They Entered the Building, but Only One Went In; Or, Don’t Call Me a “Human Being”

You’ve probably seen the classic Abbot and Costello skit, “Who’s On First.” This comedy skit is so historically famous that it has its own Wikipedia page, and the phrase is part of our common vernacular.

Generally speaking, the “Who’s on first?” phrase is used to characterize a state of linguistic confusion, often implying general idiocy within a context. It’s sort of like saying, “Guess Who is playing at the stadium tonight.” “I don’t know, who?” “Guess Who….” “I don’t know, who?” Etc. (“Guess Who” is the name of the band.)

I am told of a similar situation that occurred in a friend’s home, as follows:

[Daughter] Chris has COVID.

[Mother] When did she find out?

[Daughter] They found out they have it last week.

[Mother] Who else has it?

[Daughter] What do you mean?

[Mother] What do you mean, what do I mean?

[Daughter] They found out they have it last week.

[Mother] Who else has it?

[Daughter] No one.

[Mother] You said ‘they have it’; who else has it?

[Daughter] No one else has it!

[Mother] Then why do you keep saying ‘they have it’?

[Daughter] Mom…Chris is non-binary, okay?

[Mother] Well, oh my gosh, how am I supposed to know that…?

The essential problem is this: The non-binary “They/Them” language construct for a singular number, nominative and objective case, is fundamentally flawed as a matter of linguistic clarity; it creates ambiguity in communicative thought.

The grammatical plural number designation for a singular then feeds upon itself necessarily to find agreement with the other parts of speech; to wit: “They found out they have it last week,” rather than, “They found out they has it last week,” the latter being more substantively accurate. And then the grammatical structure must perpetuate itself causing resultant communicative confusion throughout the entire communication.

A singular is not a plural. “One” is not “two or more.” And, please don’t kill the messenger. This has nothing to do with social rights, personal identity, or individualism. Love’s got nothing to do with it. It is about linguistic reference for clarity of conveying thought, in both the written and oral formatives.

Of course, rhetoric or lesser minds might conflate issues with ad hominin arguments, but it does not follow that, to contradict a suggested proposed linguistic expression of a thing is, therefore, to deny that thing’s right to exist. I can love a person without loving a linguistic structure.

There is some professed logic that the abrupt shift in communicative expression equates to a form natural “evolution” with something like, “languages evolve; therefore, it follows that anything goes,” which is like saying that it is okay to pour hot water into a cold glass. When “Ms.” was first socially introduced to avoid disclosing the marital status of women, this was an additional new construct that did not change existing core grammatical usage. It was a brilliant linguistic evolution for both social reasons and grammatical reasons. Two for two. But, here, only one for two.

Perhaps some background is in order.

There are two sources of existential construct: The “Construct of Nature” (or, the “Natural Construct“) and the “Construct of Man” (or, the “Social Construct“).

For the first, being the “Construct of Nature,” nature herself creates the construct that is self-defined, and, as such, the facts cannot be refuted. When one living being is newly pressed out of the womb of another living being, the new being has certain attributes in an existential construct provided by nature. We cannot argue with it, it just is. If the newly born being substantively has (by any name) testicles or ovaries, or neither or both, or arms and legs, it simply is. If the being has a certain set of chromosomes, it simply is. These attributes are irrefutable facts of existence. They are effectively scientific truth. Arguing with scientific truth is delusion, by definition. That is, it is ostensibly delusion for us to deny a fact, or to think our hopeful opinion is a fact, by accepted definition.

The second construct, being the “Social Construct,” is different. This type of construct is not created by nature, but, rather, it is created by society. For example, social constructs are language itself, names, categorizations, characterizations, defined terms, and tiers of taxonomy. Social Constructs are not truths, but they are social contrivances.

A million years of human chromosomic evolution is not the same thing as this year’s latest pair of shoes for one particular culture. Words are the clothing of thought, and words can be changed and evolved as each particular society dictates. Therefore, Social Constructs, as such, are vertical constructs, in place, time and context.

Nature (and the science that reflects or exposes it) could care less about these human Social Constructs, or whether humans define the scientific truth of XX or XY-chromosomes as being as a “man,” a “woman,” or anything else. “A rose by any other name smells as sweet,” so says nature and genius Shakespeare. Natural Constructs are not bound into any society. Therefore, Natural Constructs are horizontal constructs.

