I wrote much of what you see below in response to request for comments by two British newspapers (the Sun and the Mirror) and National Public Radio (United States). I also communicated with the Daily Mail about the many errors in their article (including, less importantly, my age, location, and name spelling). What I present here is my best current articulation—given time constraints—of what I have been trying to say all along. It is meant to be the basis for dialogue. It is not a dogmatic statement of unchangeable belief.

The words being discussed are not ones I would have chosen to get into a controversy over. They involve subjects I would not normally discuss in polite company. But, alas, fate has made it so. I often get into arguments about words, but the last time I had such a word controversy, it was about whether epistēmai and technai were interchangeable in Plato and Aristotle.^[1] Many years ago I commented that “I always find myself being accused of moral crimes when people mistake my small analytic points for larger substantive ones.”

In this case, I made a quick tweet in response to a word used in a Guardian headline. I did not expect any response, but when one came I tried to explain what I had in mind and give my reasons. As I say, this is not a topic I would have chosen to get into an argument about. The subsequent response was a complete surprise to me. My original tweet and follow up generated thousands of tweets by others and many newspaper and blog articles, most of which were based on a complete misunderstanding. There are links to the newspaper and blog articles that covered the controversy at the end the full essay. They are pretty much all fake news.

For those who would like a correct understanding of my position, please read my essay on the subject. An abstract can be seen below. The full essay (with the abstract and this preface) can be accessed via the link below. Constructive comments are welcomed.

Abstract

English has many words that speakers sometimes use in a broad, genus way and sometimes in a narrow, species way. The context allows listeners to know which sense is intended. Sometimes one of the meanings derives from a technical word. The existence of a technical or quasi-technical use does not make the non-technical use incorrect. The word animal, for example, is commonly used to refer to beasts, but in biological circles the word includes humans. Another example relates to the female genitals.

The female genitals could be said to have a center and periphery. The center is where penises go in and babies come out. The periphery is the vulva, perineum, and the mound of venus. Vagina is sometimes used to refer to the center (species sense) and sometimes to both the center plus the periphery (genus sense).

Generic vagina is not synonymous with vulva. It includes among its referents the vulva, but also the vagina in the specific sense and the rest of the periphery. The genus sense of vagina has a unique function. If the generic meaning of vagina is lost, there is no non-slang word to refer to the genitals generally. The need for such a word is presumably what gave rise to the generic use in the first place.

The use of vulva where one would normally expect vagina is to one extent or another jarring to most people, in part because vulva is a less commonly used, more technical, word. Also, people rarely want to single out just what it refers to (although in what I was responding to the author may well have, which I have never denied). So using vulva in those situations is not correct, if by correct we mean consistent with prevailing expectations. The correct word, in that sense, is vagina. The claim should be seen as trivially true, assuming its asserted factual basis is accurate. In addition to being correct in that sense, the word would be all-things-considered apt if standard usage is something that should be kept. It is only the question of this aptness that should be controversial—for some people.

There may be a time when you need to refer to exactly what vulva covers, not to a part of the vulva (inner labia, outer labia, clitoris), and not to anything beyond it (e.g. vagina in the strict sense). In that case, vulva is available, although it might need introducing, depending upon the audience. Whether there is any need to increase the use of the word vulva, I don’t know. But even if there is, it would not remove the need for the generic use of vagina.

For those who want to maintain that people should stop using the word vagina in the broad way, it would be helpful to understand why the language keeps producing words that have both genus and species meanings. I’m assuming there’s a good reason. One should consider the awkwardness introduced by the refusal to accept the generic meanings of “man,” “he,” and “his.” If we eliminate the genus meaning of vagina, women will have one less word to use, and no non-slang alternative to it. This can be seen in a recent Planned Parenthood video in which they had to resort to using a meowing cat to indicate what could be indicated by vagina. So the most plausible change position would be to increase the use of vulva without banning the generic use of vagina. Another might be to use genitals instead of generic vagina, although that is even more formal sounding than vagina. My position is that since there is nothing wrong with existing usage, there is no need to seek alternatives. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

People should not feel intimidated by specialists, activists, academics, and people with vested interests (such as the promotion of books) into thinking they should not use the word generically. You should not feel pressured into speaking about the fetus in your uterus when you feel like saying baby in your tummy, and you should not feel you have to speak of your vulva itching when it feels natural to speak of your vagina itching. If you are speaking to a doctor, then you may want to remove ambiguity.

Of course, if proponents of change can come up with good reasons for a change, then people should be open to weighing those reasons. In the essay, I consider some of the reasons that have been given. I explain why I don’t consider them to be good reasons. Languages change regardless of our reasoning. But it does not follow that language should change in some particular way just because as a general factual matter languages often change.

