The other day I was at a training session. We were sitting around a table discussing an interesting and important subject (which is irrelevant for the purpose of this post). The chap leading the discussion used, perfectly in context, the word transsexual. Not a nanosecond had passed before someone in the class had piped up to object. She introduced herself and politely pointed out to the trainer that the word transsexual is no longer current terminology and that the preferred term is now transgender or, even better, trans.
I have to say I was a little bit surprised. After all, what could possibly be offensive about the word transsexual? It is surely just a description and has no derogatory or laudatory connotations whatsoever, any more than heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual have, any more than wet or Tuesday have. I do not understand how a statement of fact can be upsetting in that way. I really wanted to talk a bit more about this subject but the course was already being compressed to fit it into the available time, and I could see that the trainer felt embarrassed to have been caught red-handed by the political correctness fuzz.
This is not an isolated linguistical occurrence. We seem to have become scared of the word sex. In fact, transsexual is a much better use of the English language than transgender (so much so that my web spell-checker does not recognise the word transgender). Traditionally the word sex was used only to categorise male and female members of a species. Male or female, left or right, one or zero, blue or pink. Sex? still appears on forms, quite correctly. Yes please is not an appropriate answer, unless you have a bureaucrat fetish.
What we have seen is the sexualisation of the word sex. Lazy people have taken a sweet and innocent scientific word and corrupted it into something altogether more sleazy. Sex is now often used as a shortened form of sexual intercourse and we have had to invent the word gender to reclaim the less exotic meaning of the word. The word gender is, of course, purely a linguistic term. Some languages (thankfully not ours) have masculine and feminine nouns. Humans do not have a gender any more than we should be having sex. True Anglo-Saxons should, of course, be doing something rather more four-letterish.
So in a rather perverse and convoluted political culture of linguistic transmogrification and fear of speaking the truth we arrive at a situation where people who are not comfortable with the sex that they were born into are forced to de-sex and re-gender. It must be very confusing.
Who decides these things? Who decided that gender was more politically correct than sex? When did we become so shy about discussing our sex that we had to cloak it with linguistic bullshit? I am a male trapped in a horrible flabby fat man’s body. Everyone can see that and I can’t hide from it. If you are a man who would prefer to be a woman or vice versa there is nothing wrong with that. Nobody cares. Why wrap it up in a politically correct blanket of old nonsense?
XX Why wrap it up in a politically correct blanket of old nonsense?XX
Because without this “P.C”, these imbicilin no marks would never stand a cats chance in Hel of getting their “15 minutes of fame”.
It is the ONLY hope they have in life of EVER getting noticed outside of their own living room.
Arsehole wannabees to a man.
Of course, I have got to the stage where I would have answered “Oh, O.K then would describing it as a queer with it’s bollox cut off suit you better”?
I would never have thought of it before “P.C”, but now I am so pssed off at bioeng “told” what to do, I could not give a shit if any one is offended or not. In fact I hope they ARE!
I feel obliged to feign outrage on the next occasion you call me a Brit, VonS.
Language isn’ static, but evolving as I am sure you’d agree.
I think the evolution of words is a cultural thing. I noticed that during the recent Pakistan cricket tour of Australia, it was perfectly acceptable to refer to the visiting team as “Pakkis’. In the UK it would be a racist outrage.
I don’t know how or why culture / society attaches new meanings / emphasis to a word. An idea for someone’e dissertation! The examples I can think of all seem to stem from a movement or campaign (formal or informal) to bring and issue to the fore and take ownership of a word.
“This is not an isolated linguistical occurrence.”
No, it isn’t. Control the language, control everything…
I think that most of these politically incorrect words are only unacceptable to most people by the way they are used. We all know, very well, whether we are intending a sleight or not by the way that we use the word ‘Paki’. Some words, like ‘nigger’ are clearly unacceptable nowadays, but most of the no-no words are sometimes OK. Whoever thought that Robertsons’ Marmalade would have been stopped from having their golliwog logo? Absurd.
When good men say nothing………………………
“Why wrap it up in a politically correct blanket of old nonsense?”
Because they can. The PC Brigade need no other reason.
“Have you seen the Tenth Edition of the PC-speak dictionary?” “No, said Winston.”
As has already been touched on, saying the name of the country whose capital city is Islamabad (or is it Karachi?) creates a major dilemma, because you can’t say ****stan without saying ****, the mere mention of which gets you dragged from your bed at 3 a.m. by armed police. This being a land of free speech, after all.
I’ve found the best solution is to pronounce it the way Benazir Bhutto used to (she was an Oxford lass, and ought to have known about these things): Pah-harkistan. Simples.
The problem with that is, of course, the inevitable day when you hear: ‘typical ****ing Pah-harkis, always causing trouble.’ What to do then?
“Lazy people have taken a sweet and innocent scientific word and corrupted it into something altogether more sleazy”
Like they did with ‘gay’ ?
I love this post, Blue. Excellent.
Can I add a little something though? Chromosomes. What I mean is “If you are a man who would prefer to be a woman or vice versa there is nothing wrong with that. Nobody cares.” True, very true. But if you are a man you can never be a woman. Oh you can chop your penis off and take hormones to grow bigger breasts. But you don’t grow a womb or ovaries and your chromosomes don’t suddenly change from John to Jane. No-one actually changes sex, or gender. It’s just window dressing really.
I am a woman. That’s a very special thing, just as a man is a special thing. And whilst there may be the occasional natural aberration, you can’t be me by taking a few pills of having a doctor cut and paste. Women are far more than that. There is no such thing as a sex change.
Political correctness is the latest substitute for religeon. Know what to believe and when to believe it makes you definitely one up.
In the good old days there would be such quibbles anbout religious nuances. And these quibbles could be purely pedantic or bloodily authoritarian.
Come to think of it in a lot of the world it still is.
Absolutely, though Pip’s point makes me think that transgender probably is a better term than transsexual. On the whole trans people can only assume a gender and become recognised as masc. or fem. rather than become male or female. Genders are quite probably a load of nonsense though (I can’t think of many ‘feminine’ qualities that are essentially female, and the ‘masculine’ traits are nowt for a man to be proud of). And if a ‘woman in a man’s body’ would like me to ascribe a feminine gender to possessive adjectives whilst referring to ‘em [as in 'her'] then I’ve no problem with that, (despite revelling in using ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘theirs’ as a gender-neutral singular pronoun).
And secretly I do like knowing that women are “blonde” whilst men are “blond” and other little quirks of English.