Recently the SNP MP Kirsty Blackman tweeted
We need to talk about
menstruation. Contrary to the views of a very famous author, using the word
"menstruator" is not an attempt to erase the word "woman".
The word menstruator is used to describe people who menstruate. This is not the
same as women.
What the graph shows is that there is a subset of menstruators who are not women? I assume she doesn’t mean cows, mares and bitches. So, what can she mean? She must mean that men can menstruate.
This is why she is tweeting about a famous author.
A quick look at Kirsty Blackman’s biography tells us
that she studied medicine at the University of Aberdeen but left the course.
Perhaps her trouble was with biology.
There is a further problem. Blackman’s SNP has been
introducing laws which protect certain groups of people from hate crimes. One
of these groups is transgender people. I responded to Blackman’s tweet by
asking whether if I disagreed with her, I would be charged with a hate crime. She
didn’t reply.
But this is a genuine problem because of the basic meaning
of ordinary words.
An adult female human
being. The counterpart of man.
It defines sex as
Either of the two main
categories (male and female) into which humans and many other living things are
divided on the basis of their reproductive functions; (hence) the members of
these categories viewed as a group; the males or females of a particular
species, esp. the human race, considered collectively.
Linguistically we mean that a woman is a person of the
sex that can bear offspring. It doesn’t matter if this particular woman or
girl cannot bear offspring either because she is too old or too young. They
belong to the sex that can bear offspring. How do these women do this? They do
it because of their biology and owing to the fact that they can menstruate. If
they cannot menstruate, they cannot have children.
What about gender? How does this affect the issue?
Gender is defined by the OED in a number of ways, but
the relevant one is this.
Males or females viewed
as a group; Also: the property or fact of belonging to one of
these groups.
There is no distinction therefore between sex and
gender. The property of belonging to one
or other of the groups of human beings makes your gender male or female. If you
are an adult female you are a woman, if you are an adult male you are a man. Q.E.D.
But were did we get the idea that people could change
gender? Did we get it from experience, or did we deduce it using logic? Did we get it from the ordinary meaning of words. No it
was invented in America.
The OED defines this sense.
Psychology and Sociology
(originally U.S.). The state of being male or female as expressed by social or
cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones;
When did this usage begin. The OED lists the first
example as occurring in a psychology journal in 1945.
How do we learn words? We learn them by being taught by
our parents and others. We are taught the words “man” and “woman” based on
objective characteristics. We learn that we have given birth to a “boy” or a
girl” based on physical appearance. Until very recently in human history the words "man" and "woman" "male" and "female" were considered to be objective characteristics that
could not be changed. This is how each of us learned these words.
Blackman’s word “menstruator” does not appear in the
OED. The reason for this is obvious. It has never been needed until she invented it. Women belong to
a sex that can menstruate. Men do not.
Humpty Blackman is sitting on an SNP wall and she is
making up words.
When I use a word," Kirsty said, in rather a
scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor
less."
But the problem here is that the SNP are in control of
the law and they can prosecute people like me for a hate crime if they dislike
what I write. In Scotland am I still allowed to use words according to how they
are defined in our greatest dictionary or must we learn a whole knew SNP
vocabulary.
