More Than Words
It's not that language doesn't have enough words.  Sometimes, it doesn't have the RIGHT words.
October 2006

I am beautiful, no matter what they say
Words can bring me down.
I am beautiful in every single way
Yes, Words can bring me down
So don’t you bring me down today.
                                                                             -- lyrics from Beautiful by Christina Aguilera

As a writer, as someone who feels they’ve gained a pretty fair mastery of the English Language, and as a person who struggles to articulate some pretty difficult things in ways others might be able to understand – I see a problem. I see a problem with the English language. Specifically, I see a problem in the fact that we just don’t have enough words.

That may sound silly to some who could argue that the Unabridged Webster’s Dictionary is FULL of words to use. One estimate counts the number of words in the English language at just under a million words (see details here).  Perhaps. I guess the problem here isn’t that there aren’t enough words so much as there aren’t the right words.

I got a call a couple of years ago from a reporter who wanted to interview my son and I about Father’s Day. Specifically, he wanted to know if we celebrated Father’s Day or Mother’s Day – Matt he barely remembers his own birthday much less something as symbolic as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Anyway, there is an inherent problem here. I am certainly my son’s biological father. I’ll never argue or dispute that - it’s a fact and I’m actually very proud of it. But at the same time, the very definition of “Father” is a male parent. Certainly, I do not acknowledge being male - at least not anymore. And, in fact, during the time my son lived with me in Texas he generally referred to me as his mother: I am female and I am his parent, so the word certainly applies, too.

So there’s a conundrum here. We don’t have any other terms to use. Well, actually we do have a few variations – step-mom immediately comes to mind – but I’m certainly not that. We have mother and father – female and male – as a binary to describe parents. That’s it. And, our culture assumes that people only have one of each. What about lesbian parents? Does that mean that both necessarily identify as the “mom”? I joked with the reporter that I’m surprised Hallmark doesn’t have a Transsexual Parent card, or a Used-to-be-my-dad-but-now-my-mom Card. It seems they’re inventing holidays left and right (Sweetest Day?) so it probably won’t be long now.

What about gay marriage, or at least gay relationships? We have two words to describe people in marriage: husband and wife. When lesbians are together in a committed relationship are both a “wife”? Or, are either a “wife”? Often, they’ll use the word partner (I have recently seen the word “partnered” becoming popular as in “Are you partnered?”). But “partner” is such a blah term. It seems so cold – so generic. It doesn’t have the deeper meaning that we’re trying to convey by this kind of partnership. It doesn’t begin to communicate the same kind of love and commitment that husband/wife do.

The problem is that the language hasn’t progressed in ways that represent what’s actually happening in the culture. It’s not simply that the language doesn’t have words to represent non-traditional things very well. It’s more than that. It’s deeper than that. We’ve got a limited number of words to use to explain things that are happening in the world around of us. As a result, since none of them really fit very well, we’re forced to used the best one. Once we do that, we loose the subtleties that make the word inappropriate in the first place. Sometimes, in fact, the word we use ends up being so inappropriate so as to mis-communicate the very thing we’re trying to say.

More to the point, we live in binary world. Our language (and indeed our very culture) often considers two and only two choices for things – boy/girl, right/wrong, mother/father – when in fact life is rarely that simple. So, the problem is twofold. First, we can’t find the right words to describe things. And second, since we’ve got a very limited number of choices we somehow feel a need to try to conform to one of them as if that’s all there is.

A lifetime ago I used to video-tape weddings. I’ve seen hundreds of weddings – either in person or as I edited the tapes. As a result, I’ve seen hundreds of wedding sermons. Many of them are the same, or at least similar. I mean, there are only so many things a priest or a rabbi can say that people want to hear at these things.

Out of all these endless sermons, one stands out. Just one. The priest was talking about language, and about the fact that cultures develop lots of words to explain the things that are important in it. He explained that in Latin, there were several dozen words to describe and differentiate the many different kinds of love. One word represented the love that a parent has for a child. Another word represented the love a friend has for another friend. Another word represented the love a spouse has for another spouse. Another represented the kind of love a person has for God, and that God has for people. And so on…

He lamented that our language only has one word – love – to describe all of these similar but different things. He explained that part of the problem is that each is different and in some ways unique – but today we have one word to explain them all. Love. Are they all the same thing? Of course not. But, there’s just one word to use. I really get that.

For people like me, this is a problem. And, I daresay it’s a bigger problem than many of us realize. Let me show a couple of examples….

One question I’m asked constantly: Who are you interested in – men or women? Our culture presents two choices, and from what I’ve seen most people don’t seem to need more than one word (or one second) to answer. But, for some people, it’s not so simple. Our attraction isn’t localized to a body organ or anything specific to one gender or another - it’s based on the person. It’s based on the qualities that the person has and the way they make us feel. Those qualities may be more typical to men or women, but it’s not about their sex, or their genitals.

When I try to explain this to people, some reply “So, you’re bi?” I don’t think so, at least not by my own understanding of that label. It’s not like either will do. The point is that it’s not based on anatomy. Accommodations can always be made. I don’t think we have a good word for that, so after all this explaining people still go away confused. Oh well.

Another case in point: the word “sex”. Sex has two meanings in English – the same word means two very different things. One definition represents the act of sex as part of making love (sexual sex). The other represents the fact that you’re either male or female based on whether you have a penis or not (physical sex – not to be confused with gender which is another thing). Two very different meanings, and you’d think that there would be enough words to give each one it’s own, but in English we use the same word. Go figure.

