Category: language

Words and phrases I detest

April 27, 2025 • 12:40 pm

Yep, it’s time for this feature again. (I have been lax in accumulating words and phrases). Note that I am not trying to change the English language here—only saying what irritates me, and why. Here are four examples, some of which I may have kvetched about before:

Advancement.  NO! NO! NO!  “Advances” has always been sufficient before, so why this gussying-up of a good word? I think the “-ment” suffix is intended to make the speaker sound more erudite, though perhaps people aren’t aware that “advances” is a perfectly good word.

Dudebro.  This word simply means “males I don’t like”, either referring to all males or a specified group. Either way, it is offensive and wouldn’t be tolerated if there was a similar word for women (there probably are, but I’m not going to suggest any.)

“It is what it is.”  This seems to me, on the surface, a redundancy. Things are what they are. Yes, of course! I suppose it could be construed as meaning, “These things can’t be changed,” but why not use that phrase instead of one that’s either ambiguous or redundant.  It also implies that what is cannot be changed, which stifles progress.

“That is so niche.”  This clearly means “this is too specific” in some sense. But “niche” is a noun, not an adjective.  I’m sure it’s too late to stop this one, just as it’s impossible to stop “genius” being used as an adjective instead of a noun, as in “here are ten genius hacks for your closet”.

More words and phrases I despise

January 27, 2025 • 9:30 am

I haven’t been accumulating these much, probably because I stopped reading the main source, The Huffington Post.  Ergo some of these may be repeats from days of yore, but so be it, as we have new readers. I’ll give just three:

1.)  “Advancements” used instead of “advances”.   The longer version, which as far as I can see is identical to the older but shorter one, seems to be taking over (I’ll give one example below).  Why is this happening? Only, as far as I can see, because “advancesments” sounds fancier and more intellectual than the simpler “advances.” Let’s go back to the shorter word!

Here’s a Huffpost example from 2011 (click to read if you must):

2.) “Stakeholder” used as “someone with a material interest in a (usually) political or ideological discussion”. This word is not per se offensive, but is inevitably associated with wokeness, like “problematize” or “intersectional.” Particularly in science, it is used to argue (often without reasons) that some people have a say over how science is done. Example: cases in which animal bones or Native American found on government property automatically become controlled by Native American “stakeholders” from a given tribe, even if it cannot be shown that stakeholders from the tribe ever had any stake in the objects at issue (see Elizabeth Weiss’s book).  I consider the word is a canary in the coalmine of woke prose.

HOWEVER, although one sees this word frequently, I notice that those who police language now consider it offensive, as in the articles below (click to read):

From Research Impact Canada:

The second site reports why the word is bad and some suggested replacements (which nobody seems to be using):

The word stakeholder is becoming increasingly contested due to its colonial connotations. Has this hit your radar and are you trying out other words?

In November, Mark Reed posted a thought piece on the use of the word stakeholder concluding “ultimately that means re-thinking our use of the word “stakeholder”.”

The issue with the word stakeholder is that in a colonial context, a stakeholder was the person who drove a stake into the land to demarcate the land s/he was occupying/stealing from Indigenous territories. Continued use of the term can be construed as disrespectful of Indigenous people as well as perpetuating colonization and re-traumatization.

Mark’s post was followed up by a fairly lively LinkedIn discussion. The only conclusion was that everyone respected the discussion. Some options to replace stakeholder were rights holder, KMb constituents, actant and potential beneficiaries.

On November 25, Research Impact Canada (RIC) held a discussion on the use of the word stakeholder in a Dr RIC session – a monthly member driven call where RIC members craft the agenda. About 25 RIC member participants were present. In advance, I sent around Mark’s first post and the subsequent LinkedIn discussion to get everyone on the same page. Some interesting points arose in the discussion:

  • Stakeholder isn’t used by some who have a community-based research practice. It comes across as corporate.
  • It has a “man vibe”
  • I checked with co-chair of Indigenous Council at York University, and he was not aware of the issue. It doesn’t mean it isn’t, just that it is not a discussion that has permeated all Indigenous settings.

One take away is that this is an issue beyond Indigenous contexts so an important discussion whether or not you are approaching this as decolonization.