Nature (and the truth of science that reflects it or exposes it), is amoral. Wolves aren’t “bad” for eating sheep, it’s simply their tendency from their predatory DNA wiring. Civil society is not theoretically necessarily moral either (as Nietzsche might point out), as such, but in practice, civil society, by its very nature, manages social conduct for itself, which implicates “right and wrong” behavior so defined by the society. Morality is not the rule itself, but only a common corollary to civil society.

Why tribes and civil society occur in the first place is the subject of debate, but it is fair to say that nature is organized and governed by evolution of natural power to an apex predator for a given environmental context, such as the lion, bear, or eagle. Be it by brain or brawn, Natural Constructs resolve to power.

Civil society socializes individual natural power to a constraint of conduct either voluntarily or by force. But experience teaches that there are rules of social association at some level, with consequences, being often contrary to a natural order. Nature is based upon hierarchy, not equality. Big fish eat little fish. It just is. Indeed, civil society necessarily emerges to contradict nature herself, and by best practices, civility is best expressed in gesture and courtesy, the beauty of which exists by the voluntary disciplined reservation of power.

Perhaps by definition, civil society is not intended to be chaotic, but requires order by contrivance. Mother Nature creates order, naturally, but that order is wildly far from equality. Wolves serve their purpose, and so do the lambs that wolves eat. Natural order is not equality, but evolution to a hierarchical system of power and force, ala the apex predator, as stated. Nature will evolve certain animals into apex predators by the circle of life, and it is a blushing delusion of hope to assert that human beings are different. Human beings are naturally constructed as conquerors and tool/weapon-makers, history and evidence prove it.

Accordingly, social order and natural order are not the same thing, per se. Some societies are grounded more closely to natural order, by power and force (such as dictatorships), which define and impose the terms the social order, top-down, often as a function of master and slave. Other societies are grounded by agreement, or voluntary and free consent (such as constitutional democracies), bottom-up, and are, therefore, more divergent from natural order.

Either way, however, there must be and will be order for any civil society to sustain. Order will be contrived artificially or it will evolve by its own terms. To have social order, existing things must be categorized; that is, ordered. Categorization toward order is not per se prejudicial. Prejudice is different from categorization; the concepts may be correlated, but they are not the same thing. Prejudice tends to be illogical induction and condemnation. Order can exist by evidence and without condemnation.

At some level, to defy the necessity of social categorization is to defy order itself. In a political system, to defy order is to adduce anarchy and civil social devolution. The breakdown of civil society starts with disorder. Even in a free-thinking society, there can be too much order. But it does not follow that the risk of too much order justifies no order.

But, back to “they/them.” To point to a living being, commonly denominated as a “human being,” we might say, “That being appears to be an XX-chromosomed being,” or “That being is an XY-chromosomed being” or even, “Wowee, now that’s what I call a [XX or XY]!” This is to match a referential categorization with a grounding truth of scientific attribute.

Although it is true that there will be a rare exception to the binary general rule, society does not create order on the rare exception, but creates general rules of order and deals with rare exceptions in their respective particular contexts; that is, the exception does not and cannot swallow the general rule, or there would rarely be a general rule in the first place (thus the name as a “general” rule).

God or the rules of science (if you prefer) make the statistically abnormal white lion (and no less in inherent worthiness), but that fact does not make the exceptional white lion part of the general rule. It is not a matter of internal human worth, it is a matter of external social order. What is “normal” is a statistic, whether it is a self-fulfilling statistic is one of judgment and implementation.

Importantly, to step ahead of an argument of rhetorical hyperbole, it should be noted here that the attribute selected for order must be relevant on a necessary basis within the context, and, in this fact, science will be relevant. It may occur in the future that DNA genetic isolation will prove a difference in a white man, a black man, or a Native American, or the descendant Chinese brain versus the descendant Roman or German brain, but, even so, that science might not create relevance to the order required by civil society.

The attribute of categorization cannot exceed the relevance of political or civil purpose. Therefore, the attribute of categorization must serve a purpose in the society, and the attribute must be relevant. But, these logical draws toward a rhetorically hyperbolic argument that, at some level, there cannot be categorization, because any categorization by science or otherwise lends itself, by definition, to separation, is, once again, to deny civil order itself, or at least to bait disorder.

