Definitions of words are essential to dialogue and therefore to peacemaking.
The activists who do not want to define the word "woman" are not being intellectually honest.
If you want to attempt to redefine a word, you are welcome to make this attempt in any society in which there is free speech, but there is no word that can be defined by everyone who uses it. There cannot be three hundred million contradictory definitions for a word. If you think there can be, then you must respect all those definitions, and not seek to educate others on your definition.
If you hold that there can be millions of definitions of a word, you also cannot force others to agree with your definition.
This is especially so when it comes to legal issues: is my toy doll my daughter? If I feel that it is, can I claim it as a tax exemption? Is my granddaughter my daughter because I think so and she thinks so and therefore I can claim a child deduction on my tax form? Can one child be adopted into ten different families so that all those families can claim a child exemption because that child feels she has ten different parents and the parents feel the same?
Those activists who cannot or refuse to define a word, any word, are acting in a dishonest manner.
And that is because they end up defining what a woman is anyway, it is just that they are not up front about it - and here is their definition, which is usually finally pulled out of them only in an edgewise manner: gender is determined by according to how one identifies.
There, they admit it finally, usually only after prodding and only indirectly.
This is not because they are so inclusive, but because they are so exclusive.
What this really means is that they feel they hold the reins of social power, and can get away with whatever they do.
The activists at the forefront of non-definitions, then actually admitting that they do define according to feeling, will never be damaged by their definitions, because they will simply switch horses midstream should definitions change yet again.
Forced speech is next. Men taking away sports championships from women is already happening.
But the few who will not be damaged by these fuzzy definitions, like the activists who refrain from defining, and then actually do define by saying, for example, that gender is according to how one feels, care nothing for all the damage this intellectual anarchy will bring down on so so many others.
The same thing has occurred with "who is a Jew?" in the Jewish community. Those who claim that the definition is fuzzy, and cannot be defined, end up saying that it is just a feeling. They end up defining it, only in an edgewise manner and only after prodding.
The challenge for the modern liberal is - can you embrace the hands-off tolerance that prevented civil war in England? Can you live and let live? That was the key to avoiding civil war. Imposing gender awareness, or whatever, in schools is the opposite of tolerance. John Selden, one of the founders of the English Parliament and avid reader of traditional Jewish teachings, advocated for such ideas. Imposing is the opposite of tolerance.
Definitions do not spring from social activism or judicial activism. Definitions come from two places: one - they were handed down by God to Adam, then Noah, the forefathers and mothers, to Moses, and interpreted by intellectually honest, self-sacrificing scholars in the chain of tradition of Abrahamic religions until the present day.
An intellectually honest person does not side-step, change the subject, or use a simple question to bring up another topic, and is completely up front with the knowledge that he or she inherited from her chain of tradition. She is an empty vessel with wisdom flowing through her. He or she is part of a greater whole and if corrected, welcomes it. She is not here to only impose.
Two - the connotations of words change as culture changes. But this is a slow and voluntary process.
You actually do not have YOUR definition of a word or phrase. Definitions spring from without.
Those who claim non-definition, that is, that terms cannot be defined, or are ever so hard to define, are not being honest, because in the end they do define the very words they claim defy definition.
They are in positions of power. Be wary of them.
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