Gay Marriage and the Trannies: Fuckin' Up Your Lesson Plan.
Twice this semester, I've contested examples used in semantics lessons that were based on assumptions about gender and sexuality. In Semantics Kac gave us an assignment that made use of the terms "women" and "female" and their respective overlap in both possible worlds and the actual world. One question asked us to look at two statements about "females" and "women" and state whether they had the same meaning in the actual world. My answer:
(i) a. All women are female. (True)
b. All females are women. (False)
Different. In the actual world, all women are female (disregarding transgender and intersex individuals and theories of academics like Judith Butler). However, not all females are women - there are young girls and animals that are not included in the set of women but are certainly female. (etc. etc. some semantics jargon goes here)
(this was also the assignment where I found out dustinalfonso says "weh-mihn" and not "whim-in". You weirdo.)
Then in our lesson on semantics in Computational Linguistics today, Brian had these sentences in his slides:
A classmate came up to me after Computational Linguistics today and said that it's good to know that Brian isn't coming up with these examples on his own, that he's borrowing them from other sources; and also that's it's funny how these examples are based on those from work by Russell et al. who thought they had really gotten down to what "truth" was and had separated inherent meaning from meaning inferred from background information and so on.
I thought that was a really good point - we always think we have a handle on this shit, but there are so many assumptions we make every day that we haven't at all thought about yet. And you might make the argument that this is about a definition (i.e. that of "marriage" or "woman") changing, but I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, if you're considering that they're socially constructed categories in the first place, that makes sense. But if you stay firmly rooted in society and don't question its constructs, like... what about "marriage" makes it inherently heterosexual? What about "woman" makes it inherently biologically female? Which, y'know. Is the whole point of subverting traditional sexuality and gender normativity - that these categories tend to fall apart when you question them.
Also, geez Semantics, way to be all conservative with regard to sexual and gender diversity. God.
(i) a. All women are female. (True)
b. All females are women. (False)
Different. In the actual world, all women are female (disregarding transgender and intersex individuals and theories of academics like Judith Butler). However, not all females are women - there are young girls and animals that are not included in the set of women but are certainly female. (etc. etc. some semantics jargon goes here)
(this was also the assignment where I found out dustinalfonso says "weh-mihn" and not "whim-in". You weirdo.)
Then in our lesson on semantics in Computational Linguistics today, Brian had these sentences in his slides:
- Mia is a boxer. Vincent knows all boxers. Vincent doesn’t know Mia.
- Jody is married. Jody does not have a husband.
- Jody is a boxer. Jody is a boxer.
- Mia is married. She has a husband.
A classmate came up to me after Computational Linguistics today and said that it's good to know that Brian isn't coming up with these examples on his own, that he's borrowing them from other sources; and also that's it's funny how these examples are based on those from work by Russell et al. who thought they had really gotten down to what "truth" was and had separated inherent meaning from meaning inferred from background information and so on.
I thought that was a really good point - we always think we have a handle on this shit, but there are so many assumptions we make every day that we haven't at all thought about yet. And you might make the argument that this is about a definition (i.e. that of "marriage" or "woman") changing, but I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, if you're considering that they're socially constructed categories in the first place, that makes sense. But if you stay firmly rooted in society and don't question its constructs, like... what about "marriage" makes it inherently heterosexual? What about "woman" makes it inherently biologically female? Which, y'know. Is the whole point of subverting traditional sexuality and gender normativity - that these categories tend to fall apart when you question them.
Also, geez Semantics, way to be all conservative with regard to sexual and gender diversity. God.