For example, on the issue of an DNA-XYs (men…) participating with XXs (women…) in athletic events, the DNA potential for physical capability is relevant to the question of athletic fairness in a game primarily testing physical attributes. The issue of XX/XY DNA is not relevant to the players in a poker game, because a poker game is not testing the quality of that relative fact. Where physical strength is tested in a game, the XX/XY attribute drives, as a general rule, the potential for the thing tested in the game. Color of skin, sexual preference, religion, are irrelevant, but the scientific potential of the chromosomic science, as a general rule, is relevant to the categorization for a game of physical strength, because the DNA sets the potential of the thing tested. An athletic event at a champion level tests the nth miniscule differential of physical power in the contestants, the potential of which, as a general rule, is governed by DNA.

Society can, of course, change the game as a Social Construct, the problem is that the game will no longer test the categorical attribute of skill that allows the game to serve its essential purpose as competitive, fun or perhaps educational.

Now, if we should point to a living being, known as a “human being,” we might say, “That human being is a man.” But this is a different case than the “XX/XY” issue, because we are now into a much more complex question. We have not stated a scientific fact, but a fact by social contrivance, only the name; that is, reference by a chosen denomination by definition of terms. Society did not give the XX/XY chromosomic fact, and society cannot per se take it away; society did create its definitional term, and society can take it away or change it.

Within this space of social reference, a human being may reject a name or a definition as representative of the human being. That is, if the definition of a term attributes certain characteristics that are not applicable to the human being, then it can be socially unfair for society to force the denotation onto the human being. Therefore, it may be improper for a person to deny an attribution by chromosomic DNA “XX/XY,” but proper for the person to deny a legal attribution of “man” or “woman.” One is an immutable rule of science, one is a contrivance of social definition. Refusing to be called a “woman” is a matter of Social Construct, but all the desire aside, does not change the issue of Natural Construct.

Another argument rationalizing the “they/them” concept is that “you” is inherently ambiguous in number; therefore “they” can be ambiguous in number. However, this is only the case in the second person, not the third person. In the second person (talking to someone), the “number” ambiguity is naturally resolved by the speaker and listener within the context. But, this is not necessarily so for the third person for “they/them” (talking about someone), or for example listening aurally on the radio. The goal of having society reference a non-binary individual without a binary characterization is a noble attempt at a quick fix, but to create “number” (singular/plural) ambiguity as a pervasive point of communication is simply not the better practice. The interested minority should make a better proffer for the non-binary linguistic reference that they desire, such as women did for “Ms.” and knee-jerk ardent emotion is not persuasive on a rational basis. Moreover, the fix needs to work in both writing and orally.

True Story (To Come Soon)

The witness took the stand. The two co-defendants on a burglary charge sat at the defendants’ table, one defendant with a non-binary identity and the other with a male identity.

[Prosecutor to the Witness] “And what did you observe that evening?”

[At that moment, the defense attorney dropped a pencil and leaned over to pick it up, during which the witness responded]:

[Witness] “I saw them enter the building.”

And, by that testimony, both defendants were convicted, although, in truth, the non-binary person was the culprit and the only human being at the scene that evening.

The point is not that litigation does not have mechanisms to clarify the record, but that there is a risk of miscommunication that will injure someone, simply because there is too much heft to the historical reality of “they/them” being a plural, third person, designation. This is not the same as an ex post facto change, for example, to the definition of vaccine.

And, logically, the premise introduces even more noise of linguistic challenges. What stops a minority faction from challenging use of the term, “human being”? That is, today general society cannot use the term “man” or “woman” and tomorrow society cannot use the term, “human being” because someone has determined, apart from DNA scientific truth, that the person does not identify as a human being. “In the course of human events,” so says Thomas Jefferson’s historical Declaration, intending to grant social rights, not confuse them.

Whether the law and custom change from, “Male” or “those designated as male at birth” (using defined social terms) to “those having XY chromosomes” (using factual scientific terms) is beyond the scope of this article.

We should support the right of the protected minority to be exactly what each person is substantively as a human being, and we should support a proper reference of respect and dignity for each person. However, that said, the “they/them” construct as presented for non-binary persons, is, in my own view, simply a bad construct of the English language.

Society can change what it grants, Social Constructs. Society cannot change what it did not grant, Natural Constructs. We change what we can, accept what we cannot, and wisdom is knowing the difference; otherwise, it is folly.

_______________________

The expression set forth in this article are solely the author’s and are not endorsed, condoned or supported by any affiliation of the author.

© 2023 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.

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