“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
—Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
OK, here’s the thing…you can’t be as fundamentally different from the average person, or even the average “deviant,” as I am and have a brain without having some ideas, peeves, and raging neuroses which go against even the groupthink of those closest to you, ideologically speaking. So I figure, since it’s cheaper than therapy, I’ll tell the whole wide Internet (read: the 12 people who actually care about this blog and all future prospective employers) about some of them. I mean, I’m enriching all your lives by telling you all about great obscure music, so the least you can do is let me vent a little.
Now, I could probably do a whole post just on my notion — seemingly quaint in the age of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory™ — that people can disagree, even vehemently, and come away friends. I’m sure I will sooner or later because, let’s face it, some people (many of whom Americans, since Americans seem particularly prone to this) act as though debating their ideas or opinions is somehow invalidating them as a person and hurting their feelings yada yada yada…tell it to someone who cares. (Was that bitchy? Oops! But seriously, folks, don’t forget to tip your waitresses…)
But instead, I’m going to start with one of my all-time pet peeves and one that Saint George would no doubt approve of. I call it “semanticide,” which, if you parse the roots, roughly translates to “the death of meaning.” Semanticide is the practice of stretching the meanings of words until they no longer mean much of anything, usually because some other perfectly fine word more apt to the intended description is getting a bad rap.
I first developed the idea of semanticide thanks to my largely involuntary participation in queer and gender theory and the communities associated therewith. As a representative of both the “L” (ergo, queer) and the “T” (hey presto! gender) in “LGBT,” you would hardly think that someone with those characteristics would find herself feeling like a reactionary in the aforementioned theoretical areas…and yet, thanks to the rise of the “genderqueer” movement, that’s exactly where I find myself. More on them in another article, though. That one really deserves its own rant, ’cause I can go on for pages on the logical fallacies inherent in first granting commonly-accepted definitions of and differences between the words “sex” and “gender” and then taking the exact same modifier, “trans,” applying it to both of them, and coming up with meanings completely different from what you’d expect for the words “transsexual” and “transgender.”
Now, please do not misconstrue what I mean by reactionary. I’m not allying myself with the Camille Paglias of the world or anything here at all. The post-feminists and post-queers actually piss me off far more than the genderqueers ever could do short of actually showing up as a pitchfork-wielding mob on my doorstep.
And with all that preamble out of the way, here are some concrete examples of what I mean.
Going to college at UC Santa Cruz as I did in the early ’90s, I was there to see the cultural “vanguard” (hah!) of what I call the “trendy-bi” movement. These were people, mostly but not always women, who used the appearance of bisexuality mainly to appeal to members of the opposite sex. I got into all kinds of trouble by pointing out that a “bisexual” with no sexual experience with members of both sexes (and more on “both sexes” in a minute!), or even any specific intent to gain such sexual experience didn’t exactly seem very “bi” to me.
As a practicing bisexual at the time myself, it bugged the high holy crap out of me. Some stripes, I felt, need to be earned. And on that, I’ve never really changed my mind. But if these people got to be “bisexual” simply by verbal fiat and with no corroborating evidence to move them beyond the “bi-leaning” or “bi-curious” category, and they got to be lumped in with me, then this simple, descriptive term lost some of its descriptive power.
In fact, as a direct response to this very phenomenon, I now see actual, practicing bisexuals saying, “I don’t identify as bi…I don’t like that word. I identify as ‘queer,’” and thereby compounding one semanticide with another. If I ask someone their sexuality and they say “queer”, that doesn’t tell me much at all. If someone says “bisexual” or even the more recent favorite, “pansexual,” I at least have some idea about who is and isn’t eligible to be a part of this particular individuals sexual and romantic life. Ditto words like lesbian, gay, straight, homosexual, and heterosexual.
To me, a statement like, “I identify as ‘queer,’” can only invite the question, “Why is it you have a problem with words like ‘bisexual’ or ‘pansexual’, even though they’re more accurate and descriptive of your sexual preferences and behavior than ‘queer’, which is so vague?” Would it not be better to reclaim the word from the poseurs the way that the LGBT community took back words like “queer,” “fag,” and “dyke” from their places as slurs on us?
(Of course, “dyke” has lost its meaning over the last decade or so as well. It used to mean a lesbian woman…usually, but not always, one who is very obvious in her lesbianism, such as butch lesbians or women with visible tattoos of labyrises, linked venus symbols, and the like. Now, it seems like any non-heterosexual woman will lay claim to that one. And don’t even get me started on someone like JoAnn Loulan writing an article entitled, “Why I’m Still a Lesbian Despite the Man in My Bed” in Girlfriends. I still think the world of JoAnn Loulan as a person based on what I know of her, and I love her books on lesbian dating and sexuality, but that’s still first degree semanticide.)
“But Sonya,” I hear you cry, “they’re only words. Why get so worked up about them?”
