 We are in the middle of a culture war, and it's getting pretty ugly. One frequent battle revolves around sex and gender. For example, is Caitlyn Jenner a man or a woman? One side of the battle shouts, of course he's a man, he's just denying reality. Another side shouts, of course she's a woman, and if you insist on calling her a man, you're just a bigot. These disagreements have only become louder and more impassioned over the years, especially as more people identify themselves as transgender, transracial, trans-abled, or even trans-species. For my own examination, I think both sides are mistaken. The war isn't between delusion on one side and bigotry on another. I think it's about language. In fact, I think by being careful about our language, we can peacefully resolve most of the disagreement. Imagine the following dialogue between some guy named Joe and his neighbor. Joe says, I am blue. And his neighbor says, what? No, you're not. Joe responds, yes, I'm telling you I'm blue. His neighbor says, well, it doesn't matter what you're telling me, you're certainly not blue. Joe gets upset and says, I think I would know. I mean, how can you deny my experience of being blue? His neighbor responds, well, if you think you're experiencing being blue, you're deluded. Just factually speaking, you aren't blue and it doesn't really matter what you say. Joe responds, well, I know that I'm blue and it makes you kind of an asshole for not accepting what I'm telling you about my internal experience. And his neighbor says, well, your internal experience is wrong. I don't care if you think I'm an asshole, you aren't blue. So who's right and who's wrong? The answer is, of course, it depends on what they mean by blue. If Joe and his neighbor mean different things, then their disagreement is kind of a waste of time. When Joe says, I am blue, he's referencing his own internal experience of feeling melancholy or being down in the dumps. When his neighbor says you are not blue, he's referencing his physical color. His skin color is simply not blue and it doesn't matter how strongly Joe disagrees. So how silly would they feel if they realized that they were talking past each other? Joe is certainly not physically blue, but he might be mentally blue. I think this is the precise error committed by both sides of the gender and sex debates. They're talking past each other. Each side is right when they use their own definitions. Each side is wrong when they use their opponent's definition. So is Caitlyn Jenner a man or a woman? The answer is clear. It depends on what we mean by man or woman. If our definitions are imprecise or ambiguous, we're guaranteed to generate confusion and passionate disagreement. I see the linguistic divide between two camps, what I call traditionalists on one side and progressives on the other. Traditionalists think that words should mean what they've always meant. The terms male and female, for example, are used to reference objective biological facts, i.e. genitalia, body composition, and genetics. That's the way it's always been, therefore that's what the term should mean. Progressives, on the other hand, are a bit more flexible. They think that words can and sometimes should change their meaning. For example, just because marriage has been used one way throughout history doesn't mean that's a good thing. And in fact, how we define our words can greatly affect people's life experiences. To the progressive, traditionalists are far too rigid, and they overlook the social consequences of labeling marriage or race or gender one particular way. Calling somebody a man isn't simply referencing their biology. It's putting implicit social constraints on that person. This distinction is central to the disagreement, the difference between objective external biological facts and subjective internal psychological feeling. The traditionalists are referencing objective facts when they categorize somebody as male or female. The progressives are referring to internal feeling. Neither was right or wrong, no different than our example of Joe who insists that he's blue because that's how he feels. The first step in clearing up the confusion is to lay out a set of facts that I think all parties would probably agree to, in no particular order. One, biological facts are objective. You are what you are. If you are a biological male, then merely labeling yourself as a biological female does not change objective reality. Two, the categories of biological male and female are not binary absolutes. Some people are intersex, meaning their objective biology is neither male nor female. Three, societies across the globe have constructed expectations for behavior based on biology. Men are associated with masculinity, and women are associated with femininity. We can call those expectations gender roles. Four, some people do not fit into traditional gender roles. Some biological men are very feminine, and some biological women are very masculine. Those individuals often face social condemnation because of this. Five, the categories of masculine and feminine are not binary absolutes either. Everybody has a blend of masculine and feminine characteristics. I think nearly everybody would agree with these statements. However, what leads to so much confusion is what particular words people use to reference this difference between objective and subjective. So it makes perfect sense to have two words. Sex is a biological construction, gender is a social construction. Your sex is objective, your gender is subjective. You are inescapably born into your sex, and you are socially boxed into your gender. So the progressives, I think, have a point. It doesn't make sense to force somebody into a gender role just because they were born as a particular sex. But the traditionalists have a point too. It's useful to make distinctions between the sexes for navigating life. Biological men and women, for example, probably shouldn't use the same locker rooms. Plus, I think most people would agree with the following. Gender roles are accurate approximations of human behavior. It's true to say that your average woman is more feminine than your average man, and vice versa. Furthermore, masculinity and femininity have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Macho men are better suited for fighting off barbarians, and feminine women are better suited for nurturing children. What's the problem? As far as I can tell, language. Take an example of a feminine man. He has an objective male biology. He's got male genitals, a Y chromosome, high levels of testosterone, and a high muscle to fat ratio. But mentally, he has traditionally feminine characteristics. He's gentle, empathetic, and sensitive. He might say quite accurately that I self-identify as a female, or my mindset is more feminine than masculine. Now, for precise and specify, though I self-identify as a female that doesn't mean I am objectively a female, I don't think any traditionalist would object. It's no different than saying I am a man who thinks like a woman. But here's the problem. Progressives insist on using language in a particular way. They want everybody to be able to say freely and uncontroversially, I am a female, regardless of their objective sex. They want the terms male and female to remain flexible. Sometimes it references sex, and sometimes it references gender. This is precisely the problem. Historically speaking, the terms male and female have been