FOREGROUND

What I was not saying

Although my brief tweet could understandably be taken as somebody correcting what he took to be a simple error, in this case appearances were deceiving. Because it had the same form as such a correction, when somebody responded, I was quick to clarify the real nature of what I was doing. I was joining issue with what I took to be an instantiation of an attempt to change common usage that I took to be misguided.

I was not denying that the things that we could see in the photos were technically called vulvas. I am fully (or at least sufficiently) aware of the difference between the referent of “vulva” and the referent of the narrow sense of “vagina.” If somebody were to ask me, “What does vulva mean?” I could imagine showing them the photos in the article I was responding to. To make it absolutely clear: I was not denying that what you saw in the photos were vulvas. Almost all the many newspaper and blog headlines asserted that I was confused on this subject. I am not. I am not disputing any of the technical meanings of the terms of female anatomy. If we had been looking at a biology text-book, I would not have thought or said “the correct word is vagina.”

Unfortunately, the prospect of a man publicly making a clearly mistaken correction about the names of parts of the body of the opposite sex was so tempting to people (especially those eager to find opportunities to use the quasi-racist term “mansplaining”) that they could or would not process anything said that would undermine such a delightful perception. In this situation, only the most ascetic of Stoics could take his own counsel of hesitating before assenting to the appearance (phantasia).^[2]

What I was I saying

By my tweet I was calling into question what I perceived to be yet another misguided attempt to change ordinary language usage. I was saying, in effect, “I think you should use the expected word.” I was sticking up for what I took to be standard usage.^[3] But my “the correct word is vagina” tweet was a conclusion with no premises. And it was not self-evident to others what I was concluding. And even if someone did understand what I was saying, I had provided no reasons that might persuade him if he were skeptical.

One does not need to have the same confidence in one’s position when starting an informal discussion as when publishing something in a scientific journal. But one should be ready to defend what one says when called upon to do so. The ensuing informal discussion is itself a bit like peer review. You can’t be completely sure how good your argument is until you’ve heard objections others might have to it.

I had no specific knowledge of why there was an attempted language change. But I assumed it was because people concluded that since there is a technical meaning, the non-technical meaning was illegitimate.

I took them to be implicitly saying “the word vagina is not correct,” and I was explicitly taking issue with that. So that imagined disagreement was the issue (stasis). I was being provocative since I spoke apodictically with the sort of apparent confidence that you might have if you were publishing in a scientific journal—or making a straightforward grammar or spelling correction.

As soon as there was a response, however, I moved to a humble and reasonable mode, ready to deal with any reasons that might come my way in favor of the attempted change I view myself as resisting.

The question in my mind had only to do with the status of one of two meanings of the word vagina. What I was claiming is that the use of the word vulva was solecistic in this non-technical context—although I assumed it was intentionally so.^[4] I was resisting those intentions. I was claiming that most people would have expected the word “vagina” and that it would have been better to respect those expectations. My view was that the fact that the word vagina also has a narrower meaning does not make the broader meaning illegitimate. At this point, I was unaware of any ideological reasons given for wanting to use the unexpected “vulva.” I figured it was just confused linguistic thinking, presumably influenced by an ethos of constantly finding existing usage “problematic.” I was challenging anyone to provide reasons for why my defense of the status quo was faulty.

The missing argument

Premises don't just support the conclusion, they help you understand (what) the conclusion (means).^[5] As I have said it the past, “There’s the thing and there’s the account. (It’s not enough to be right only about the thing.)”

The conclusion is “the correct word is vagina.” My argument in support of it, which follows, should clarify the meaning of the conclusion, provide reasons to think it might be correct, and clarify the sort of arguments that might join issue with it and refute it. Here is the missing argument:

Many words have broad and narrow meanings

The English language has evolved in ways that give many words both narrow and broad meanings—and situations frequently arise in which a word can have both broad and narrow applications. I call them genus and species meanings.^[6]Sometimes one of the meanings derives from a technical word. In fact, sometimes both words derive from a technical meaning, with one of the meanings being close to the technical meaning and the other broader (and including the narrower). The context allows people to automatically distinguish which meaning is intended in a particular situation, so much so that when one meaning is being engaged they don’t even think about the other possible meaning. This happens so often I am guessing there must be some implicit social logic to this and so must be found in all languages.^[7]

