Humpty Dumpty and war on language and reality ...
This conversation occurred in Lewis Carrol’s Through a Looking Glass.
Alice is talking with Humpty Dumpty about birthday presents.
‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
‘Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course, you don’t–till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”, Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all.’
Humpty Dumpty’s claim to be the master of his words – “they mean what I choose them to mean, neither more nor less” – raises a very old and very important question about the nature of language. Actually, all this sounds very much like some of today’s language debates, even though written in 1871.
A critical skirmish in the current language debates is over the meanings of “woman” and “man.”
Over the long span of history everyone has been pretty clear about the stable meanings of “woman” and “man” – that is, until fifteen minutes ago. In 2022, one of our leading dictionaries, following popular trends in western culture, went the way of Humpty Dumpty.
In an October 2022 update, Cambridge Dictionary gave two definitions for “woman.”
Woman is an “adult female human being”.
Woman can also be “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they [sic] may have been said to have a different sex at birth”.
Likewise, “man” is “an adult male human being” and also “an adult who lives and identifies as male though they [sic] may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
This expanded definition has created outrage all across the cultural spectrum.
Now even the dictionary is lying to us.
This is Brendan O’Neill’s commentary in spiked, as he wrote about “a war on truth.”
O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast. spiked, in case you’re wondering, is neither religious nor conservative. It’s something of a successor publication to Living Marxism which was sued out of existence in a libel case.
O’Neill goes on to explain that this “war on truth” has far-ranging and profound consequences.
These lexicographers, in their keenness to cozy up to the correct-thinking elites, are really reprimanding and re-educating the populace. They’re instructing us that our belief that there are men and women, and that they are biologically different, is outdated and possibly bigoted.
Biology means nothing! A war on truth is a war on reality. O’Neill continues,
Language is being manipulated to manipulate minds.
Brendan O’Neill is not the only secular person alarmed by these perverse distortions of language. Helen Joyce, Louise Perry, Abigail Shrier, Katherine Dee, and Mary Harrington are only a few of names that could be mentioned.
Again, like O’Neill, none of these women are religious or conservative. But they each recognize that biology tells us something true about reality.
Add Dr. Debra Soh to list. She is a PhD who once researched the neuroscience of sex. She begins her book, The End of Gender, with an Introduction entitled “The Battle Against Biology.”
[In my research], I was using brain-imaging techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI), to better understand paraphilias [unusual sexual preferences], sexual orientation, and hypersexuality in men. As someone who is surprisingly old-fashioned and vanilla (that is, nonkinky) in my personal life, one of my biggest aims as a sex researcher was to combat sexual stigma and shame. ...
Despite feeling that she had won the “career lottery,” Dr. Soh decided to leave academia. She explains, “Writing an op-ed became the catalyst.”
I had noticed a trend in mainstream news stories that left me feeling unsettled because they were extremely one-sided. An endless stream of pieces presented glowing stories about children as young as age three transitioning—changing their haircut, taking on a new name, and championing the use of medical interventions to halt some physical changes and facilitate others.
From as young an age as their parents could recall, something was different about these kids. They would say things that would make any parent's heart wrench, like they were born in the wrong body, that “God made a mistake,” and that they wanted to die and be brought back to life as the opposite sex. These children would be suffering immensely until they were allowed a gender transition.
Not only that, but when I scrolled down below these articles, I would see parents posting in the comments section. Many would say that they, too, had a child who felt they were born in the wrong body, bur the parents were unsure as to whether this direction was right for them. They were uncomfortable with the idea of allowing a child to essentially be a guinea pig, undergoing such a new and experimental approach. These parents would clearly state that they were in support of the transgender community, but were torn as to what to do.
In response, other commenters would attack the parent, calling them transphobic and bigoted, saying that their child would kill themselves and they would be the one to blame. I could only imagine how a parent would feel, voicing genuine concern for their child’s well-being and in turn being harassed and dehumanized for merely asking a question. I could also see how this intimidation could lead to more parents allowing their children to transition.After seeing this happen again and again, one story after another, I felt I had to speak up, for the sake of these parents and their children, because so few of my colleagues were willing to say anything.
This silence was the result of a long, ugly history between transgender activists and sexologists, in which activists would go after sex researchers if they didn’t like a particular study that had been done or what an expert had publicly said. Everyone in the field who criticized transgender ideology would be attacked ruthlessly, to the point, in some cases, of nearly having their professional and personal reputation ruined.
I wrote an opinion piece that countered the early transitioning narrative, then deliberated about publishing it for about six months. Even though the science I referenced was solid, it was too politically volatile, and drawing attention to it would be the equivalent of expelling myself from academia.
Her piece was published it the Pacific Standard, and then, “as if on cue, the mobbing began.”
All I knew is that I had taken aim at a sacred cow and people were very, very angry. ...
Dr. Soh is not a person who lives her life online: “I like being in the real world, talking to people in real life.” So, she wasn’t prepared for the mobbing. Neither was she prepared to see who came to her defense.
It may sound like I was alone amid the mess of that mobbing, but I wasn't. Much to my shock, conservative media had come to my defense. Much like radical feminists and fundamentalist Christians joining hands over the transgender bathroom debate—another alliance could have never anticipated—the unforeseen shift in the zeitgeist has led me, a sex-positive, nontraditionalist, gay rights supporter who once made a living studying kinky sex and sex toys, to be considered, by those who negated what I had to say, as right-leaning and Republican. ...
She doesn’t regret blowing up her promising career studying the neuroscience of sex.
With everything I’ve witnessed since I left, I no longer question whether I made the right decision.
As Brenden O’Neill said, “Language is being manipulated to manipulate minds.” It’s a war of ideas about the nature of reality (biology) and the nature of language.
Reflecting these broader cultural trends, “post-truth” was named “Word of the Year” in 2016 by Oxford Dictionaries.
Our friends at the Cambridge Dictionary define “post-truth” this way:
The situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.
This is not new, just accelerated by social media. It’s more present is some sectors of society (entertainment) than in others and increasingly present in the other sectors (education) — more urban than rural, etc. But, as we’ve just seen, it’s provoking pushback even among the non-religious who are also not conservative.
The last century saw lots of interest in the corruption of language. George Orwell’s book 1984 should be noted along with the many studies of the uses of propaganda by the Nazis and the communists. Jacques Ellul and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were prominent Christian voices opposing the corruption of language.
The ancients. They too were aware of the dangers of perverting language – and also of the vices that travel with such corruption. You can’t get more direct than the prophet Isaiah!
5:20 Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight!
22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine,
and valiant men in mixing strong drink,
23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deprive the innocent of his right!
24 Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,
and as dry grass sinks down in the flame,
so their root will be as rottenness,
and their blossom go up like dust;
for they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts,
and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
We’ll give the last word to another “seer” – a seer who mentored some of the most perceptive seers of the 20th Century, G. K. Chesterton.
In 1926 Chesterton wrote this in a piece for The Illustrated London News:
We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.
[Emphasis added.]
You can find Brendon O’Neill’s article at the spiked website: The woke war on truth: The Cambridge Dictionary’s redefinition of the word woman is a gross assault on reality.
Dr. Debra Soh’s The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society is available here. Her website is here. A Note to Follow Soh, a Review of 'The End of Gender' by Abigail Shrier, gives a broader view of her book.
Lewis Carrol’s Through a Looking Glass is available at Project Gutenberg.