Name-calling: the politics of medical, legal and religious fanatics
by Curtis E. Hinkle
Over the years, I have been amused and sometimes disgusted by the pseudo-sophisticated posts by many in the LGBT and intersex communities who insist that labels are not important and which then go on to say that they don't care what label people use to refer to them or to their community.
I challenge this position for several reasons. The first being that they never provide any proof for their position, only arrogant, self-aggrandizing rhetoric about their own superiority of not being affected by the labeling process. But more importantly, they seem to brush aside the serious consequences and the abuse of power that are often the political motivation and the political process involved in creating the labels, the actual medicalisation, marginilisation and invisibilisation in many cases of those excluded from the process of name-calling and who will be the subjects of that name-calling.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is one of the platitudes included in many of the posts of such high-minded elitists who imagine that they live in a world where language is of no importance (a very schizophrenic delusion in light of the fact that they are reduced to conveying this arrogance by means of language itself).
Name-calling has serious consequences on the lives of people, especially when the person calling you a name is a doctor, lawyer or a clergyman. To assume otherwise shows a total misunderstanding of language and its power over people and society in general. Almost all human institutions (religious, legal and medical), scientific endeavors and interpersonal relationships involve specific uses of language and without human language there would be no possibility of having such institutions, research or complexity of human relationships. To dismiss language as not important is to dismiss the most important factor about humans which make us different from other animals. To dismiss name-calling as being of no importance is even more logically fallacious because it first of all assumes that the relationships within the human species are not produced and reproduced by the "magical" use of language, the power of name-calling (putting people in categories) and then posits that by some magic the writer of the post has transcended the human condition.
Name-callers use several linguistic techniques, some more powerful than others, to control us, to limit our own potential within the human family. What follows is a pragmatic analysis of such name-calling and the abuse of power over us that the name-callers have and maintain within the legal, medical and religious institutions within our societies.
Pragmatics is the field of linguistics which deals with the interpretation or meaning that language, words, sentences, utterances, articles, etc., have in context. There is both a linguistic context which would be the surrounding sentences and words involved in the discourse and the situational context which would include knowledge about the world and society in which those utterances are made.
The philosopher Paul Grice proposed four conversational maxims that arise from the pragmatics of natural language. These maxims are:
- Maxim of Quality: Truth
- Maxim of Quantity: Information
- Maxim of Relation: Relevance
- Maxim of Manner: Clarity
These maxims may be better understood as describing the assumptions listeners normally make about the way speakers will talk, rather than prescriptions for how one ought to talk.
The use of the term "disorder" when applied to gender and/or sex as used by medical experts violates all of Grice's maxims. First of all, let's deal with the truth, the most basic principal required for human communication in most instances. As an example, let us start by using the following sentences from the definition of GID (Gender Identity Disorder):
"People with gender identity disorder act and present themselves as members of the opposite sex. The disorder may affect self-concept, choice of sexual partners and the display of femininity or masculinity through mannerisms, behavior and dress."
What truth do we have in this description concerning GID? Very little. What is the "opposite sex" referred to? How does the "choice of sexual partners" have relevance to a disorder? What are "femininity" and "masculinity"? (Yes, in everyday life we have ideas about these topics, but this is from a psychology magazine and is talking about a "scientific" name-calling process with a particular diagnosis which is a "disorder".) How do we ever know the "opposite sex" of an individual without being able to know how many sexes there are to begin with? In a scientific, medical context, what truth can one really convey by using the terms "femininity" and "masculinity"? In my opinion, nothing but stereotypes. If we actually studied all the range of behaviors of people assigned male and people assigned female, would we come up with these stereotypes as truly typical of the people in those categories? So far, there has not been much scientific evidence to support the stereotypes for "femininity" and "masculinity" because we cannot separate what is purely social or (nurture) from what is purely nature (the body itself). Until we have more definitive proof concerning the real cause of "feminine" and "masculine" behaviors, we have no way of knowing to what degree the "femininity" or "masculinity" of the individual being called a "disorder" is the result of nature, nurture or simply the imagination of the observer or of the subject or both. One can accept the stereotypes as true, without proof, and then call people names based on the stereotypes and that seems to be what a pragmatic analysis of this text from the Psychology Today article does. To be called a "sissy" or "dyke" by a playmate may not break your bones, but being called a "disorder" by a psychiatrist is a totally different matter and it lacks scientific truth because the scientists have yet to define clearly what the "order" is. What they are doing is simply taking the norms that society has assumed to be true and are reproducing those norms by the power they have as medical experts. Truth is not the subject of this discourse. This is about politics and social control.