Some options to stakeholder were

  • Those in the circle

  • Those who do/should care

  • Partners – although that was acknowledged as having a legal definition

3.) “Dudebros”.    This is often used as a general disparagement of men in general, not just a certain type of man. If people want to disparage, say, pretentious college frat guys as “dudebros”, then say whom you’re disparaging. The term should be as offensive to men as the word “chicks” is for women.

*********

The object here is for readers to add their own phrases they don’t like (one I considered here was “it is what it is”, though it can have a real meaning, like “accept things that can’t be changed.)

Do not bother to correct me as to what you see as the “real” meanings of these words, as I am simply giving my own personal reasons to dislike them.

Richard Dawkins interviews John McWhorter on linguistics and “woke racism”

June 9, 2024 • 12:15 pm

Here Richard Dawkins interviews linguist and author John McWhorter, a person familiar to readers of this site. And most of the 54-minute discussion is about linguistics.

It’s refreshing to hear McWhorter’s enthusiasm for linguistics, and this bit of the discussion goes from the start of the interview until about 37 minutes in. It’s sad that McWhorter has, by his own admission, been more or less drummed out of the fraternity of academic linguists because of his heterodox views on racism. I’m sure, based on this interview alone, that he was a terrific teacher.

At any rate, McWhorter explains why he began studying linguistics (it involves Hebrew), how many times he thinks language originated (McWhorter thinks just once, though he’s not convinced that this is supported by the existence of a “universal grammar” or universal “recursion”: subordinate phrases embedded within phrases). Rather, McWhorter is convinced of a single origin of language by parsimony alone. As to when it originated, McWhorter makes rather unconvincing arguments (criticized by Richard) that Homo erectus could use syntactic language; he’s on more solid ground when he thinks that Africans, because of evidence of their mental sophistication, used language around 300,000 years ago.

They discuss evidence that the FOXP2 gene was implicated in origin of language, and McWhorter is accurate in saying that this theory hasn’t worked out, though he believes, along with Steve Pinker, that the ability to use syntactic language is encoded in our genome.

The discussion of “woke racism” (the title of McWhorter’s well known book, which was originally “The Elect”) begins at 36:40.  Dawkins moves the discussion into why McWhorter considers woke racism a “religion”, even though there are no supernatural beings involved. I’m not particularly concerned whether one conceives of progressive racial activism as an ideology or a religion, for it seems a semantic question. To me the more interesting questions are the characteristics of the movement (Does it promote irrationality? Is it disconnected from reality? Does it promote “safe spaces”, which McWhorter sees as a religious concept?)

The discussion moves to the question of why you are considered black (or claim you are black) if you have any black ancestors, which leads to McWhorter’s assertion that we have to go beyond race as a personal identity.

The discussion finishes with McWhorter pushing back on the “defenestration” of figures like Thomas Jefferson because they were either slaveholders or didn’t denigrate slavery. He sees this demonization as “pernicious for education”, although he agrees that some extreme versions of racism (e.g., Woodrow Wilson) warrants taking down statues or erasing names. And what, he muses, will demonize us to our descendants.

It’s a very good discussion, I think, and shows McWhorter’s passion, eloquence, and thoughtfulness.

Since McWhorter mentions Jamaican patois as a form of English that isn’t recognizable as English, I wanted to hear some of it, so I’ve put the video showing such patois below.

h/t: Williams Garcia

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 20, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today we’re really stretching the definition  of “wildlife”, which now includes the language of Homo sapiens.  Athayde Tonhasca Júnior had a biology contribution in the queue, but, as you see below, urged me to post this first because it’s relevant to one of my recent posts about the spread of logorrhea in our species.

Hi Jerry. I sent you a contribution a short while ago but consider the attached first, which was inspired by your timely post on people babbling way too much. It’s a curse, I tell you…

And so we have this post about language. Athayde’s words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly (Ludwig Wittgenstein).

People are talking too much, and not talking (or writing) too well.

For Orwell, the corruption of language in public life threatened the intelligent discourse on which democracy depends. (…) We need to feel safe in the assumption that words mean what they are commonly understood to mean. Deliberate ambiguities, slides of meaning, obscure, incomprehensible or meaningless words poison the democratic process by leaving people less able to make informed or rational decisions. They erode trust. Don Watson, ‘Gobbledygook’.

PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope’s-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

A metaphor is both detour and destination, a digression that gets to the point. James Geary.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer, he has mastered everything except language; as a novelist, he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist, he is everything except articulate. Oscar Wilde on George Meredith.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. Oscar Wilde.

You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you’ve got something to say. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

That’s not writing – that’ typing. Truman Capote, on Jack Kerouac (Attrib.). 

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. August Wilson.

The old repeat themselves and the youth have nothing to say. The boredom is mutual. Jacques Bainville.

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation. Francois de La Rochefoucauld.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. George Orwell.

Good prose is like a window pane. George Orwell.

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now. Woodrow Wilson.

Good things, when short, are twice as good. Gracian.

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. George Burns.

A good sermon should be like a woman’s skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials. Ronald Knox.

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance. Robert Quillen. 

PCC(E): The next one is the most relevant to what I wrote:

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. Margaret Millar.

Where in this small-talking world can I find / A longitude with no platitude? Christopher Fry, The Lady’s not for Burning.

The first ingredient in conversation is truth: the next good sense; the third, good humour; and the fourth wit. William Temple.

The honourable member’s speech reminds me of Columbus. When he set out, he didn’t know where he was going, when he got there he didn’t know where he was and when he returned home he didn’t know where he’d been. Winston Churchill.

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought. Winston Churchill.

Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence. Robert Heinlein.

Vacuity, obscurity, ambiguity and pomposity are not much less difficult than their opposites. Winston Churchill.

Blessed is he who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving evidence of that fact. George Eliot.

A man is known by the silence he keeps. Oliver Herford.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. Robert Benchley (Attrib.)

In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present. Tony Petito.

His speeches leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner in their midst until it died of servitude and overwork. William McAdoo about Warren G. Harding.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. Voltaire.

EPSON scanner image

Abuses of Speech: First, when men register their thoughts wrong by the inconstancy of the signification of their words; by which they register for their conceptions that which they never conceived, and so deceive themselves. Secondly, when they use words metaphorically; that is, in other sense than that they are ordained for, and thereby deceive others. Thirdly, when by words they declare that to be their will which is not. Fourthly, when they use them to grieve one another. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech. George Bernard Shaw.

Though he tortures the English language, he has never yet succeeded in forcing it to reveal its meaning. J.B. Morton.

We want to create a sort of linguistic Lourdes, where evil and misfortune are dispelled by a dip in the waters of euphemism. Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. Samuel Johnson.

Meditation is a gift confined to unknown philosophers and cows. Others don’t begin to think till they begin to talk or write. Finley Peter Dunne.

The cliché is the handrail of the crippled mind. Spike Milligan.

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. H. L. Mencken on US President Warren G. Harding.

PCC(E): Yay for this next guy!

[Captain Hook] is not wholly evil: he has a Thesaurus in his cabin. J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.

I take the view, and always have done, that if you cannot say what you have to say in twenty minutes, you should go away and write a book about it. Lord Brabazon.

OOAQICI82QB4IP. Graffiti in a ladies’ toilet.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them. Philip K. Dick.

Obscurity often brings safety. Aesop’s Fables: The Tree and the Reed.

Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well intentioned letter, anguish of a traveller expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. E. B. White in his revision of the 1935 classic “The Elements of Style”, by William Strunk.

When the meaning is unclear there is no meaning. Marty Rubin.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. William Strunk Jr.

Postmodernists have achieved the ability to write about their thoughts in a uniquely impenetrable manner. Their neo-baroque prose style with its inner clauses, bracketed syllables, metaphors and metonyms, verbal pirouettes, curlicues and figures is not a mere epiphenomenon; rather, it is a mocking rejoinder to anyone who would try to write simple intelligible sentences in the modernist tradition. Marvin Harris, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times.

CNN’s guide to “neopronouns”

August 28, 2023 • 9:45 am

I’ve always said that in person I’ll call anyone by the pronoun they wish to be called, and I intend to abide by this as a simple matter of civility. But I’m not sure I’d do that when talking about someone who uses a “neopronoun” when they’re not present, because some of those pronouns seem pretty bizarre and would stick in my craw (see below for examples).

