It was early summer; the cold war had just ended, and the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was docked at Greenwich.
Sailors had been granted shore leave. Unsurprisingly, they had hit the bars and were boisterously 'being American’ much to our chagrin. At least until she hit him…
She hit him very hard indeed and we were impressed. A local South London girl full on punched this young American sailor.
For a split second, there was silence and then it was pandemonium. His crime? He had walked up to her - she was leaning against the bar, talking to a friend - and he had - in his eyes - paid her a compliment.
There should be a rule - taught to young people who travel abroad. The first rule should be; language does matter.
As George Bernard Shaw said: "England and America are two countries separated by a common language”
In this instance, Shaw would have felt vindicated. The young man had sidled - that is what bold young American sailors appear to do - up to her and announced, “Excuse me, ma'am, can I buy you a drink?” He seemed to be off to a good start until he added, “I’ve been sitting over there looking at you, and without doubt, you have the best fanny in the joint!” At which point he got the aforementioned punch to his face.
At this point American readers will probably be thinking something like, that was pretty lame, but not a punching offence, certainly not back in 1992.
Whereas British readers will be thinking something like, that was a disgusting sexual slur and he deserved locking up and being put on a sex offenders register.
The smart literary types will be smugly waffling on about Shaw and his truisms while acting in a very conceited and all-knowing manner.
Meaning is everything. The word “fanny” is a very good example of the linguistic chasm that exists somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic. To the West it means buttocks, however to the East in Britain it is a euphemism for the female genitals.
Obviously language matters. It forms a negotiation over meaning. Therefore it is usually held that to communicate effectively speakers must strive to either adapt word choice - something we all do subconsciously - according to context, or use an alternative common vocabulary.
This is why a large percentage of us have never told grannie to eff off, but frequently did tell both mum and dad to do so as rebellious “unique”, edgy teenagers that we once were.
Countless examples of common words exist in science, commerce, trade, government, academic research & study and other key areas. These words exist with very clear, widely acknowledged and commonly understood meanings due to the very precise and explicit nature of the language.
Imagine using the word “default” as a negative word. Before the late 1980s that was precisely the widely understood meaning. As in, “Colin defaulted on his mortgage.” Now “default” has come to mean a good state - you reset your computer to default settings if it goes wrong - as technologists have been quietly colonising and repurposing much of our language.
Recently Queer Theory evangelists have been quietly devouring, twisting and subverting important meanings for questionable reasons. Since the late 14th-century “gender” has been understood - throughout the English speaking world - as another word for sex. While this meaning remains, Queer Theory advocates have tried to appropriate the word, hide and change it before removing its clear and explicit meaning.
If we accept the new meaning that the LGBQTI+ try to apply to “gender”, it now becomes a rather vague, meaningless sortie into the murky, confused and confusing world of postmodernist ontological metaphysics.
A jumbled up word salad mixture of guilt and self-loathing, liberally laced with an almost pathological level of spiteful and vindictive misogyny and homophobia.
Many of the people who seem to insist - like some kind of thought-fascists - that we all be compelled to use words and phrases that are not only alien and obscure in meaning, but worst still they create a confused, dystopian world full of inherent contradiction, logical fallacies and rigid, suffocating conformity that would have given George Orwell nightmares and the Taliban “wet dreams” - or whatever the religious zealots' version of a “wet dream” is.
Currently, this clever misappropriation and subverting of language has gone largely unnoticed. Changes have been, slow, subtle and slight. But nothing lasts forever, as this “postmodernist hell” has started to be challenged by women, gay men, lesbians, radical feminists and academic free thinkers the pace of colonisation would appear to be accelerating.
Few politicians or public figures dare to publicly state simple biological facts anymore - saying that a woman is an adult human female is the heresy that got women like J.K.Rowling, Joanna Cherry, Katherine Deves and many others cancelled. It should be noted that, alarmingly, they all appear to have received credible rape and death threats from Queer Theory adherents.
Now the word female itself is being quietly stolen and its meaning is subtly changed. A recent Canadian report into male transvestites participating in women's sports contained a phrase which appears to be describing the male transvestites as “female trans women”. This is deeply troubling on many levels.
One hopes that by now the educated reader will be asking how has all this happened. Sadly the answer is both simple and so twisted that it shakes one’s faith in human decency. The language creep has been slow, very calculated and inherently it exploits our humanity.
By attaching themselves to the hugely successful and widely admired LGB movement; the QTI and that ominous - we’re pretty sure it's the paedophiles - plus sign have inveigled their way into public sympathy. Nothing is said about constant attacks - by the QTI and the P for paedophiles and pluses - on women and lesbians. It is now an onslaught.
