The sense of a woman

Published by the Cambridge University Press, the Cambridge Dictionary is designed for learners of English.

I’m sure learners opening that dictionary can feel, with trepidation, the patina accumulated by that venerable institution rubbing off on them. After all, the University was founded in 1209, which makes it one of the world’s oldest.

Its most illustrious alumni include Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, John Milton and too many others to mention. An example of its grandeur I often cite is that Cambridge’s Trinity College alone has produced 33 Nobel winners for science – as opposed to four for the whole Islamic world.

Such a sustained history of cultural and intellectual achievement has to be reflected in the University’s contribution to lexicography as well. Since in my impetuous youth I studied such things academically, I was eager to find out how the dictionary’s new edition defined woman (another subject of more than passing interest to me).

So here is its entry: “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth”.

One feels humbled by so much scholarship going into what would appear to be a simple definition. But then one can always rely on academics to correct one’s woeful misconceptions. In this case, mine are glaring:

Scientifically, a woman is a specimen of Homo sapiens whose DNA features XX chromosomes. Poetically, a woman can be compared to a summer’s day preceded by the darling buds of May. Empirically, a woman is a person who looks like Penelope.

Or so I thought. Actually, so I’ll continue to think, what with all such fundamental notions so deeply implanted in my mind that they aren’t subject to change. Nor do I believe I’m a target reader the compilers saw in their mind’s eye.

Though I do regard myself as a lifelong student of English, I don’t think I’m the learner they envisaged. A good job too, for such learners will be getting a lesson in so much more than just the meaning of English words.

They’ll learn that Cambridge University Press has turned its pages into a cultural and political battlefield. For its entry doesn’t define woman scientifically, poetically or empirically. Its definition is strictly political – and insidiously political too.

An example cited by way of illustration leaves one in no doubt on that score: “Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth”.

In other words, Mary is a male freak who was born with XY chromosomes but was deranged enough to submit to castration in the delusionary hope of becoming something he could never be: a woman.

Even the grammar of the entry pulls in the same direction. Following the singular antecedent “an adult” with the plural pronoun “their” is also a political statement issued by the most radical wing of cultural saboteurs.

The spokesman for the Cambridge Dictionary explained the situation: “Our dictionaries are written for learners of English and are designed to help users understand English as it is used. We regularly update our dictionary to reflect changes in how English is used.”

That’s bollocks (n. vulgar slang, British: nonsense, rubbish). The only people who use English that way are crazed ideologues getting high on their wokery and febrile commitment to destroying our culture.

Lest you may think it’s just British universities leading the onslaught on sanity, the American dictionary, Merriam-Webster, isn’t far behind. However, one must admit mournfully that the parent organisation of its publisher is British, Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Merriam-Webster defines a woman as “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male”. This at least has scholarly connotations to it. In rhetoric, defining something by what it isn’t is called ‘antiphrasis’. A theology that defines God by something that definitely can’t be said about Him is called ‘apophatic’.

So there I was, getting the warm feelings I usually have for kindred spirits inhabiting the same rhetorical universe. However, it dissipated almost instantly.

A woman isn’t a “gender identity”. She is a female human being, born as such and remaining that way for life – whatever psychiatric disorder she may suffer from as she goes through life. She may, for example, think she is a nightingale, but that won’t make her sing beautifully.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes itself as ‘synchronic’. Using its own taxonomic method, that means something that’s not diachronic. In plain language, Merriam-Webster purports to record English as it’s used currently, not the way it has been used historically – or indeed correctly.

The dictionary withdraws or, to be more precise, repudiates judgement. There are no correct or incorrect usages – just current or obsolete ones. Fine, if that’s what the compilers want to preach, it’s their privilege.

As it is my privilege to describe such anodyne permissiveness as cultural vandalism. All that ‘gender identity’ business doesn’t belong in a mainstream dictionary.

Its natural domain is Trans Unite rants and similar effluvia. Should some lexicographers wish to record perverse usages in dictionary form, then by all means they should do so – in an addendum to the dictionary designed to help people learn English. Putting it into the main body of the dictionary doesn’t help anyone, while hurting many.

By the same token, a dictionary of slang may include a reference to the song You Ain’t Nuthin’ But a Hound Dog. But it would be misplaced in a textbook on English grammar.

P.S. Speaking of cultural vandalism, even peers of the realm aren’t above indulging in it. Thus Daniel Finkelstein delivered himself of a view on Kayne West in The Times: “I find the rapper’s antisemitic assertions repugnant, but unlike his tweets his pioneering art should not be censored.”

I’ve vaguely heard Mr West’s name, mainly in the context of his ex-wife’s gluteus maximus and indeed of his “antisemitic assertions”. But his “pioneering art” has passed me by. Still, since Lord Finkelstein is a cultural force to be reckoned with, I felt duty-bound to fill that gap.

So here, for example, is a verse from Mr West’s pioneering song Get Em High (Merriam-Webster would approve of this usage):

“N-now, th-th-throw your motherfuckin’ hands/ (Get ‘em high)/ All the girls pass the weed to yo’ motherfuckin’ man/ (Get ‘em high)/ Now I ain’t never tell you to put down your hands/ (Keep ‘em high)/ And if you’re losin’ your high then smoke again/ (Keep ‘em high).”

Verily I say unto you, His Lordship must be following the cultural pioneer’s recommendation. As, come to think of it, are the compilers of our dictionaries.