“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 so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
I am a mathematician. In mathematical writing, we frequently define new technical terms. Sometimes these terms are new coinages—like the physicists’ “quark”—but more often they are words borrowed from the ordinary English language and given new meanings. Things like:
Definition. A hedgehog is a Siegel compactum around an irrationally indifferent fixed point that is not contained in the closure of a linearization domain.
This definition is clear and unambiguous (to any suitably trained reader, it goes without saying). No mathematician would object to this definition on the grounds that it conflicts with the established meaning of “hedgehog” in zoology. Everyone knows that this is a technical term with a precise local meaning, and there is zero risk of confusion.
Charles Dodgson (better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll) was a distinguished mathematician as well as a novelist. Humpty Dumpty’s dictum that “a word means just what I choose it to mean”—often viewed as satirical—is in reality nothing more than standard mathematical practice.
So no mathematician would object were an article to begin:
In this article the word “transphobic” means “a view on sex and gender that disagrees with gender-identity ideology.”
Or perhaps more simply:
In this article the word “transphobic” means “a view on sex and gender that disagrees with mine.”
This redefinition of a well-known word might be considered bizarre or idiosyncratic, but at least it would be up-front; no reader would be misled.
Alas, writers on social and political issues rarely introduce their redefinitions so forthrightly. Instead, they smuggle them in surreptitously: employing a word in a private technical sense at the same time as they allow their readers to interpret the word in its ordinary English-language sense—the one in which “transphobic” means “characterized by fear of (or perhaps hatred of) transgender people.” To put it bluntly, these authors try to win an argument by deceiving their readers: by creating and then exploiting a confusion between two meanings of the same English word.
But those who use the word “transphobic” in this way are probably not conscious of their chicanery. Indeed, they would vehemently deny it. To them “transphobic” probably signifies something like “opposed to the legitimate rights of transgender people,” and they assume that their readers understand this.
But the whole problem, of course, is that different people have different ideas about what the legitimate rights of transgender people are—for instance, when it comes to using single-sex changing rooms or competing in women’s sports. So the writer uses the word “transphobic” to mean “opposed to what I conceive to be the legitimate rights of transgender people” without making this crucial clarification explicit—much less explaining what that hidden conception is—and the reader is once again deceived.
Unfortunately, even professors of philosophy—a discipline that devotes great attention to precision in the use of words—can fall into this trap. For instance, in an open letter, written by a group of distinguished philosophers, protesting the award of a British government honour to philosopher Kathleen Stock—a stance that is surely within their rights to take, just as others may hold a different opinion—the authors casually label Professor Stock’s work as “transphobic fearmongering.” Nowhere in the letter do they define that inflammatory adjective, much less engage with (or even accurately characterize) the content of Stock’s arguments.
Sometimes this terminological ploy is combined with even more brazen attempts to win a social or political argument by linguistic fiat. A recent open letter on trans rights addressed to Advance HE—a British NGO devoted to promoting racial and sexual equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education—provides a rather extreme example. After the customary denigration of the authors’ opponents as “dangerously transphobic,” the letter continues:
[T]he Gender in HE Conference 2022 was originally scheduled to include a panel on “connections and tensions between sex-based and gender-inclusive rights.” The very framing of this panel implied that the rights of cis women and trans women are separate and in tension. However, from the standpoint of inclusivity as upheld by the Athena Swan Charter principles, trans women are women and hence there is no such tension.
The logic is breathtaking. Since “trans women”—that is to say, biological males who consider themselves to be women—are in fact women, there cannot be any tension between the interests of “cis women” and “trans women.” Q.E.D.
So the authors of this letter do not simply wish to win an argument by linguistic sleight of hand. They want to demonstrate that there is nothing to debate—that a thorny social and political issue is in fact nonexistent.
No need, therefore, to give sensitive and empathetic consideration to the legitimate—and unfortunately conflicting—interests of different groups of people. No need to discuss respectfully across identity and ideological lines, and to craft fair compromises. Quite simply, there is no tension: end of story.
Of course, this purported “demonstration” is rubbish. The premise of the argument, that “trans women are women”—or to spell it out more precisely, that “trans women” and natal women should be treated in the same manner in all situations—is exactly what is under debate. The authors prove that they are right by assuming that they are right. This venerable tactic is called begging the question.
Indeed, even if one accepts for the sake of argument that “trans women are women,” the logic still fails. Black women are women—no one denies that—but it does not follow that there can never be any tension between the interests of black women and other women. (Such tensions are what “intersectionality” is all about, after all.)
Of course, the locution “trans woman” is itself a linguistic swindle. Ordinary usage tells us that “adjective + noun” describes a subclass of whatever is described by “noun” (of course there are exceptions, such as “dry ice,” but this is anyway the general rule); and this grammatical rule is implicit in every English speaker’s brain. So the locution “trans woman” induces its hearers to accept, unthinkingly, that of course trans women are women—and this, not as the outcome of a delicate social and political debate about who should have access to which spaces, but simply as a tautology, on a par with the innocuous assertion that “Japanese women are women.” I confess that I myself once fell into this trap, until a gender-critical feminist philosopher friend pointed out my error.