If truth were the object of this discourse, it seems that the main person who could state the truth would be the person who is being called a name (or diagnosed) since the actual truth is that we don't have enough scientific information to know what the actual order is and to what degree the actual order is dimorphic to begin with nor to what degree the order is simply imposed on nature. Without this information, the medical expert is simply assuming that the individual is "disordered". Science may ultimately prove that the individual doing the name calling is the one with a "disordered" view of gender.
Now, let's deal with the second maxim, information. As an example, let us cite the DSD Guidelines for Parents. In the introduction of the DSD Guidelines for Parents we read:
"This handbook does not include a large amount of medical information about your child's specific condition. That is because there are many conditions that count as disorders of sex development (DSDs), so it would be impossible for us to cover them all. Instead, this book is meant to give you some basic information about sex and gender development.."
I have found this typical of name-callers. They constantly start by calling others names and then when they are to explain the justification and definitions for the names, they change the subject and supply irrelevant information that often looks scientific and interesting but when scrutinized has nothing to do with the topic, in this case Disorders of sex development or DSD's.
If the sex of an infant really is disordered, which is the premise of this book, why not provide information about why the child's sex is disordered? Instead of a justification for calling the child's sex disordered, the authors are going to switch to another topic which is about sex and gender development in general. If the child's sex is "disordered", it appears that parents would be better served by knowing and understanding just why it is disordered and how to "solve" the disorder. The problem the authors face is that the "disorder" is not in the child but the people calling the child names and that would start being evident if they actually had to deal with the real title of the book which is DSD Guidelines.
In dealing with the first two maxims, it is also clear that the other two are also violated, the maxims concerning relevance and clarity. Most of the disorder name-calling propagated by the experts lacks clarity because they cannot give a scientific definition for male or female to begin with much less what a disordered male or female is. As a result, much of what they say has little relevance to intersexed and gender-variant people.
However, the most powerful and misunderstood use of language used by name-callers is what linguists refer to as performative discourse. In linguistics, the use of the word performative refers to statements which cannot be categorized as true or false but which "perform" the action they state. For example: "I promise." "I swear." "I pronounce you man and wife." By saying these sentences, you have performed the act stated.
As opposed to people with other congenital variations, the intersexed face a series of performative discourses which affect identity issues, not just their bodies. First, the statement, "It's a girl". The newborn in question is a girl because the person who writes this on the birth certificate has so stated. In other words the person's discursive power and authority over the infant has placed her in the category simply by stating it and then recording it. This is all about the use of language to make something so, whether it is or not in reality true or false. Such legal discourse is purely performative because by saying it one makes it so and the individual is categorized without consent and for what purpose?
Then we are given a name on the birth certificate, another performative use of language and these names are often "sexed". Then we might decide we wish to get married and once again we are faced with the use of performative language which often will not "pronounce us as man and wife" with the partner of our choice.
Medical, legal and religious discourse controls our lives in ways that other people with bodies that do not meet norms do not face and this is the serious problem with conflating intersex with just a body issue or "disorder" of our sex.
A person who is born without an arm is not faced with legal, medical and religious discourse which separates all people into one-armed and two-armed people and then sets very rigid norms which all the people of each category must adhere to. This is not recorded on the birth certificate. It does not require sorting through different lists of names, one for one-armed people and the other for those that are two-armed and it does not prevent a one-armed person from getting an artificial limb by making them agree to psychological treatments and being categorized as mentally ill for wanting to change their status from one-armed to two-armed people. Furthermore, it does not prevent a two-armed person from marrying another two-armed person.
Conflating intersex with a disorder of one's sex merely objectifies the intersexed and overlooks the complexity of issues and the trauma that many intersexed people face trying to live in a world that has no place for them.
To deny the importance that name-calling has in our lives overlooks the power of performative discourse and actually is a form of collaboration with the name-callers by pretending there is no power behind such discourse. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As polemics about the topic of disorder when applied to sex and/or gender is dealt with, the uneven distribution of power (historically associated with polemics) is often ignored and the victims of the name-callers are not allowed to denounce the victimization without further abuse of power of those who called them the names to begin with and a vicious cycle ensues which does nothing to expose the actual dynamics and discursive methods involved in that discourse. The medical experts simply have the power to call you names and these names can have very serious consequences socially, medically and legally. To constantly tell the victims to "shut up and get over it" colludes with the bullies, the name-callers and if their advice were followed, no form of activism is worth pursuing at all because the very reason for being activists - to resist the power of those "ordering" the system - is somehow magically transformed as meaningless and therefore the very reason for the activism itself would be meaningless.
I would add in conclusion that the disorder model is a confluence of the mutual interests of medical, legal and religious fanatics. All derive further power for their own positions of authority by this particular model.