Pronouns like “they” for bi-gender people are okay by me, as are “he/him” for trans males or “she/her for transfemales. But when you go on, and look at lists of other ones, it seems like going down the rabbit hole. The article below mentions over 200 different neopronouns!

For your delectation and social harmony, CNN offers “A guide to neopronouns, from ae to ze.”  First, what is a neopronoun? The site explains:

The most common third-person pronouns include “she,” “he” and “they.” While “she” and “he” are typically used as gendered pronouns to refer to a woman and a man respectively, “they” can be used as a gender-neutral descriptor for an individual person or a group of people. Celebrities like Janelle Monáe, Emma Corrin and Jonathan Van Ness have each said “they” is a pronoun that works for them. [JAC: I use “they” when referring to a generic person.]

Neopronouns, meanwhile, are less commonly used than those three familiar pronouns. They’re often used by nonbinary, transgender and gender nonconforming people because they offer more freedom of identity. In his book “What’s Your Pronoun?” Baron wrote that neopronouns “expand the ways that people are able to indicate their gender identity to encompass anyone who is trans or nonbinary, as well as those who choose an altogether different term to characterize their gender.”

Per the LGBTQ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, neopronouns are a “step towards a society where people can more fully express all parts of themselves.”

And here’s a handy list from the article. As I said, I’d use them to a person when encountering them directly, but I’m not so sure if, when talking about such a person to another, I’d use them.  In fact, while I’d use them as well in writing about a person, I would probably refer to a neopronoun user by name rather than use these words, which seem awkward. Actually, for most of the examples below, you can use a person’s name instead of their pronoun (i.e. “I asked Sammi to come to the movies. Sammi said yes!”, and so on).

xe/xyr (commonly pronounced zee/zeer)

I asked xyr to come to the movies. Xe said yes!

ze/zir or ze/hir (commonly pronounced zee/zeer or zee/heer)

The teacher graded zir paper today, and ze got an A!

Ze said hirself that I’m hir favorite neighbor.

fae/faer (commonly pronounced fay/fair) 

Fae told me that faer best friend is in town this week.

ey/em/eir  (commonlypronounced aye/em/air)

I’m taking em to the park today. Ey wants to bring eir camera to capture the garden for emself!

ae/aer (commonly pronounced aye/air)

Ae is my best friend — most of aer’s weekday evenings are spent at my house.

I’m not sure exactly how these pronouns express a person’s identity, beyond reject the familiar “binary” pronouns, but that’s their business, not mine.

The article notes that some neopronouns were introduced in the 1700s, but an expert weighs in on their history. (The expert is “Dennis Baron, one of the foremost experts on neopronouns and their histories and an emeritus professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign”.)  Baron notes that

Even though there were dozens of neopronouns that made it into print in the 19th and 20th centuries, most of them didn’t make a huge impact upon their introduction or were lost to time, Baron said. During that time, the public was resistant to language change, and men in positions of power often didn’t take issue with a lack of gender-neutral pronouns, Baron wrote. [I suspect you can’t pin this solely on “men in power”, as these neologisms would seem strange to many people.]

And I don’t think I’ve ever see any used in literature, whether fiction or nonfiction. But times have changed:

Some neopronouns were created by writers as far back as the 18th century, many of whom did not publicly identify as nonbinary, because they wanted a genderless word to describe a person or group of people —only recently have pronouns been used as a political tool for the way they’re used by nonbinary and trans people, Baron wrote.

The “political use”, says Baron, is that ” Understanding and using someone’s pronouns is one way to show solidarity and respect toward trans people.”  And that’s why I’ll use these terms to people’s faces, but there’s an element of compulsion about using them otherwise that smacks of virtue signaling and attempts to appropriate power through language change. I’d rather use someone’s name.  And really, are you being a good ally when you use the ones below?

Leaf, sun, star — nounself pronouns are neopronouns that use nature and other inspirations as nonbinary or genderless descriptors. Linguist Jason D’Angelo told The New York Times that nounself pronouns were popularized on the social platform Tumblr around 2012 and 2013 and remain in use among members of fandoms who may take their nounself pronouns from the properties they enjoy.