(It’s probably too late to change this deceptive terminology, but here is a modest suggestion: in the future let’s write “transwoman” rather than “trans woman.” Unfortunately, that won’t help much in oral discussions.)
Gender-identity ideology may be an extreme case in its stratagem to win political arguments by twisting the meaning of everyday English words, but it is far from the only example. Both sides in the debate over “critical race theory” have, unfortunately, employed this same tactic. Right-wingers have often attached the label “critical race theory” to any effort, no matter how fair-minded and evidence-based, to study and teach honestly about the history of slavery and racial discrimination. Defenders of critical race theory, in response, have often pretended that it constitutes nothing more than an effort to study and teach honestly about the history of slavery and racial discrimination. Both are misrepresentations—and the confusion is compounded by the fact that “critical race theory” does not connote any unique doctrine, but rather a congeries of related but sometimes-conflicting views.
Let me be clear: I am not complaining about the fact that the meanings of words evolve over time. For instance, the word “parent” traditionally meant “a person who is one of the progenitors of a child,” i.e. a biological parent; but nowadays most people understand the word to mean “a person who takes on parental responsibilities towards a child,” i.e. a legal parent or social parent, and we say explicitly “biological parent” whenever that is what we mean. In fact, as an adoptive parent myself, I would be incensed if someone, using the old definition, were to tell me that I am not a real parent.
So the problem is not that the meanings of words change over time, with usage; that is to be taken for granted. The problem is when writers at a given time use words in a sense that is radically different from how their readers will interpret those words at that same time—and when, moreover, that misinterpretation plays a central role in making a flawed argument seem to be strong.
That said, my plea for writers on all sides to be more careful in their use of words may, I acknowledge, be whistling in the wind. Since time immemorial, contenders in public debate have employed deceptive tactics in an effort to help their side to “win,” and specialists in advertising and public relations have over the years refined that practice. It is probably unrealistic to expect people, right now, to voluntarily moderate their use of this tried-and-true method, precisely at a time when social media have supercharged its effectiveness.
There are also psychological obstacles. When people feel that they are right about some issue, they are tempted to cut corners in debate: rather than explaining forthrightly the reasons why they consider themselves to be right—and thereby opening up that reasoning to public critique and possible refutation—they may take for granted that they are right and simply seek the most efficacious way to lead their audience to that desired conclusion. This temptation applies with especial psychological force whenever the issue under debate is intensely moral: people can convince themselves that the morally virtuous goal justifies the lesser ethical transgression of deception. Moreover, this temptation is reinforced whenever one or both sides in the debate consider it to be, not just a discrete disagreement over some matter of public policy, but one skirmish in a war between good and evil. By contrast, good-faith participation in public debate requires each of us to acknowledge that we might be wrong; and people nowadays seem increasingly disinclined to concede this possibility, especially on issues having an intense moral valence.
So the solution may be, not to train public commentators to be more honest, but to train readers and listeners to be more discerning: to be better detectors of deceptive argumentation. Particularly when terms with a pejorative connotation are employed—words like “transphobic” (to say nothing of its vicious cousin, “TERF”), “misogynist,” “sexist,” “racist,” “fascist,” “antisemitic” and “Islamophobic,” to name just a few—readers should ask themselves: What is the author’s implicit definition of this term? Does this usage conform to the commonly accepted definition? And does the evidence (if any) presented by the author substantiate the accusation, as interpreted in each of the two definitions?
Perhaps, if readers and listeners were to become more discerning, writers and speakers would have less incentive to engage in linguistic subterfuge.