Simple. I have this odd fondness for being able to communicate with people. So, when you render words effectively meaningless as the value-judgment-free taxonomical descriptors they’re meant to be, you end up having to re-define those words every time you use them in every conversation you have on the related subjects with every person you have them with.
What’s even worse is when people engage in semanticide based on a clearly shaky grasp of the words whose meanings they’re so busily rendering moot. The trans* and genderqueer “community” (HAH! I’ve seen herds of cats with more cohesion) is the worst offender in this regard. If you ever hear anyone tell you that there are some discrete number of sexes or genders greater than two, you’re dealing with either someone who’s only devoted very shallow thought to the subject or else someone with a very particular agenda, though the two so often seem to go hand in hand.
Yes, it’s patently obvious that there’s more than just binary “male/female” and “masculine/feminine.” But in each of those cases you’re still dealing in a continuous spectrum with only two poles. Everyone exists somewhere(s) between zero and one on the axes of sex and gender, but there’s no two or π or any other number to be found. To shift metaphors, you’ve got your a, your b, and your “some a and some b”…but what you don’t have is any option c. Chuck in the Kinsey Scale on a third axis and allow for variation over time and you’ll quickly see that even that level of abstraction in quantifying the sex, gender, and sexuality of human beings will allow for infinite variety. All the words we coin to describe people represent particular areas or vectors (or even quantum phenomena!) in that space. We’ll never be able to name them all, but at least we can usefully name 99.99% of them, presuming we could ever agree on those words.
At this point, I should probably take a moment to say that this is hardly an absolute thing. There are times when semanticide is not just necessary, but simply a good idea. It’s only the needless verbal killings that offend my sensibilities. Any definition of masculinity that includes words like “logical” or “assertive,” or likewise any of femininity that use “emotional” or “passive” need to just go. None of those characteristics ought to be “gendered” at all. In fact, I would go so far as to propose that gender be left strictly in the realm of kabuki…costuming and performance. Long hair, emphasizing (or creating) bodily curves, and so on…that’s all that should be seen as “feminine.” Likewise emphasizing or creating angularity and crew cuts “masculine.” Everything else is just “human,” if you ask me.
Take me for instance. Look at any picture of me. All the signals I choose to give with my hair, makeup, clothing, etc. says “feminine” to greater or lesser degree. But some would hold that my fascination with and profession involving all things computational is somehow inherently “masculine.” That’s exactly the kind of horrible gender-based “definition” that needs to die a quick and painful death. Until men can be seen as no less “manly” for being nurturing or collaborative and women no less “womanly” for being ambitious, technically-inclined, or commanding, then society will continue to be just that much more fucked up.
Some would, of course, argue that they see the exact examples I cited as being needless cases of semanticide as being worthwhile and necessary, too. I’d be happy to debate those points. In fact, I recently have done so both with a new friend, Joyce, about a month back and the wonderful women of the Chasing Amy Social Club just this past Sunday. And a fine thing it was in both cases!
If you ask me, every idea everyone has should always be challenged, and the intellectually honest should both give a respectful dissent the floor to make its case and modify their positions when the argument is persuasive enough to change their minds. (For the record, no, that does not mean “you all should change your minds because I’m right and you’re wrong.” I’ve been brought around to new opinions by compelling arguments made to me in the past, and will no doubt have it happen again in the future. Also for the record, I have admittedly gotten better at the “respectful” part of “respectful debate” over the years. I deeply apologize to those who, in my younger days, I might have treated more shabbily than they deserved simply for disagreeing with me. Of course I knew everything back then, and have oddly managed to forget so much in the intervening time.)
I simply put it to you, gentle reader, that taxonomy is not harmful in and of itself. I also assert that much-maligned “labels” are only problematic when we make them problematic. I don’t think that any reasonable person expects that in a messy, analog world, all definitions will always be completely concrete and no interstitial example will ever challenge them. I don’t think that language will do anything but change and evolve, or that we’ll keep finding examples of people and things who just plain need a new word coined to describe them usefully, thus preventing the need for unwieldy sentences about what they’re not.
The map, as they say, is not the territory. But that doesn’t make the metaphorical map, or the or the real-world taxonomical terms useless. They still generally get you most of the way to where you want to be so that you only have to tailor them slightly to any given situation unless you’re actually dealing with one of those .01% or less of instances that are truly exceptional and require neologisms to describe them. The trouble only happens when people start assigning value judgments to simple taxonomy and therefore feel a need to throw the semantic baby out with the bathwater because we don’t like that emotional baggage which ought not to be there in the first place.
And yet, despite all that, I’m still a huge fan of Emperor Norton. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself!“
A writer, they say, writes. This makes me a sysadmin, queer/poly pervert, a geek, but certainly no kind of writer the way I’ve been neglecting my blogging. And, really, the whole point was that I was trying to improve my writing habits. But, I’m not writing it off yet. (See what I did there? It was a pun, people! A writing-related pun! HAH! Oy…)
