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Writer's pictureTony Herbert

Words turned upside down


 

 

We seem to be being manipulated by words that are being turned upside down.

 

Gender-critical

 

Are you “gender-critical”? Come to that, am I “gender-critical? I had no idea when I first heard the phrase. I’m certainly not critical of gender. How could I be? The phrase is meaningless.

 

However, we are now getting used to these terms. We now know, if we follow these things, that “gender-critical” doesn’t mean being critical of gender - rather obviously. It means being critical of people who say that there are lots of genders, that people can choose their gender, and even change it. And if we are “gender-critical” in this new sense, we need to be very careful not to be “trans-phobic”, that is to say, hostile to those who have changed their gender, not that I have ever come across anyone who is hostile to someone simply because they’ve changed their gender.

 

But who came up with the new language? Who said that criticising or even being sceptical about these ideas is being “gender-critical”? When the words, if they mean anything, mean the opposite.

 

Gender and Sex

 

Of course, the word “gender” has had a face lift in recent years. In my younger days, words had genders, not people. We learnt that the French thought a table was feminine and that the Germans thought it was masculine. Similarly, or rather dis-similarly, the French talk about the sun as masculine and the moon feminine, whereas the Germans have it the other way round. It’s all about words, not really about sex. After all, the German word for a young girl is neuter.

 

But now “gender” has become the polite way of referring to someone’s “sex”, the latter word being reserved for what Philip Larkin jokingly complained had only been invented in 1963 - which he said was too late for him. But we can also talk about “biological sex” so as to distinguish it from the “gender” that people can choose and even change.

 

Binary and Non-binary

 

This is another thing, still on the subject of sex and gender. Am I “binary” or “non-binary”? I have been confused. I know I’m not “bisexual” but I now know that I am “binary”. It means that I think that there are two sexes and only two sexes. If you think that’s a bit simplistic and regard sex as fluid, my understanding is that you are “non-binary”.

 

This is certainly not an example of words being turned upside down. It’s just an example of words getting a new meaning. “Binary” has, for a long time, been doing a good job in astronomy describing stars that orbit around each other; and more recently describing the computer codes that just use 1 and 0. My Oxford Dictionary of English revised only 20 years ago has no indication that the word was getting into the murky world of sexuality.

 

 

Progressive

 

But let’s get back to manipulation. An example of words being used to indoctrinate us is the word “progressive”. If you are “progressive”, you can be assumed to go along with some or all of the proposals to support trans-gender people, even those that most people, particularly women, disagree with - such as making all public lavatories unisex. Who said that these proposals are “progressive”?

 

I assume that people wanting to cancel J K Rowling think of themselves as “progressive”? How come? It implies that they are marching forward towards the promised land, firmly on the side of the angels. Who said so? Certainly not J K Rowling. And certainly not Kathleen Stock, the ex-professor of philosophy who got kicked out of her job at the University of Sussex for insisting that there are only two biological sexes.

 

These situations are examples of the way in which those on the Left successfully manage to adopt nice, attractive, virtuous-sounding words to describe what they believe in, leaving the rest of us stuttering on the sidelines.

 

Sir Roger Scruton noted the problem:

 

The Left is very good at slogans: “March!” “Forward!” “Into the future!”.

If you think what a slogan would be on the conservative side, it would be something like: “Hesitate” - it doesn’t work.

 

So, we have to put up with people styling themselves as “progressive” when no one knows what they are progressing to. Or if they do know, they may well not want to go there.

 

Woke

 

Now for some good news! Where are we on “woke”?

 

This has to be the best example of a word being used, even invented, to manipulate us. According to the Progressives (ugh!), you are “woke” if you are “awake” to the evils of the world.

 

As with most things, it came originally from the US, used by black Americans fighting for their rights. But recently, of course, it’s crossed the pond and come to cover all sorts of political creeds, including what people refer to as “identity politics”.

 

The good news is that over here, in the last few years, the word has become largely a joke. In Britain apparently 73% of us use it pejoratively and only 11% with approval. And we hear people say: “Get woke, go broke!”

 

It’s probably only by laughter that we’ll emerge from some of the nonsense. And laughter is something that we Brits are good at.

 

 

Tony Herbert

All Saints’ Day

1 November 2024

 

 

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