Ever since Charles Leslie Stevenson coined the term in his eponymous essay, the rhetorical sleight of hand that Professor Sokal identifies has been investigated at some length by rhetoricians, argument theorists, and philosophers of language as the deceptive use of persuasive definitions. See Charles Leslie Stevenson. (1938) “Persuasive Definitions.” Mind, Vol. 47, No. 187 , pp. 331-350. Persuasive definitions are engineered to vary in meaning from the contemporary dictionary (lexical) definition and common understanding of the terms they define, while retaining those terms’ positive (or negative) “emotive meanings” (i.e., emotional evocations and associations). This altering of the conventional definition may consist of broadening it to include referents not ordinarily within its compass, narrowing it by applying new conditions (e.g., defining “racism” as requiring the existence of a hierarchical or other unequal distribution of power), or even by standing the definition on its head (e.g., “War is peace” in Orwellian Newspeak).… Read more »
To amplify my remarks the other day on the two opposite meanings of “intersectionality”: The Scottish-born American sociologist and political scientist Robert M. MacIver (1882-1970), as I recall, used the example of working-class Catholics being at the same time pulled politically to the Left by their economic class interests but to the Right by their Church’s opposition to Socialism and Communism in his 1947 book “The Web of Government.” Another American sociologist and political scientist, Seymour Martin Lipset (1922-2008), in his 1960 book “Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics” discussed working-class women pulled to the Left by their economic interests but also responsive because of their concerns for the faithfulness and good behavior of their husbands and children to conservative political appeals to what we now call “family values” as in attacks on drugs, pornography, and sexual promiscuity. Today, as we all know, many working-class white Americans of both… Read more »
Prof. Sokal wrote, “Black women are women—no one denies that—but it does not follow that there can never be any tension between the interests of black women and other women. (Such tensions are what “intersectionality” is all about, after all.)” His “Black women are women–no one denies that” reminds me of the logic-chopping ancient Chinese philosopher who won immortal notoriety by arguing that “a white horse is not a horse” on the grounds that, in Western terminology, “horse” and “white horse” are two different “universals”–as though, for instance, “Socrates” can’t both be “mortal” and a “philosopher”! More practically relevant for our own time, the “intersectionality” mentioned by Prof. Sokal can in fact work in two quite opposite directions. Current “intersectionality” ideologues always (or very nearly always) use the concept to emphasize the ways in which racial, gender, class, etc., disadvantages pile upon top of each other to reinforce each other, as in… Read more »
Starting with the work of Charles Stevenson, the practice described by Professor Sokal has been described by various rhetoricians, argument theorists, and philosophers of language as the use of “persuasive definitions.” Because these definitions vary from dictionary (lexical) definitions and those in common usage, their introduction into discourse can be manipulative and deceptive when done so tacitly, without acknowledging their variance from common understanding. The manipulative and deceptive effect of such tacit (or clandestine) use of persuasive definitions is to lead unwary interlocutors into unconsciously transfering the positive (or negative) emotive associations and responses evoked by their conventional understanding of the words being newly (i.e., persuasively) defined to the concepts embodied by those newly defined terms—all without the interlocutors’ opportunity to consciously weigh those concepts or challenge them through reasoned argumentation. There is a good deal of authority on this subject, beginning with Charles Stevenson’s works, Stevenson, C. L. (1938).… Read more »
[…] of “transphobia” is a complete distortion, at least in the ordinary sense of that word (Sokal 2022). WPUK fully supports the right of transgender people to live their lives free from harassment, […]
All of this is hitting home to me, as my company’s DEI coordinators just scheduled a meeting about stopping “macroagression” — at which phrase the mind absolutely boggles. I mean, the domain of meaning here is completely unbounded. And, if I may, that’s the real problem: beyond self-contradictory or misleading use of language, we have terms that create, as it were, their own markets of meaning; phrases and neologisms that have no real etymology, and are rather intended to aggregate connotation through use. “Parent,” in your example, can extend equivocally to things that are not “strictly” parents without trouble precisely because a parent is something. The class of Parents admits representative individuals, and so we can agree that an adoptive parent is a parent without violating the integrity of the core idea. On the other hand, “critical race theory” does not seem to have any proper ontology at all. It… Read more »
Very nice article, clear and concise.
Of course, everything in the article is very obvious and should not need saying, but there is no doubt that in fact it does need saying, repeatedly.
I remember when I first noticed that many (most?) arguments are caused by people using different definitions of key words and that they are therefore arguing at cross-purposes. Its one of those realisations that suddenly makes sense of so many things. On the rare occasions I can be bothered engaging with such arguments my contribution is usually just “define your terms”.
The single biggest source of confusion in this area is due to the ambiguity in the word “gender”. It can mean “sex”, it can mean “gender role”, or it can mean “gender identity”. Plenty of discussions use these three meanings without making the distinction, even within a single sentence.
“Gender identity” in its turn is ambiguous. First, “gender” in this context can mean either “sex” or “gender role”. Thus the target of the “gender identity” is unclear. Second, “identity” can be a declared belief, possibly subject to change, or it can be an intrinsic property that is immune to outside intervention. This second confusion would be alleviated if we used “declared gender identity” and “innate gender identity” to describe the two concepts.
Finally, the concept “transgender” is often explained in terms of “gender” and “gender identity”, and so it inherits all the same difficulties.
A fine lesson in logic there.
Great article, and great advice here for critical thinking: “So the solution may be, not to train public commentators to be more honest, but to train readers and listeners to be more discerning: to be better detectors of deceptive argumentation.”
Professor John McWhorter (private communication) has pointed out to me that the phrase “bad faith” in my title is ambiguous and could potentially lead to confusion, as it might seem that I am accusing people of deliberate deception. It seems to me that John has a point, so I’d like to clarify. In the fifth paragraph of my article, I say explicitly that those who use the word “transphobic” in this way are probably not conscious of their chicanery. Indeed, they would vehemently deny it. Of course, one can never be sure about another person’s state of mind; but my best guess is that the people who use the word “transphobic” in the way documented in my article — and those on both sides of the debate about critical race theory who misuse that term — are not, at least in most cases, being deliberately deceptive. On the other hand, as… Read more »
Excellent observation. At times I wish people who conceive of AI projects would do work in processing texts in such a way that these errors are brought to our attention. What we need is a Hegel parser, something that finds, even in the densest text, some solid analysis of abuse of terms, undefined concepts and syllogisms that are incomplete.