Monday, October 28, 2013

A Word

I finished Julia Serano's new book yesterday. It is good. It is very good. I can't really talk about it because I'm not sure I can do it justice, but I do want to digress from a certain part of it.

At one point, she briefly talks about cis resistance to the terms 'cis' and 'cissexism'. She attributes this resistance to the idea that accepting those as legitimate terms means accepting her and her ideas as also legitimate- that cissexism is predicated on trans* being fake.

I can't disagree, but I feel like it also stems from a more generalized place than the cis/trans relationship.

When I first encountered the term 'cissexual' as the opposite of 'transsexual', I immediately rejected it in my mind. This didn't have anything to do with any opposition to transsexuality- that made some sense to me, but cissexual was such a nonsense word. Then I learned the etymology of it (cis has always meant the opposite of trans) and that this dichotomy is found in the sciences (specifically in organic chemistry.) At which point I embraced it fully- the word has etymological validity as so it's a great word.

Etymological validity is fundamental to the natural progress of language, to people understanding what you're talking about. You can blog because you understand what a web log might be because you understand what the World Wide Web is. Etymological validity is continuity. Etymological validity is the preservation of the core of language. Etymological validity is utter bullshit.

Because I understand that a Jedi fights the Sith. I understand that a Blorgon is the Inspector Spacetime equivalent of a Dalek. I understand that this dren is a load of smeg and frak the people who say otherwise. I understand that a Vulcan has a katra and a Klingon wields a bat'leth. I understand that I am a muggle and that every single word in this paragraph, despite having no etymological validity, is perfectly cromulent because those words were necessary to define something and someone made that word.

Appealing to etymological validity is a generic privilege of gatekeepers. The entire course of language is dominated by the flow of the majority over the minority. History is written by the victors and it is written in the words they want.

So we can recognize that English lacks a third-person, genderless pronoun to refer to people. We stress over "should we use 'they'? it's not okay to use 'it' right?" when people have already made those pronouns. But those pronouns don't have etymological validity, i.e. those pronouns were made up by people who we don't want to give the position of power that lets them change our language.

We can recognize that English lacks a second-person plural, and we don't how the hell you're supposed to refer to a group of people without confusing the issue. Except for that we have y'all, yinz, youse, and you guys. But those are unacceptable- they come from lower classes and dammit we need a word that we can imagine people with power saying. The Queen is not going to say 'yinz,' can you imagine?

And these are things that are trying to correct deep, fundamental flaws of the language itself- this doesn't even go into something like cissexual which is necessary, but its necessity is utterly invisible to the vast majority of people. Allowing everyone to contribute to a conversation means allowing everyone to say it in their own words- no matter where the words come from.

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