this space have focused on two related efforts. The first is exporting the idea from academia that sex as we know it—as a complete body designed toward reproductive ends—isn’t real but rather socially constructed in service of the patriarchy. The second is changing the common usage and legal definitions of the words male (and man and boy) and female (and woman and girl) so that they’re consistent with this deconstruction.
I go on to detail the steps involved in these two efforts and the extraordinary success the movement has had getting major American and British institutions, including dictionaries, to adopt their project.
In Chapter Eight—on The Politics of Sex and Gender—I describe the advocacy groups’ style
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