SARA CARTER - STAFF - DEC 19, 2022
The fetish progressive liberals display for redefining foundational human truths will not end well. The Cambridge Dictionary has succumbed to their fantasy, going so far as to redefining ‘man’ and ‘woman.’
The New York Post writes of the changes:
“Man” now includes the definition “an adult who lives and identifies as a male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
In the same vein, the updated definition of “woman” reads “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
In a New York Post op-ed by Mark Goldblatt titled
The article details the confusion unleashed by the Cambridge Dictionary using Pete Buttigieg, current Secretary of Transportation of the United States government, as an illustrative example. “Consider the statement “Pete Buttigieg is a gay man.” You probably think you know what it means: Pete Buttigieg is an adult male human being who is sexually attracted to other adult male human beings. But,” the article continues, per the Cambridge Dictionary, the assertion may mean at least three other things.
The article goes through the new variations allowed under the revised definitions:
For example, the otherwise benign phrase could mean that Mr. Buttigieg is an adult male human being who is attracted to female human beings who identify as male. The phrase could also mean that Mr. Buttigieg is an adult female human being who identifies as male and is attracted to other adult male human beings. There is at least one other variation of meaning to add to the loss of clarity of meaning. The phrase could mean that Mr. Buttigieg is an adult female human being who identifies as male and is attracted to other female human beings who identify as male.
These conflicting interpretations of “gay man” exist because, as reported, the Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of “man” now includes what the article describes as “the grammatically tortured, trans-sensitive addendum” which is “an adult who lives and identifies as a male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.” Its definition of “woman” has been likewise stretched.
This is what happens, the article reports, to language and logic when you reject what’s demonstrably true in favor of what a sympathetic group of people wishes were true. The article advances the questionable proposition “You start out with good intentions” and concludes one may not end up not being able to say clearly what you mean.
Of course, language evolves. For elaboration, not long ago, the sentence “Pete Buttigieg is a gay man” would mean Mayor Pete is a happy, fun-loving fellow. “Gay” acquired a “homosexual” sense relatively recently. But words don’t get blurred with their antonyms to render what’s false true.
The article asserts that “male” and female” have clear definitions: they’re sexual classifications. There are only two sexual classifications, and even in those vanishingly rare instances where observable anatomy isn’t determinative, a person’s genome will reveal his or her sex with 100% accuracy.
Dictionaries have become venues of warfare. “These points get contentious only if you argue that “man,” “woman,” “male” and “female” are fluid terms: arbitrary assignments and subjective realizations — rather than objective, empirical observations — “that can be overridden by untestable gender identities.” That’s why dictionaries are now battlegrounds. Men become women and women become men only by substituting gender identities for sexual classifications. The article concludes that the “demand to substitute freely is the whole of the transgender-recognition case.” When reality is extinguished, things will not end well, because the impulse to eliminate reality can be boundless.