Fifty years of word games
by Jonathan Saunders, Christian Concern:
This week marks 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, and lots has changed. Laws have changed. Public attitudes have changed. Institutions have changed. These might all appear obvious.
But one of the subtler changes has been the reshaping of language; the battle of words.
The sexual revolution has brought with it a new vocabulary: ‘gay’, ‘straight’, ‘queer’, ‘sexual orientation’, ‘gender’, ‘gender identity’, ‘homophobia’, ‘LGBT community’, ‘transgender’, ‘sex assigned at birth’, ‘fight for equality’ and much more.
The sexual revolutionaries have put immense pressure on society to learn this new vocabulary, and have for the most part succeeded in mainstreaming it.
Just think about the phrase ‘I feel very gay today’ and how it would be interpreted in 1917 and 2017. In both years, it would probably garner the same response (‘good for you’) but for very different reasons.
Introducing new words, and redefining old ones, has hugely affected the debate:
Confusion
First, new words create a fog in the public discourse. They enable you to talk about a topic without being challenged. It’s a bit like using big words or long sentences. Politicians do this all the time. Fans of Yes Minister will identify strongly with the notion of ‘pulling a Sir Humphrey’.
So, if I can talk in the language of Queer Theory and gender mainstreaming, speak of ‘sex assigned at birth’ and (self-proclaimed) ‘gender identity’, and the ‘equality of all sexual orientations and gender identities’, I can make myself sound like an expert when in fact the concepts I am speaking about have no basis in reality.
Those who do not speak the language are seen as failing to understand, and everyone listening is confused. But the person with the clever words must surely be right.
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