When words mean anything, they mean nothing(ness)

Over the course of a few days in mid-January, the U.S. Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) heard oral argument in a major Title IX case, a U.S. Senate committee held a hearing about the danger of chemical abortions, and Pope Leo gave an address to foreign diplomats. What do these disparate events have in common?

All three expose the importance of truthful communication and the real-world danger of the abuse and misuse of language. At SCOTUS, lawyers and justices referred to boys and men with feminine pronouns, and used nonsensical words like “cisgender” and “transgender”; in the Senate hearing, an obstetrician from an elite medical school refused to answer the question, “can a man get pregnant?”; and in his address, the Pope lamented the loss of shared meaning in the words we use.

Taken together, these three proceedings remind us that we live in perilous times—times in which the very concept of truth is not merely elusive, but proactively denied by large, influential institutions. It is a time when, for some, words mean whatever any particular interest group says they mean, and that these meanings will be imposed by force if necessary.

The words matter

In a pivotal scene of Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, about the martyrdom of St. Thomas More, the English statesman is confronted by his daughter Margaret and her husband Will Roper after Parliament passed the Succession to the Crown Act of 1533. Among other things, the Act required any British subject, if commanded, to swear an oath recognizing both the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and Henry’s supremacy over the Church in England. The provision for the oath was added to the Act solely to test the loyalty of clerics and government officials—especially Thomas More—by forcing them to repudiate the authority of the Bishop of Rome.

When news of the Act became known, Margaret, Roper, and More had the following exchange:

Margaret: Father, by this Act, they’re going to administer an oath.

More: An oath! On what compulsion?

Roper: It’s expected to be treason!

More: What is the oath?

Roper: It’s about the marriage, sir.

More: But what is the wording?

Roper: We don’t need to know the wording—we know what it will mean!

More: It will mean what the words say! An oath is made of words! It may be possible to take it. Or avoid it.

Later in the play, Margaret visits More in the Tower of London, where he has been imprisoned for his refusal to take the oath. Margaret, in despair over her father’s inevitable execution if he does not consent, urges him to say the words of the oath, but think otherwise to himself.

More: You want me to swear to the Act of Succession?

Margaret: “God more regards the thoughts of the heart than the words of the mouth.” Or so you’ve always told me.

More: Yes.

Margaret: Then say the words of the oath and in your heart think otherwise.

More: What is an oath then but words we say to God?

Margaret: That’s very neat.

More: Do you mean it isn’t true?

Margaret: No, It’s true.

More: Then it’s a poor argument to call it “neat,” Meg. When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. [He cups his hands] And if he opens his fingers then . . . he needn’t hope to find himself again. Some men aren’t capable of [holding firm], but I’d be loath to think your father one of them.

Of course, both these lines of dialogue were invented by Bolt for his play. But they are derived from and consistent with various writings and letters of More and Margaret. In any event, both scenes are cautionary tales about the times in which we live.

Live not by lies

The January 13 SCOTUS arguments concerned laws in Utah and West Virginia that restrict participation in girls’ and women’s athletics competitions to . . . girls and women. Like laws in some 25 other states, the purpose of these statutes is to guard the integrity of girls’ and women’s competitions and to protect athletes from unreasonable risk. The context is the rise of boys and men intruding upon women’s sports and other spaces by calling themselves “trans girls” or “trans women,” thus denying opportunities to women while endangering their health and safety. These terms are contrasted by the words “ciswomen” or “cisgender,” for example, indicating, well, women who are actually women, rather than men cosplaying as women.

The argument before the Court seemed to indicate that Utah and West Virginia’s laws will be upheld by the Court. Even so, the argument was replete with the use of false words, terms, and categories, even among justices who seemed inclined to protect girls and women. The prefixes “cis” and “trans” are rooted in the pernicious, false ideology that, for example, men can become women or that there are two categories (at least) of women, the kind with ovaries and a vagina and the kind with testes and penises.

To use the terms “cis” and “trans” is implicitly to accept that these false assertions are true. If I use the term “cisgender woman,” it necessarily implies that I have agreed that there are other kinds of women. Words and phrases derive their meanings from communities of discourse; their definitions are determined by intellectual commitments to those linguistic communities. Thus, to use terms like “cis” and “trans” is to engage in speech that is objectively false. It is to participate in ideology rather than reality. This is why even those justices who are inclined to protect girls and women should refrain from using the false words and phrases rooted in pernicious ideology. When ideology trumps reality, we are on a short road to chaos.

This is illustrated by the Emory ob/gyn who refused to answer the simple question—repeated over and over—“Can a man get pregnant?” In her opening remarks, the physician smugly declared that she follows the science and evidence in her stand on abortion. This prompted Senator Josh Hawley to ask the simple, straightforward, scientific question of whether men can become pregnant. The Emory physician refused to answer the question, choosing instead to accuse Hawle of playing political games. In other words, she refused to state a simple, straightforward, categorical truth: only women can become pregnant.

Of course, we know why she refused. Like the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the SCOTUS case, the physician has embraced the false ideology that a woman becomes a man simply by declaring herself so. Thus, if a woman says she is a “trans man,” and the physician endorses the false ideology, she will conclude that men can, indeed, become pregnant. While she was clearly embarrassed by it, the physician participates in a falsehood that prevents her from answering the simplest of questions about basic human biology. She could not betray her ideological commitments, on the one hand, but she is rightly ashamed of those commitments on the other. So she refused to answer, calling the question politically motivated.

When words are divorced from reality, they become expressions of the false ideologies that produce them. Put another way, they become weapons of oppression, as they do not correspond to anything real. Thus, this physician at a prestigious medical school has literally rejected science and evidence, which calls into question her judgment about everything. Like the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the SCOTUS cases, this doctor lives by lies.

If the ideology does not arise, neither do the words, phrases, and grammar that communicate and advance it. We cannot participate in this ideology, even for the sake of argument. To use phrases like “cisgender” and “transgender” is to accept the “legitimacy” of illegitimate words. It is to assume the “truth” of false phrases and, thus, the ideology that produces them.

If meaning is “fluid,” ideology reigns

While Pope Leo’s address to the diplomatic corps occurred a few days before the SCOTUS argument and Senate hearing, it is a correction of both.

“Today, the meaning of words is ever more fluid and the concepts they represent are increasingly ambiguous,” the Pope observes. In the “contortions of semantic ambiguity, language is becoming more and more a weapon with which to deceive, or to strike and offend opponents.” This is not a mere academic problem. Rather, it has profound practical implications about the way we view the world, and how we live peaceably together. “When words lose their connection to reality,” Pope Leo continues, “reality itself becomes debatable and ultimately incommunicable.”

The result, of course, is precisely the Orwellian dystopia toward which we are rapidly descending in the U.S. By reducing language to the expression of false ideologies—rather than a participation in reality—we threaten the very freedom of thought and expression that the ideologically laden terms claim to be rooted.

“Freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed precisely by the certainty of language and the fact that every term is anchored in the truth,” explains Leo. But if words are expressions of ideology rather than truth, “a new Orwellian-style language, . . . in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fueling it.” Thus, declares Leo, “We need words once again to express distinct and clear realities unequivocally.”

The crisis in the U.S. over the meaning of words is not simply an arid debate. Rather, it goes to the heart of such things as private spaces for women, the practice of medicine, the formation of laws and regulations, and even freedom of expression. “It is painful to see how, especially in the West, the space for genuine freedom of expression is rapidly shrinking,” laments Pope Leo. The SCOTUS argument and Senate hearing reveal the truth about Leo’s observation. When ideology trumps truth, we are all the victims.