Gender: The Ultimate Language Game
Two adults in a shop (Photo: victoriano, via Unsplash)
Many linguists and philosophers alike are familiar with the challenge of defining a game. As demonstrated by Wittgenstein, any attempts to categorically restrict the concept of a game are futile. Does a game need winners and losers? Such a definition clashes with the ever-growing popularity of role-playing games, from the latest iconic Tomodachi Life sequel to in-person play in Dungeons and Dragons. Must a game have an end goal? Ask that to a toddler on their fifteenth round of peek-a-boo. With the notion of a game accounting for such a vast array of activities, Wittgenstein concluded that such concepts are necessarily malleable and context-dependent.
Defining the language of gender runs into many of the same challenges. The trial-and-error process of attributing classical features of games runs parallel with recent debates on what constitutes a woman. For the self-proclaimed “gender-critical feminist” movement, the classical dictionary definition of woman as “adult human female” comes front and centre in their branding. But, as classical definitions often do, this leads us down a complex rabbit-hole of infinite regress. How do we define female? One definition from Merriam-Webster describes a female as “an individual of the sex who is typically capable of bearing young or producing eggs.” The hedging of typicality is important here; many women can experience reproductive health conditions that make them unable to meet these biological criteria. So, then, how do we define biological sex? Where does the line fall between being female with a reproductive health condition and being intersex (an umbrella term for sexual characteristics outside of the biological binary)? The common responses to such a question – differentiating by internal organs or chromosomes – potentially excludes as many as than 1 in 100 trans-exclusionary feminists from their own definition of womanhood.
However, from any feminist perspective, there are equally undeniable flaws with more prototypical approaches to defining a gender. Returning to Merriam-Webster’s characterisation of what a female is “typically” biologically capable of, there’s an undeniable risk that those who are less capable of “bearing young” or “producing eggs” could be deemed less of a woman. Such a judgement should make any feminist feel uncomfortable at best, but especially any intersectional feminist. Consider how these value judgements disproportionately harm disabled women, who may be less able to biologically reproduce due to the health risk, or – especially in countries without free healthcare – working class women, who may not be able to receive the medical support they need in order to have children.
There’s also a complexity to the cultural prototypes (often blurring into stereotypes) which may characterise some definitions of womanhood. Such concerns came to the fore in mainstream trans discourse after transfemme comedian and actress Dylan Mulvaney released iconic satirical celebration track, Days Of Girlhood. The notions of a “code-pink emergency” and “retail therapy” were met with outcry by a loud minority. Yet, these feel no different to some of the novel prototypes circulating in cis-dominant feminist spaces online. Take the TikTok trend of “girl dinner”, a phrase now associated with tapas-style leftovers: tortilla chips, blocks of cheese, cured meats and maybe some leftover salad if you’re feeling fancy. In a similar vein, the “girl math” trend centred itself on simple sums, aggressive rounding down and finding any possible justification for shopping. The notions are undeniably pejorative, insinuating that women naturally default to culinary laziness and simplistic, impulsive hedonism. Yet, many young women found solace in these trends; women weren’t revelling in the assignment of stereotypes, but in the community that such novel concepts forged. The same can be said for many instances of gender expression within trans+ communities. A woman is not a woman simply because of any typically “feminine” practices that they engage with; nonetheless, it’s through these prototypical aspects of gender expression that many cisgender and transgender women experience gender euphoria and community.
Where both classical and prototypical approaches fail to sufficiently define a “man” or “woman”, we’re left to conclude that someone is their gender simply because they are. There’s no neat dividing lines between or within genders, a conclusion met with anger and disdain in many anti-trans discourses. When looking at these reactions from a trans perspective, I can find myself feeling disheartened and at a loss; however, from a linguistic perspective, I can see where the problem lies. A common thread in pragmatic research is the communicative desire for maximal informativity – thus, for people who view transgender people as inherently removed from cisgender people, it’s no wonder that the proposal of “women” as a collective for cis and trans women has received such staunch opposition. Such theories of meaning and implicature from the likes of Jaszczolt or Sperber and Wilson place shared knowledge and the forefront of communicative understanding. So the answer is clear: with biological and sociological characteristics failing to neatly divide genders or sexes, we need to increase mutual awareness and understanding of a range of experiences of gender.
Perhaps, Wittgenstein’s iconic “language games” is more than a simple account for concepts and their flexibility. If we acknowledge that a “woman” cannot be tied down by a singular definition, this linguistic awareness could be a vehicle of social change. “Women” can include people who menstruate, pregnant people, people who experience misogyny. Sometimes, you may need to single out these specific features when discussing topics like period poverty, reproductive health or sexual violence. However, it’s both vital and more informative to make use of these specific descriptors, rather than taking “woman” as a catch-all at the expense of anyone who may not share certain biological experiences. Instead, the concept of a “woman” has the power to bring together all sorts of women, united not by sexual characteristics but by lived experiences.