For someone who uses the nounself pronoun “leaf,” that may look like: “I hope leaf knows how proud we are that leaf is getting to know leafself better!” or “Leaf arrived at the coffee shop before me; I was mortified to have been late to meet leaf.”

I don’t think I could force myself to say such things.  And I get that someone might have a non-standard identity and want a novel identifier, but who identifies as part of a tree, or as an astronomical body? Really, would you refer to someone as “leafself”?

Why we can’t say “pipeline” any longer

July 9, 2023 • 1:15 pm

Here’s a short piece from the Journal of the American Medical Association Open that explains why we can no longer use the word “pipeline” when referring to the progress of human beings from birth until adulthood. The word is often used when discussing ethnic diversity, referring to a pipeline from birth to adulthood and its concomitants: college, jobs, and so on. If the pipeline is meant to include college and one’s achievements there, as well as jobs based on those achievements, the people who leave that career path are said to instantiate a “leaky pipeline.”

Now we are told that we can no longer use the “pipeline” simile, because it’s not inclusive. But on the other hand “American Indian” is a term that’s okay again!

Click to read:

I’m just going to quote from the short piece and make one or two brief remarks.

For many years, the term pipeline has been used metaphorically by researchers and policy makers to refer to the progression of students advancing toward a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) degree or a career in medicine. Past criticisms of the term pipeline highlight how students, especially those from historically excluded backgrounds, such as American Indian, Black, and Latino/a individuals, “leak” out of the “pipeline” for a variety of personal, social, financial (economic), or cultural reasons. For American Indian and Alaska Native individuals, the term pipeline is especially offensive. More specifically, this term is pejorative for communities where pipeline projects in the US threaten sacred homelands and water supplies. Many people will recall the resistance of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Recently, a new pipeline project impacting racially marginalized residents, including Black and low-income residents, living in the Southwest Crossings neighborhood of Houston, Texas, highlighted the continuing practice of divestment and displacement faced by these communities.

. . . .In place of pipeline, the term pathways has come into favor by many, including the AMA and the Association of American Medical Colleges. Pipeline implies that there is only 1 entry point and 1 exit, and frames career development as a passive process in which individuals are commodified as a resource to be delivered as a final result. Pipeline leaves out the contexts, complexities, and variations of the myriad pathways students may take in education from elementary and secondary school, through higher education, and on to a STEM or health professions field. Pipeline connotes extraction, transport, and removal from community, rather than investment in and nurturing of people and resources in place. Since many historically marginalized or minoritized racial and ethnic groups of students may take nontraditional or divergent career pathways, it remains critically important to use the more inclusive, accurate term of pathways. Use of pathways for this purpose communicates respect for students’ choices, agency, and career exploration.

Note first that the term “American Indian” is used. More on that in a second. What I am wondering here are two things. First, has anybody besides these three privileged authors ever objected to the use of the term “pipeline”—which is reserved for intellectual discussion of academic and social achievement—as insulting to their community? If so—and I do follow these things—I’ve never heard it.  Second, do the authors seriously believe that replacing “pipeline” with “pathway” is going to improve society? How, exactly, will that happen?  Are some “American Indian” and “Alaska Native” individuals who previously refused to discuss career achievement because the discussion involved the p-word, now going to participate eagerly with the new, improved word “pathway.”

I don’t believe it. what we have here is exactly what the authors decry in the next paragraph: “performative allyship”!

Equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts have been challenged by performative allyship and the persistent lack of commitment to equitable access from institutional leadership. Proclaiming representative diversity as the end goal establishes dominant cultural norms of tokenism, deficit framing, and devaluation of historically excluded students and their communities. The messaging must evolve to value diversity as a shared value that benefits individuals, communities, institutions, and ultimately, patients. Using pathways terminology can help move beyond representation to inclusive excellence. Medicine as a profession must decommodify the language around workforce development challenges and focus on the power of diversity and inclusion to enhance and improve medicine, primary health care and health equity.