“Animal” sometimes includes humans, as animal kingdom. In biological circles the word includes humans. Sometimes the word refers to the beasts, excluding humans (as in “Man Gave Names to All the Animals”).^[8] “Man” sometimes includes women (man’s best friend), sometimes excludes them (he’s my man). “Vegetable” sometimes includes all plants (as in vegetable kingdom), sometimes only some (as in the things you must eat before you get desert). Mineral sometimes means all non-living things (as in mineral kingdom) and sometimes one part of that kingdom (as in vitamins and minerals). “Argument” can mean what you have to say in favor of a claim (so just the premises) or the whole thing: premises plus conclusion (claim). Science can mean the natural sciences or it can mean any systematic study, especially if it is explanatory. “Gay” can mean either homosexual or male homosexual (where it is contrasted with Lesbian, as in LGBT and sometimes Q). The word ‘girl’ can mean all females (as in girlfriend or the girls and I got together for bridge) and a young female (as in “when I just a girl, I asked my mother what would I be”). I think the new word “sex worker” will end up with two meanings: all those who exchange sexual services for money and prostitutes in particular. “He” and “his” have had useful dual functions.^[9]

More examples

Filipino: Sometimes means both male and female, and sometimes just male.
Latino (a dubious word): Sometimes means both male and female, and sometimes just male. Latinx: Idiotic attempt to avoid the need for genus-species word.
Intoxicant: Usually suggests alcohol, but can be extended to include drugs.
Drugs: Usually excludes alcohol, but can be extended to include alcohol. Sometimes means medicine (e.g., drug store).
Penis: narrow sense (shaft + glans) and narrow sense plus scrotum.^[10]
Speech: It can refer only to speaking (using sounds from the vocal cords to express ideas) or it can include writing too.
Guardians: In Plato’s Plato's ideal political system, the term sometimes includes both the rulers and the auxiliaries and sometimes only the rulers. φύλακες (phylakes) = guardians. In its genus use, phylakes covers both ἄρχοντες (archontes, rulers) and ἐπίκουροι (epikouroi, auxiliaries). The older guardians (species sense) rule; the younger auxiliaries fight. The rulers are also called "complete guardians" at Republic III 414a-b.
guy: sometimes just means males; sometimes males and females. (See the silly recent video with a girl entreating people not to use “guys” to cover everyone.)
gut: The word gut has a broad meaning and narrower meanings. The broad meaning is the digestive tract (alimentary canal, gastrointestinal tract) from oesophagus to large intestine. The middle meaning is that part of the digestive tract that is below the diaphragm, sometimes just the intestines, especially the small ones. Coincidentally, this is mentioned by Gunter in her recent book as part of her acknowledgment that vagina too has more than one usage. She calls the narrow meaning “medical.”
epidemic: a pandemic is a kind of epidemic, a very large one. But sometimes epidemic is used to mean “not big enough to be a pandemic.”^[11]
Nov. 14: I have added this point to the main article: recent evidence (in the form of a video ‘educating’ elementary school students about ‘gender fluidity’) of the attempt to have a new generic meaning of ‘vulva’ replace the traditional generic meaning of ‘vagina’—suggesting that the concern is not really over why only the technical meaning should be used.
Feb. 2020: I had a lengthy DM discussion with a nurse in Scotland. She says in her circles (and in sex education there), ‘vulva’ is common. I plan to add what she says as an appendix.
Dec. 8, 2020: Another genus species word: in England and elsewhere, “tea” is both a drink and a meal which includes drinking tea (like gohan, which means in Japan both rice and a meal in which you typically eat rice).
Dec. 23, 2020: Another word with both species and genus meanings: Europe sometimes means the Continent, and sometimes the Continent plus the British Isles.
Jan. 8, 2021: The word people can mean everybody or just the common people. Populism promotes the interests of the common people as against the wealthy elite.
April 30, 2021: In legal language (in the UK, for example), “assault” sometimes means threatening someone with imminent violence and sometimes it means actually committing violence against them (or both). The former is the strict meaning, but the latter can be found in the same legal documents. Context and qualifying words distinguish.
Democracy sometimes means something as opposed to a republic, and sometimes includes republic (I will have to say more about this).
Republic itself has several meanings. The two main: non-monarchy and a mixed representative system (I will have to clarify the relevance of this).

For other languages, in Aristotle’s Greek, politeia has two levels of genus–species relationships: political system, political system without a king (republic), and political system that is a careful mixture of democratic and oligarchic elements (“polity”).^[12] Polis can mean both the central city plus surrounding countryside and sometimes just the central city. I have seen it for other words in Greek too, but I did not keep a list. Aristotle often says that some word is “said in many ways.”

In French, the verb aimer can mean both to like and to love. French people can say “I like you but I don’t love you” using the same verb (Je t’aime bien, mais je ne t’aime pas).^[13]

Japanese: Gohan (ご飯) means both rice and meal. So the word for meal is taken from a part of the typical meal.

In Roman law, iniuria has both a general meaning and a specific meaning. It actually has two different general meanings. One of them is just a violation of someone’s rights (“injury”) and the other is the delict that can be translated as insult or outrage (including, among other things, what the common law calls assault and battery).

