You may have heard about this guy who was arrested for threatening to blow up the offices of Merriam Webster and kill their employees because their dictionary now offers as one definition of the word "female" "having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.(I note that the first definition is still ": of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs.")
Among other rants and threats, Jeremy David Hanson wrote:
It is absolutely sickening that Merriam-Webster now tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda. There is no such thing as ‘gender identity.’ The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot.
And:
You [sic] headquarters should be shot up and bombed. It is sickening that you have caved to the cultural Marxist, anti-science tranny [sic] agenda and altered the definition of ‘female’ as part of the Left’s efforts to corrupt and degrade the English language and deny reality. You evil Marxists should all be killed. It would be poetic justice to have someone storm your offices and shoot up the place, leaving none of you commies alive.
I really don't know why the idea that someone might identify as female outrages these people, or why they would believe it is "anti-science." People are who they are, they feel how they feel. As a scientist, I can observe that fact, and I can ask how it comes about. Some people who identify as female are born with standard female sexual organs and grow up feeling female. Others have different stories, but science does indeed observe that they exist, whether you like it or not.
On the other hand, this incontrovertible fact has nothing to do with Marxism or Communism, but of course Mr. Hanson, like seemingly all right wing nutjobs these days, has no idea what either of those words actually mean. But most fundamentally, obviously, it is the purpose of a dictionary to define words as they are used. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines innumerable words for entities that do not, in fact exist, such as unicorn, Zeus, Atlantis, and free market. People who identify as female do exist, but that a word exists does not bring what it signifies into existence. That's an entirely different question.
It is possible, using words in the dictionary and the rules of English syntax, to write "intelligent conservative." But that is an entity which, like unicorn, does not exist.
3 comments:
What is at the root of this incredibly destructive mental illness? Is it the religion of Christianity? Is it Rupert Murdoch? Does it have multiple sources? Is it Caucasian nationalism?
Whatever the hell the root of this fucked-up disease is, it’s rooted in fear.
From the subsequent post you wrote and the information you shared, I now realize that it’s also rooted in cruelty and greed.
"I really don't know why the idea that someone might identify as female outrages these people, or why they would believe it is "anti-science."
Clearly, the problem this guy had was here was an authority, a keeper of the language, attempting to change the culture and undermine the idea that gender is immutable. No evidence. No discussion.
He is, also, an idiot for doing this. The one thing he is right about is there is no such thing as "gender identity". Just a softer, more palatable term for Gender Identity Disorder.
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