Many of the veterans of the LGB struggle have been driven out and hounded to the edges of health and sanity by these modern-day ideological Stakhanovites.
Obviously the ideologues have portrayed this as a generational “changing of the guard”, but it is more like a mixture of the MacCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s in the US and Stalin's show trials of the late 1930s except - thankfully - without the gulags and firing squads. The fear is genuine and very real to those who have been threatened, intimidated, doxxed, attacked and cancelled.
What is incredibly clever is how this has gone unnoticed. At first, it was only the odd “angry old woman who couldn't handle change” or a “homophobic old man who hates gay and trans people.” And, there in the previous sentence you have the sneaky, calculating and duplicitous lie - “gay and trans together”.
Gay men and lesbians are same-sex attracted. We all know this, however, for some fairly self-evident reasons, this uncomfortable truth is completely at odds with the “gender identity theory” narrative because, according to this belief system, sex is not real and is “assigned” implying that like a seat on a train it can be changed if “assigned” incorrectly.
Sex cannot be changed, nor can the commonly understood meaning of gender be either. So that has had to be changed, it's not your gender - because we know that's binary - no it's now “gender identity” which they demand that you believe is a feeling, or the more you fight this, the more complex, triggering and nuanced those feelings will be for the “brave, yet vulnerable trans people”.
They generally succeed in wearing down any opposition primarily through guilt shaming people- if you're not a homophobe you don't want to be called one publicly. If guilt shaming doesn't work, then creating overly complex revisionist histories of the gay, lesbian - and now “trans” - struggle and finally invoke mysterious, near-magical, pseudo-scientific papers and mad dangerous hypotheses - often “authored,” or “researched” by half-baked student cult adherents masquerading as genuine academics.
This usually succeeds and leaves the poor unsuspecting victims feeling embarrassed, stupid, worthless and questioning if they might have accidentally been homophobic and transphobic without having previously been aware!
It is truly horrific because if all that doesn't work they’ll maybe cry, shout, tell everyone you know and work with that you're a transphobe, then get you doxxed, cancelled and intimidated.
People are now afraid to state basic biological facts. It's very dangerous to say that there are only two possible sexes male and female. Mammals cannot change sex. Sex is immutable and binary. Gender stereotypes - upon which “gender identity” is based - are nothing more than a regressive, dangerous and offensive lie.
There is no “man way” and “no woman” way. Despite arguing that a male transvestite can miraculously now become a woman, the cult members cannot explain what a woman really is. Woman is not a feeling to be put on and off like their cheap lipstick, tacky frock and size 13 slingbacks.
“Gender dysphoria” is another regressive lie. As we know that there is not innately a “male way” and not innately a “female way” either, then whatever the type of dysphoria experienced, it most certainly cannot be “gender dysphoria.
What most people are failing to see - beyond the nasty, dangerous deep-rooted misogyny and homophobia - is the coercive way that cult member’s ability to dress and behave in a non-traditional manner is completely limited and restricted to tawdry, clichéd outfits and poses that mimic, mock and gaslight women and men alike.
Bizarrely, the very people under constant attack are those of us who have consistently argued that it's fine to be whatever you want to be as long as it involves consent and doesn't override the human rights of others, especially people with specially protected classes like women and girls, disabled people, people of colour, gay men and lesbian women.
As I hope has been demonstrated, language is more than just a little bit important in this struggle.
If we do not use language that is clear and unambiguous in its meaning; this regressive march of the young men with beards and penises who demand to be called women and see it as their entitlement to be allowed to trample all over the hard-won rights and protections that women fought and died for, they will continue to bully and threaten women and girls completely unchecked.
If language needs to be compelled then it is essentially meaningless. The Queer Theory advocates know this and realise that if they can't control the language they’ll not be able to twist and control society at all.
We must reject the corruption and weaponising of language and insist that all language must be common to all as well as accessible. And possibly most important of all that the cancelling, doxxing, smearing and that the vicious threats stop, so that a grown-up discussion, based upon proven science and material reality, can be conducted.
Well put! Excellent....
So, about the word "gender." Originally it meant "type or category." Then linguists got hold of it and used it to label particular qualities of particular words. I don't know when people started using it as an euphemism for sex but it was sometime after that. People actually used the word "sex" quite liberally in the late 1800s to mid 1900s. The only reason I know that is I've read enough books from that time frame. Anyway, de-sexing gender would be taking it back closer to its original meaning, ironically enough.