used to reference objective sex. The terms masculine and feminine have been used to reference subjective dispositions. Therefore, I think the progressives are fighting a losing battle against language. I understand the reason they don't like the additional social constraints upon people when they are biologically identified, but I don't think a helpful solution is to try to change language. Here's my honest question that I hope somebody will answer for me, because I don't understand. What is the difference between somebody saying, I am a man who thinks like a woman, and I am a female? The former seems uncontroversial and explicitly references somebody's internal mindset. The latter is the one that causes the controversy, because it ambiguously references sex or gender. So what is the purpose on insisting on using male-female language to talk about masculinity and femininity? A more recent argument from the progressives goes like this. Gender comes from the brain structure of the individual. Certain parts of the brain are structured differently, whether one is biologically male or biologically female. With transgender people we see a peculiarity. Their brain structure more closely resembles the brain structure of the opposite sex. So men who self-identify as women have brains that look objectively closer to women's brains. This, the argument goes, is what we actually mean when we use male and female language, the physical characteristics of the brain. So let's say for the sake of argument that all of their claims are true about brain structure. That still doesn't resolve the problem. The conflation between the objective and subjective still remains. Let's simply examine our own language. What does it mean to say, I have a female brain? Well, we have two answers depending on what we mean by female. The objective sex meaning or the subjective gender meaning. If we're talking about objective biology, we would say that I have a female brain means biological women have certain physical traits in their brain, and I also have those traits. But notice that doesn't mean therefore I am a woman. I mean brain structure doesn't change genitalia, body composition, or genetics, which is what the term sex references. If we're talking about subjective gender, then the sentence I have a female brain means something like men and women tend to think and act in different ways and they tend to value different things. Those general patterns of male thinking and acting and valuing, we call masculine. And the female patterns we call feminine. My internal experience is more closely aligned with the female or feminine patterns. No problem. If we keep these strong lines between how I am objectively and how I feel subjectively, I think the confusion and disagreements go away. Also note differences in brain structure should be expected to correlate with differences in thought patterns. Brain and mind are strongly linked. But somebody's brain structure does not determine their sex. It might determine their gender, how they self-identify or view themselves in society, but not other objective biological features. But what about the stickler who says, Steve, gender is exactly identical with brain structure. The term male or female references specific objective parts of the brain and nothing more. This too is a losing battle. First of all, it's another fight against language. The terms male and female have never been used to reference parts of somebody's brain. Second, it overlooks the whole reason we make the distinction between sex and gender, namely to reference one's own internal experience versus their outside biology. This runs into a third problem. What about transgendered individuals, those people who are biologically male, whose brain structure is male, and yet who self-identify as female? If what we mean by gender is identical to brain structure, then transgendered people are an impossibility. Of course, the confusion resolves itself again when you differentiate between subjective gender and objective biology. With this distinction, the biological male who has a male brain structure yet self-identifies as a female does not represent any conceptual challenge. There's no confusion. Transgendered people simply identify more closely with the opposite sex's gender. So once we've clarified our language, we can start addressing the social concerns of traditionalists and progressives. There's a huge difference between what is the metaphysical status of a transgendered person versus how should we view or treat transgendered individuals in society. So here's my own resolution to any tension. One, you are how you are. Two, other people are how they are. Three, people should be how they are. Now that's another way of saying people are different and who cares. Life is too short to worry about the relationship between your neighbor's genitals and his self-identification. In fact, by clarifying our language surrounding sex and gender, I think we can more accurately identify two groups of people, bigots and crusaders. The bigots are people who have a serious problem with feminine men or masculine women. They think that biology and gender should be forced together. Social gender roles exist for a reason, and if you break them, well, that's problematic behavior to the bigot. Crusaders, on the other hand, are those who insist on waging a war against language. Anybody can call themselves anything, and that's what they are. And they often add, and if you disagree, you're a bigot. Crusaders are especially popular on college campuses. They are focused on protecting people's feelings, often to the point of explicit denials of reality. They aren't willing to make the distinction between objective facts and subjective feelings because they think it's offensive to claim that somebody might be wrong about their identity. From my experiences, I think the bigots and crusaders are in the minority. If we're precise about our terminology, I don't think most people would care about transgenderism, and I think they'd agree that it's unacceptable to force people into boxes based on their biology. Gender roles might be helpful in society, but they shouldn't be absolute. Furthermore, it's true that labels are not impartial. They come with baggage, immediate associations that people make based on your label. In all but the strictest of circumstances, calling somebody a man implies more than just biology. Masculinity is inherently tied to being a man. So if a biological man doesn't like the additional baggage of being called a man and prefers the assumptions tied to being called a woman, it seems reasonable to be polite and call him a woman. If Bradley would prefer to be called Chelsea because he prefers the social connotations of being female, then we should just call him Chelsea. And if he would prefer that we start referencing him as she, then I just don't see the harm in it. Again, as long as we're precise about what our words mean and as long as we differentiate between objective reality and subjective feeling. After all of this, it's clearer than ever. Language is tricky and a dangerous thing. If we care about critical reasoning and precision, we must deeply examine our language, how words work, what they mean, and how they relate to reality. What may appear as a heated debate between delusional progressives on one end and bigoted traditionalists on the other might actually come down to a disagreement about language. www.patterson.com