LANGUAGE is the means by which we communicate with precision and clarity. One of the things that makes English difficult for foreigners is the oblique way in which we sometimes express ourselves, which is why the curate’s egg can be ‘good in parts’, Jim Hacker’s ill-conceived proposals can be ‘brave’ and Lord Copper can be correct ‘up to a point’.
Today the meaning of words has become increasingly malleable and language is regularly used to gull the listener or reader into at best a state of torpor (listen to Kamala Harris or Keir Starmer) and at worst a state of acquiescence and submission as happens under repressive regimes. A couple of recent examples illustrate the point.
Earlier this year The Spectator published a piece describing as ‘a man who claims to be a woman’ the writer of an interview with Nicola Sturgeon. The individual, a certificated trans person, would not have chosen the description but one cannot deny its accuracy. Also, given the interview covered Sturgeon’s views on ‘gender rights’, the neutrality or otherwise of the interviewer was relevant.
It’s a given that gender rights, gender self-ID and deadnaming belong in a realm of linguistic jiggery-pokery whereby a progressive label affords a kind of universal legitimacy to a condition or psychological need few of us ever experience or wish to celebrate.
A complaint was made to IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (which oversees The Spectator and most of the UK’s print media) after the interviewer, Juno Dawson, claimed to have been ‘deliberately misgendered’. https://pressgazette.co.uk/the-wire/newspaper-corrections-media-mistakes-errors-legal/spectator-juno-dawson-ipso/ IPSOS ruled that the piece was accurate and did not constitute harassment. It did, however, rebuke The Spectator for breaching the discrimination section (Clause 12) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, which states the press must avoid reference to an individual’s sex or gender identity, as well as to other attributes including sexual orientation and, as a kicker, any physical or mental illness or disability.
IPSO does allow such references to be made where they are ‘genuinely relevant’ to the story, which of course in this instance they were. It nonetheless ruled that the language ‘was personally belittling and demeaning toward the complainant, in a way that was both pejorative and prejudicial of the complainant due to her gender identity’.
Forget the dictionary definitions of those four adjectives – belittling, demeaning, pejorative and prejudicial – that are not remotely apposite here since they all stand for ‘hurtful’. IPSO would have you believe that something as mutable as an individual’s gender identity trumps his or her sex, which is immutable.
Of course, the wilful and widespread substitution of ‘gender’ to mean ‘sex’ is a great enemy of clarity in this area, because sex is unarguable while gender is infinitely supple, as for example in the absurdity of children being said to have their gender ‘assigned’ at birth.
It is helpful here to remember poor Pabllo Vittar, not the Brazilian drag queen, who might immediately spring to mind, but the short-haired miniature dachshund that was born (and will live and die) male but was assigned gender fluidity by his owner in Cambridge.
Unusually for a dog, Pabllo wears a purple frou-frou dress in photographs, which is demeaning in the true sense of the word and belittles his status as a dog. He does not want your pity; he rejects the pejorative and prejudicial slurs as being simply beneath him – which in the context of a miniature dachshund means extremely low indeed.
My second example is from the well publicised denouement of the infamous tweet that could have seen the columnist Allison Pearson filing her copy from Devil’s Island.
The story has had widespread media coverage – and was detailed by Janice Davis on TCW – but it’s worth highlighting that Mrs Pearson was doorstepped at home on Remembrance Sunday by a couple of police officers unable to tell her anything about her supposed offence or its putative victim. She subsequently declined an invitation to be interviewed at a police station and that appears to be the long and the short of her personal involvement in this investigation.
The saga is sinister and bizarre.
As many as three police forces played ping-pong with the case before Essex Police sent around its bluebottles on a mission whose purpose remains open to conjecture. Subsequently and for reasons unrecorded the supposed non-crime hate incident was ‘escalated’ into a potential criminal offence before being allowed to curl up and die – abandoned with the sanction of the CPS – when the media brouhaha kicked off.
When the Head of Essex Police was interviewed on LBC by Nick Ferrari, the top cop maintained his force had followed all reasonable lines of enquiry before concluding no offence had been committed. His officers, he asserted, had investigated the crime proportionately. It is noteworthy that the Chief Constable still refers to a ‘crime’ rather than an ‘allegation’ or ‘complaint’ – it’s as though he’s aggrieved at having left a guilty collar unfelt.
If, as the chief constable asserted, all reasonable lines of enquiry had been followed, why was Allison Pearson approached or invited to attend a police station? She cannot have added anything to advance or shut down the enquiry, so turning up unannounced at her home was not remotely justifiable. Sending officers round armed with little more than embarrassment at the silliness of their assignment was not only ineffective policing but also slightly daft given Ms Pearson’s media profile.
The icing on the cake though is that even then Essex Police dropped the affair only after referring it up to the Crown Prosecution Service, and the cherry on the icing on the cake is that the Chief Constable claimed his men had behaved ‘very, very ethically’, which use of language is arguably an aggravated grammatical hate incident.
I shall need to become a member of the Free Speech Union before translating that last quote for you, but I think the gist is that Allison was a jolly lucky girl, and we should all watch our step if we know what’s good for us.
Language is increasingly subverted by those who wish to propagandise or control how we respond to their actions. It has evolved into a safe and effective tool for making the unacceptable acceptable. That famous exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty applies perfectly to our looking-glass age:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’
‘The question is,” said Alice ‘whether you can make words mean different things – that’s all.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’
There’s more than a hint of menace in that last response.