But the authors’ entire article is an example of useless language policing—”performative allyship” from three privileged academics and physicians.  As for the rest of the paragraph above, it is so badly written that I am not sure what they are trying to say except that they are in favor of more diversity and less oppression.  Oh, and that medicine will improve when we substitute “pathways” for “pipeline”.  If you believe that, well, all I can say is, “Show me the data.”

One more point. For years now, the term “Indian” or “American Indian” has been considered pejorative itself, like saying “Negro” instead of “African American” or “black”.  Now it’s apparently back again:

Allies who do not identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, including influential medical educators, researchers, clinicians, authors, and journal editors in the US, should update their language with preference for the terms American Indian or Alaska Native.

The updating by the Language Police happens so fast that I can’t keep up with it.

The Associated Press’s Orwellian recommendations for journalists

June 22, 2023 • 10:00 am

If you’re going to use the adjective “Orwellian” to refer to authoritarianism and unsavory manipulation of people’s thoughts, you must have read at least two of his pieces: the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), free online from The Orwell Foundation. They are of course connected; both involve the psychological manipulation of people for bad political ends, the former by government actions and the latter by manipulation of words.  Here are two bits from his essay:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

. . . Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I’m sure that investigative journalist Gerald Posner didn’t write this piece out of right-winged animus or transphobia (he used to be the investigative reporter for The Daily Beast), but rather out of outrage about how other people are trying to change language to achieve political ends. And, at any rate, what matters is not his politics, but the veracity of his reports, which you can check for yourself.  His issue is the language around coverage of transgender politics, and his object is the Associated Press Style Guide, which, as he notes, is

. . . . the leading style and usage guide for many newspapers, magazines, newsrooms, and public relations offices. Journalists and editors largely abide by its grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules and specific styles for everything from numbers to acronyms.  AP editors are supposed to regularly update the Stylebook in order to keep up with changes in language and societal norms.

Modern woke political language however, doesn’t undergo a natural evolution over time; rather, it is imposed from above, and here it’s imposed by the AP Style Guide.

Click to read the piece on his “Just the Facts” Substack site:

Posner is approaching the 3,000 word (!) article on “Transgender Coverage” as an investigative journalist, giving examples of recommended and un-recommended usages. But he does come to a conclusion: it’s ideological and inaccurate.  You can see the data at the “Transgender Coverage Topical Guide” entry at the AP Stylebook.

And here’s Posner’s take on it all. Most of it I agree with, but one or two of his criticisms seems to me not wrong, but a tad exaggerated.

The revised Transgender entry runs 3,000 words, setting forth what it says is the acceptable standard for journalists when “writ[ing] about and interview[ing] transgender people.”  It starts with what seems like a good rule, that reporters must use “accurate, sensitive and unbiased language.”

The editors then proceed to trash the concepts of accuracy and “no bias.” The guide dictates the use of language that in some cases is factually incorrect. Or, as Orwell might have said, the AP editors did their best “to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Language matters.  Unfortunately, those in charge of setting the rules for the use of it are titling the standards to affect the coverage.

Sometimes, the AP Stylebook contradicts established science, other times ignore inconvenient evidence to the contrary, and repeatedly adopts rules that endorse only one side of what is a vigorous ongoing controversy.

Here are two examples of bad recommendations and one that I think doesn’t matter all that much. Posner’s words are indented, and the AP Stylebook recommendations in bold, italic type. My words are flush left.

BAD ONES:

 “Use the term sex assigned at birth instead of biological sex, birth gender, was identified at birth as, born a girl and the like…. Avoid terms like biological sex, along with biological male and biological female.”

On the issue of biology being so passé, the AP is insistent. A dozen times the style guide reinforces that a person’s gender is “assigned” at birth.  Richard Ostling, a former AP national reporter (now a GetReligion contributor), notes that, “That’s central to LGBTQ+ insistence that each infant’s gender is arbitrarily imposed from outside and subject to change, so this word allies the news media with one outlook in an intense societal debate.”

