It's Not About The Smartest People In The Room Anymore

As you might expect, I’m a big fan of words. I love reading them, I love crafting them, I love their shades of meaning and tone. 

But their true value is more utilitarian; words are our primary means of connection to a shared reality. They’re the means by which our knowledge is preserved. They’re the tools that govern our ability to think and communicate clearly.

In my article, What Happens If Trans Women Aren’t Women?, I wrote about the increasingly controversial definition of the word “woman.” Unlike “lioness” or “doe” or “hen” or “vixen”, we’re no longer allowed to admit that “woman” simply refers to the female of a particular species.

Ingo, like myself, is exasperated by this shift in our shared reality. But there’s a deeper problem lurking.

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Ingo:

If the supposed smartest people in the room can't conceive of, much less agree, on what a woman is, how do you even... I give up. The world is crumbling, smothering any order and sense there ever was along the way. How tragic!

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Steve QJ:

If the supposed smartest people in the room can't conceive of, much less agree, on what a woman is, how do you even... I give up

I think the bigger problem is that of course they can. In the article I listed three, brilliant, highly educated women, all claiming they're unwilling or unable to define the word that happens to describe what they are. Even though they all use it frequently.

This would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. In fact, asking somebody what a woman was would have seemed bizarre ten years ago because the answer is so obvious. But today, it's basically a test of whether you're willing to answer the question honestly or not. Are you willing to take the abuse and the threats and the risk to your career? It's not about the smartest people in the room anymore. It's about the bravest.

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Ingo:

You're spot on about the current state of affairs. But, while the smartest cowards in the room may pretend not to know, soon enough the next generation of smart people may truly not know. Because their predecessors were too pretentious, afraid, and ideological to teach them right. That's the tragedy.

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Steve QJ:

soon enough the next generation of smart people may truly not know.

Yeah, this worries me too. Yet another reason why it's important that people stop cowering before this denial of reality.

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It’s often noted that new generations are kinder and more tolerant than the ones they replace. Much of the progress we see in civil right movements is the result of old attitudes dying away and new attitudes replacing them.

This is a good thing.

But it’s good when dealing with ignorance and hatred. When washing away the bigotry that has accumulated over the years. Not when it extends to the denial of reality.

Regardless of what some might try to claim, the idea that males and females are different and, on occasion, have different needs, is not bigotry.

Predatory men pose a danger to women. This won’t change in a generation. Males have athletic advantages over females. This won’t change in a generation. But what might change in a generation is our ability to think clearly about these facts.