The words ‘homosexual’ and ‘transsexual’ both have the word 'sex' in them. The difficulty is that each represents a different definition of the word – one represents sexuality and the other represents physical male/female sex as generally defined by genitalia. This is a confusing thing for many people. And, I daresay, it’s the root of many of the misconceptions and misunderstandings we’re working to correct.

I see several words that are commonly used as weapons – words which don’t accurately convey what’s really happening here. Choice, selfish, disorder are just a few of them. Until we can effectively explain other meanings for some of these words, or identify other better words, we’ll find ourselves on the defensive. And, we’ll find that our own worst enemy is ourselves.

Where is this perhaps most damaging?  When dealing with religion.  People interpret holy works in any number of ways - some take them literally - without pausing to think.  One mis-transcribed out-of-context word.  That's all it takes to justify hate.  That's all it takes to kill in the name of God.  I've got any number of things to say about organized religion and the role is has played through the ages to shape culture, to institutionalize prejudice, and to exert control.  How?  Through words.    But that discussion will have to wait until some other time.

I was recently at a luncheon and the keynote speaker was a friend who I admire and trust in our community. She’s very intelligent and articulate (in fact, she used a word I had never even heard before so I had to write it down and ask her what it meant when she came back to the table). Anyway, one of the things she was explaining to this crowd of a couple hundred people was the fact that the trans community suffers from an image problem.

She explained that it seems “homosexual” had always seemed to be a dirty word to many and, in fact was part of the reason they had difficulty gaining any real acceptance in our culture for so long. It has the word “sex” in it. It wasn’t until that somehow changed – that “gay” and “lesbian” became more popular terms (she said they were happier words) with more positive connotations – that the gay and lesbian community really started to make strides in gaining acceptance as a group in the culture.

Now days, the only time you see the word “homosexual” as it refers to the gay and lesbian community is when it’s used by someone who is not supportive so they want to maintain the negative connotations that the word still implies. There’s a significant – perhaps even profound - difference between the meaning of the word as an adjective (a homosexual man) or as a noun (a homosexual). In that same way, our own community needs to recognize the significance of that difference, too (a transsexual man or woman vs. a transsexual).

She said that we need to find a new word, a better word, that somehow captures the fact that this journey isn’t just about sex or gender – it’s more than that. It’s not just a physical thing. It’s not just about “sex”. It’s core deep - it’s about “self”. (She explained that the Latin word for self means “breath”). As long as our community is defined by a label that has the word “sex” in it there will be confusion, there will be all kinds of negative connotations. We need a new word.

During the question and answer session somebody asked her what better word she might suggest and she said she didn’t know – that somehow the need to incorporate the “Two Spirit” concept from Native American cultures into it. We have enough smart people in our community so we should be able to come up with something, although I find our community often has a difficult time agreeing on things so reaching consensus on this might be harder than it sounds.

Do you remember when people used to explain that being transsexual was “a woman trapped in a man’s body”? Because we didn’t have good words to explain the complicated issues involved, that analogy seemed to make sense. I sometimes wonder if we’re still not suffering from that – if that over-simplified explanation is a self-inflicted wound that really doesn’t approach explaining the difficult issues involved.

Back to the topic at hand – part of the problem we face is a problem of words, of labels. Some fit. Some don’t. Some accurately explain how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, what you mean. Other times – it’s hard to find the right words. As a community we need to recognize that. We need to understand that words can be our friend just as they can be our enemy. We need to remain sensitive to that.

How does that apply to our community?  That's easy.  As many of us struggle to find our place - our future - we find ourselves faced with labels, definitions, expectations.  "Am I a transsexual or am I just a cross-dresser?" (I hate it when they put the word 'just' in there - it implies that one is better than the other, or that one is somehow more real than the other).   I'll tell you here and now that I know many people who are just as transsexual as I am who end up not feeling a need for Sexual Reassignment Surgery for some reason or another.  Does the fact that they don't have surgery make them a cross-dresser?  Of course not - unless that's what they'd like to believe.  That's part of the problem.  We've got all these labels - not just in the transgender community but throughout life in general - and we think we need to make one fit.  That limits us.  That constrains us.  If the youth of today tell us anything it's that our notions of labels, and perhaps even of gender as a binary, are outdated.  In the end, they're just words.

There’s another word I’ve recently become sensitive to: Tranny. I see it being used all the time – and oddly it’s usually from inside our community. It reminds me of the N word as it refers to African Americans. If someone else says it they immediately target themselves as an ignorant bigot. But the community itself uses it all the time (watch Chris Rock and you’ll see what I mean). We do that, too. We refer to ourselves as “trannies” in self-deprecating ways. Not good.

The word transsexual has been around for as long as I can remember finding out what one was. The word transgender is relatively new – it seemed to pop up out of nowhere. None of us chose the words “transsexual” or “transgender” any more than we chose to be one. They’re labels we inherited, created by people outside the community, and we seem to accept that. I think part of our problem stems from the words we’re using to define ourselves, and we need to see the opportunities to fix that.

Words are powerful tools (and weapons). The express emotion. They express feeling. The fact of the matter is that we’re more than words. The complexity of our lives is not limited to the number of words we can use to describe it. We need to remember that. And, we need to make sure others understand that, too.

Just because we don’t have enough words to explain complicated things, we can’t allow ourselves to somehow feel that that’s all there is. We can’t confine ourselves to that kind of narrow thinking. Instead, we are who and what we are as multi-faceted people and if we can find the words to express that to others that’s fine. If not, perhaps we’ll need to make some up.

*****