Language is an annoyingly useful but flawed thing. Without it, we would be nothing more than apes, a footnote in the unwritten history of life on this planet, occupying a niche carved by intelligence but unable to pull itself out of its restrictive environment. Language allows us to share ideas, and the fact that those ideas are transmitted imperfectly may even help us to evolve ideas that work from those that don't.
If I could hook up my brain to yours, I could send you my meaning perfectly. As it is, communication is held back by both my ability to put something into words, and your ability to understand it. If I forget to define something sufficiently, or just assume that your understanding of the word is the same as mine, we can get into terrible arguments, where actually if we properly understood what each other meant we were in complete agreement all along. Conversely, people can join causes to support them because they think they are one thing, but where everyone else thinks another, and sometimes can spend months before they realise this isn't something they believe in after all.
Language is a tool for communication of complex ideas, which can be broken down into words which have individual meanings. Very few of these are simple. Take the word "Table", for instance. Could not be a simpler concept, right? Well, my dictionary provides 15 separate meanings of the word "Table", from the thing you eat off to obscure architectural features. Not to mention that its lead definition: "A piece of furniture with a flat top and one or more legs, providing a level surface for eating, writing, or working at", could also refer to a stool, a chair, a worktop, a workbench, or a cabinet, or lots of other things, if that is how you choose to use them. I do, in fact, have a piece of furniture by my side sold in a certain swedish store as a stool as a small table by my side right now in my living room.
And yet we all know a table when we see it, or think we do. We all understand what a table is. Except we don't. I can't be sure you knew that definition of it at all. And yet we wander through life assuming these things all the time.
Meanings wander in and out of existence all the time. What generally happens is that meaning changes well before the language describing it does, and then we have people getting very angry that that is not what the word means, who hadn't noticed that the thing the word originally meant stopped being a meaning anyone wanted to communicate a long time ago. It's very rare we have a Starburst moment, when something doesn't change its meaning at all, just the word used to express it (If you're below a certain age, or not British, you will have very little idea what I mean by that, probably even with the picture at the top of this post. I'm not explaining it. It's an irony thing).
Words don't continue to mean forever what they were originally invented to mean, but that doesn't mean that we can arbitrarily decide a word means whatever we want it to mean either. If we do, we're just wrong. But we have to concede that eventually, if enough people think the wrong meaning they have wrested it away from us, and then maybe we have to think up a new name for the original meaning. Because there's no point in using a word if you have to preface every conversation about it with a history lesson.
So, for the sake of clarity and to try and clear up any confusion:
Yes, my name is Claire. I legally adopted a new name it because it was required to do so to enjoy legal protections for being the person that I am. It was chosen by fate rather than because I liked it, because the notion of picking your own name seemed odd at the time. But no, it wasn't the one given to me when I was born.
Yes, I'm English, though my ancestry on my father's side, from whom I get my surname, is Welsh. But I'm not a fan of patriotism. I don't see anything to be proud of in the country you happen to have been born, whatever its history. But it does have cultural significance to me.
Yes, I'm feminine. By that I mean that my interests, behaviour and presentation are closely in line for the stereotype for my adopted gender. No, I do not believe that that is required of anyone of my gender, I do not believe it is something to be either proud or ashamed of for anyone of either gender. It just is.
Yes, I'm male, but only in the particular narrow biological sense that is probably the best known, in that I have a particular set of genitals, and I don't want anyone I'm meeting for a date to be shocked by that, I would want them to know that in advance. It is a fact I hate with every part of myself, it is not a fact I like, it is something that makes me feel sick to even acknowledge. But no, I am not definitely denying i have a female brain, I have no evidence against that particular assertion. But I do resent the assertion that I must believe it in order to feel legitimate.
Yes, I'm intelligent, educated, and dyslexic. In some IQ tests I have a score in excess of 150. I also acknowledge I have poor aptitude at some things, in some tests my IQ comes out under 90, and this is a feature of having a specific learning disability, or dyslexia, which held me back from reading or writing till I was much older than my peers, meant I left school having failed every exam I sat. But I did go to university as a mature student, and I count that as being educated, and my reading and writing now is not bad at all, actually, I hope you will agree?
Yes, I'm working-class and poor. This is probably the one I waver on the most, though, possibly because it is the most ill-defined. My mother was a dental nurse and my estranged father was a soup salesman, although they then went on to do much more middle-class things. I work in a call centre with nobody below me. I earn just above minimum wage for part-time work to only just above the tax threshold, drink beer, and spend time with my friends in the pub. However I confess my interests are all resolutely stereotypically middle-class, and I'm not scrimping for every penny, mainly thanks to owning my own home. At any one time I might say I was middle or working class, depending on my audience.
Yes, I'm a socialist. I think that the principle of fairness, "From each according to ability, to each according to need" is the ideal standard that the vast majority in this country will accept when it is explained to them. I also accept evolution, and recognise that people are motivated by selfishness above all, and that that ideal is a state that we are never likely to achieve. The best we can reasonably do is try and create an environment for capitalism wherein doing the right thing also makes the best profit, and pull back enough that those with the greatest need and the lowest ability still get enough that they can have a reasonable minimum standard of life, such as that which I enjoy.
Yes, I'm a feminist. By that I mean I believe in the ideal of the equality of both the sexes and the genders, and in most cases that means primarily with regard to the defence of women, they being most often disadvantaged by that inequality, though usually by lack of consideration rather than actual misogyny. No, that doesn't mean I think anti-male or anti-men policies don't exist. However when it does exist, it is usually because it is under the assumption that all men are masculine in all their interests and desires, and therefore I think the anti-femininity slant on the word still applies. No, that doesn't mean I am against all men, or all males.
Yes, I'm a straight woman. Oh, wait, I've done this one already.
There, are we all clear now? No, sadly probably not. Ah, well.