Ditching biological sex in one species of animal but not in every other species is unconscionable.  Why is human “gender” (they of course mean “biological sex”) assigned at birth instead of recognized at birth? When I divide piles of fruit flies into sexes, I am not “assigning their sex”, but recognizing it based on sexually dimorphic characters that are nearly perfectly correlated with biological sex. (Remember biologists define sex by the nature of the reproductive system that produces either large, immobile gametes [“females’], or small, mobile gametes [“males’]). I’ve dissected gazillions of male and female flies, and I’ve never seen a “normal-appearing” male with ovaries. (We very rarely get gynandromorphs: flies that are part male and part female, produced when an X chromosome gets lost during cell division in an embryo. But these are developmental accidents, not a “third sex”, and gynandromorphs occur in many animal species).  It would be strange indeed if sex was defined and recognized in animals and plants—except in H. sapiens!

This wording in bold is, of course, there to reinforce the gender activists’ wrongheaded claim that sex a “spectrum” and not binary.  And they claim this because gender (social sex roles) are more of a spectrum—though still bimodal.  It’s the reverse naturalistic fallacy: what you want to be true in nature is what you must see in nature. This language is used to reinforce that fallacy.

Also,

If children meet guidelines and are showing signs of puberty, they can begin taking puberty blockers — fully reversible prescription medication that pauses sexual maturation, typically given in injections or skin implants.

The AP editors — without any supporting citation or caveat — set the rule that journalists writing transgender stories must remember that puberty blockers are “fully reversible.”  Mixing some incorrect science into the style guide might be simple enough but has serious consequences.  That is especially true when the science shows there is a litany of serious, long term adverse effects to children who have been on those drugs. I highlighted some of those side effects in my recent WJS piece, “The Truth About Puberty Blockers.”

At least the style guide admits that “the evidence is mixed” about whether hormone treatments and surgery resolve the “stress, depression and suicidal thoughts” to which “transgender youth and adults are prone.”

The effects of puberty blockers, as we are coming to learn, are almost certainly not “fully reversible.” Nor are they without side effects. Nor are they able to “pause” puberty fully and innocuously while a child makes up its mind. This language is straight-out deceptive, and again plays into the agenda of extreme gender activists, who argue that there’s no harm involved in stopping sexual maturation while you decide whether to assume a gender different from the one you have.

NOT HORRIBLE BUT STILL MISLEADING:

“[In reporting on transgender people in sports] Don’t refer to male or female hormones. All people have the same hormones; only their levels vary. If discussion of hormones is needed, name the specific hormone(s)…. If transgender players of any gender are banned from playing on teams in line with their gender, say that.”

This is embarrassingly disingenuous. Men and women do indeed produce estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone but the ways their bodies manufacture those hormones means they have completely different blood concentrations and interactions with organs and muscles.

By ignoring the differences between male and female hormones is to ignore the differences that are key to why biological males have a physical advantage over biological females in athletics. Bone size and strength, greater muscle mass, and higher rates of metabolizing and releasing energy cannot be fully reversed after puberty. Males are, among with biological advantages, are more powerful at kicking and hitting; jumping higher; extra endurance; faster swimming and running speeds.

The results of a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2020 showed that different hormones between transmen and transwomen made a significant difference in “body composition and athletic performance.”

I think by now people know this, but the levels of testosterone and estrogen do differ on average between males and premenopausal females, with average testosterone levels very different and the distributions virtually nonoverlapping.  Posner is right that hiding hormone names is a way to minimize the profound effects that different levels of testosterone and (to a lesser extent) estrogen have on secondary sex traits, especially those involved in sports like size and musculature.  But I don’t really care if they use “testosterone” instead of “male hormone” because, as the AP says, both hormones are found in both sexes. So long as writers emphasize the effect that different levels of these hormones (especially “T”) have on secondary sex traits, I’m satisfied.

I do recommend, by the way, that you read Carole Hooven’s book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. It’s a good, accurate, and enlightening read.

There are others recommendations from the A.P. that you can read and assess, and Posner finishes with the AP’s suggestions about how to use phrases that actually “present still contested concepts as settled,” like that it’s fine to use “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women,”

Posner finishes with a two-sentence zinger that sums up his take on these Orwellian attempts to control language. He puts the AP recommendation in bold italics:

Of course, these rules are often more about following an ideology than acting as the premier style guide. If anyone doubts that, “Do not use the term transgenderism, which frames transgender identity as an ideology.”