Beware the petition to OUP re dictionary definitions of women

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

There is a petition doing the rounds to change the definition of "woman" in the dictionary, and it all sounds very good.

Have you ever searched online for the definition of a woman? 'Bitch, besom, piece, bit, mare, baggage, wench, petticoat, frail, bird, bint, biddy, filly' - these are the words which the Oxford's English Dictionary online tells us mean the same as ‘woman’. This sexist dictionary must change.

This petition is to ask Oxford University Press to:

^Eliminate all phrases and definitions that discriminate against and patronise women and/or connote men’s ownership of women;
Enlarge the dictionary's entry for ‘woman’;^

Sounds good, but then tucked in at the end

Include examples representative of minorities, for example, a transgender woman, a lesbian woman, etc.

Disappointingly this is from the Fawcett society.

God took Adam's rib and begot Eve - then Adam said, "but Lord, I must be Eve too, because I fancy having a vagina - it's sexy"

bleuuugh

Not sure exactly what Adam took a bite of but if it was an apple I think it might have begun to ferment.

"Adam was drunk" is an excellent prologue to the Bible. Eve was probably just trying to clean up his crap.

*And ended up being blamed for it.

I’d lie down under the library truck and let it roll over my head before I’d sign a petition to remove words from a dictionary.

Those words exist, they the history of language and of the people who speak it, including women.

Certainly dictionary definitions are not value-free, but that doesn’t mean they should be removed. All history is value-laden, it’s the nature of humans. We can’t expunge the bad bits just because it triggers the feelings of some vague approximation of a rational, adult human.

You feeble children of identity politics should be ashamed of yourselves. The world is hurtling into the fire and you want to damage one of the towering creations of human achievement. The OUP is the result of painstaking effort by hundreds of people, over decades. That includes many women, two of whom were on the editorial team. How is erasing their work any kind of feminism?

Tomorrow is Samuel Johnson’s birthday. Don’t make him come for you.

Beautifully put, EmmaGoldman.

Surely OED were telling the TRAs to fuck off in that article.

Dictionaries should record how words are used (for good or bad) not how they ought to be used. They are works of record, not engines of social engineering.

(Which is why I always thought the whole "but that's what it says in the dictionary" argument was naive and misguided - there are far better arguments one can use).

All words, even the N-word (appropriately flagged as derogatory) have to be included. Because to understand the role language plays in all spheres of life, including the way it's used in the politics of oppression, you have to have a whole picture of language, not an airbrushes, bowdlerised version.

The OP thought it was fine apart from the last bit but in fact none of it is true.

I foolishly thought it being from the Fawcett society gave it some credence and didn't independently check it's claims.

So a cynic might think the whole wordy petition was for the purpose of getting 30,000 people to ask the OED to make sure that woman and lesbian includes transwomen...

Dictionaries document the spoken word in use as well as the etymology of words. They follow they do not lead. Spoken language leads.

Remember when you just assumed the Fawcett society of all groups realized that women exist and are actual people and not a fantasy that exists in a man's head?

All words, even the N-word (appropriately flagged as derogatory) have to be included. Because to understand the role language plays in all spheres of life, including the way it's used in the politics of oppression, you have to have a whole picture of language, not an airbrushes, bowdlerised version.

YY.

The English language convention is to decsribe and not prescribe. The French have their Academie that governs the language. The German speaking nations have periodic international conferences to rule on spelling. English goes where it goes, and the dictionary follows.

Remember when you just assumed the Fawcett society of all groups realized that women exist and are actual people

I do not remember that. Was that a thing?

Many organisations seem to have become institutionally bored of doing good work, unnoticed, and have decided to shout loudly about what everyone else should do instead- it's much easier and the CEO has lots of 'evidence' for their annual pay review.

You do realize what the Fawcett society is? Or at least was.

Dictionaries document the spoken word in use as well as the etymology of words. They follow they do not lead. Spoken language leads.

actually, dictionaries document the written word.

You do realize what the Fawcett society is? Or at least was.

I guess you are saying that pointing out how others behave is kind of Fawcett's legitimate purpose?

Fair point. I think there is a reasonable distinction between campaigning for meaningful positive change which impacts people's lives and stuff like this petition.

This is an organization that was involved in getting women the vote. I'm pretty sure that at some point in their history they knew what a woman is even if whichever woke fool is currently running campaigns is pretending not to now.

All women's organizations have been taken over by AWA.
Women's orgs are their primary target.
Fawcett society included. Their history consigned to history.

Unfortunately that's true. Which is not an excuse for being too lazy to google said org to find out what their background is if one (very very clearly) doesn't know.

I'm pretty sure that at some point in their history they knew what a woman is even if whichever woke fool is currently running campaigns is pretending not to now.

Yeah, sorry; was being facetious but unclear.

I meant that it's been so long seeing them keep making attention grabbing but empty campaigns, or prioritise things which are not women's rights (even opposing them) that I don't recall a time when they were useful.

I am aware of the heritage that this squanders. Thinks would be very different today if Millicent had focused on women talking about being 'kind and inclusive' instead of acting with 'Steadfastness and Courage'.

How about starting a counter-petition, with the corrected definition as many have suggested?

If we resurrected any of the suffragette generation they'd tell their mealy-mouthed, cowardly replacements to grow a damn spine.

Well, I suppose this is a movement that wants to rewrite birth certificates to what the subject of the certificate wishes had been written at the time, so removing words from the dictionary that are mean and replacing them with definitions that include completely opposite things fits with that whole 'reality and clear records are bad' vibe they're working with.

It's like the old cliche about history being written by the victors on steroids.