Interestingly, there is a video in which people are using “vulva” generically (to include the vagina, in the narrow sense)—as a substitute for the generic use of vagina. It proves my point that (1) we need a general word and that (2) words often develop broader and narrower meanings. So the suggestion we should use only the narrow (technical) meaning of ‘vagina’ falls apart if you start also using ‘vulva’ in a non-technical way.

Vagina is one of those words

Another example relates to female genitals, which could be said to have a center and periphery (or penumbra). The center is where penises go in and babies come out. The periphery is the vulva, perineum, and the mound of venus. Most people know the word vagina is used in two ways: (1) most commonly to refer to the female genital area generally (the center and the periphery), but also (2) to refer to one particular part of it (just the center).^[14]

I don’t know, but I assume that the species meaning derives from the technical term of biology. In any case, there is a close relationship between the species meaning and that technical term. My guess is that the average speaker does not mean to exclude the ectocervix when he says “vagina.” But according to anatomy textbooks, the term vagina does not include it. So in that sense, it is not even correct to call the species sense of vagina technical. It is either derived from the technical meaning or is quasi-technical. Or for all I know, the genus meaning came first and only later did the narrower and technical meanings get fixed. I feign a bit more ignorance here than I have mainly because it does not matter. This essay aims to provide a synchronic account of existing usage, not a diachronic account confused by the genetic fallacy.

Getting an ought from an is

This descriptive fact determines correct use.^[15] We get an ought from an is, so to speak.^[16] “Correct use” here means one in which people will know what you are talking about and you won’t sound strange. It’s a bit like wearing clothes where you don’t attract attention to yourself.

My descriptivism is only presumptive in that it allows for the possibility of viewing widespread usage as in some sense incorrect.^[17] This “presumptive descriptivism” is a step away from strict descriptivism in the direction of prescriptivism. It is open to non-descriptive possibilities, but the burden is on the person holding that position to explain why millions of people are wrong. The ordinary speaker is innocent until proven guilty. I would have to make a case why “beg the question” should not be used to mean “gives rise to the question,” why “parameter” should not be used to mean limit, why “literally” should not be used as an intensifier, why “issue” should not be used to mean problem, why “as well as” should not be used to mean “and,” and so on.

[My position in this essay forces me to say that “begs the question” is correct in one sense, but incorrect in a more important one. But in the end it may not be possible to avoid an “in the sense that” qualification to any use of the word correct, although some contexts would reasonably lead a person to assume an intended sense. The use of the word correct in my original tweet may have allowed people to too easily insert their preferred sense of correct, including ones that are argumentatively self-serving. There may be a natural tendency to resolve ambiguity in a way that makes one’s opponent easy to criticize. That is one more reason to apply the principle of charity—if one is engaged in dialectic rather than war.].

[[So there are two ways of looking at usage: according to descriptivism, prevailing collective use (usage) determines individual correct use. Based on this view, if in existing usage women use the catch-all “vagina” to refer to their vulvas (among other things), “the correct word is vagina.” You can’t say, “but technically…..” But even people who accept this sort of descriptivist prescriptivism (collective is determines individual ought) as a general matter may allow that certain usages are nonetheless “incorrect,” or at least objectionable, in a more important sense. The easiest example is the use of literally as a vague intensifier. For example, it can never be justified (one might think) for the TV reporter to have said “I am literally in the middle of nowhere.” And one might object to the claim (actually made) that “economics is literally everywhere”—despite usage.

I have that attitude with words like long-lived, which I pronounce with a long “i”—having being convinced that it is the “correct” way to do it. And I pronounce forte (meaning strength) without an accent on the “e”—having been convinced that is the “correct” way to do it. Many people follow pseudo rules of grammar or usage due to the warnings of a Miss Thistlebottom.^[18] I may be one of them here. If I am, then burden is on me to make a case.

So one cannot automatically rule out the possibility that although “vagina” is widely used as a catch-all and so in at least one sense correct, it is incorrect in a more important sense. Or at least that its use is not a good idea.

Just as people sometimes violate the law to bring about a revolution, people sometimes violate usage as part of an attempt to change it. These people are speaking “incorrectly” (coming across as solecistic) for the sake of making a change. There is some number of women who say “vulva” when the normal person—one who has not been subjected to conscientização—would expect “vagina.”

So even if one were to concede that currently the generic use of “vagina” is correct English (consistent with usage), one could still advocate that usage be changed.

How it might be that some people have come to reject usage^[19]

One can understand how a female gynecologist, in the habit of using technical terms and of not using the word vagina generically, could have as a pet peeve the fact that her patients use the language differently from herself and her colleagues. And having adopted this attitude, she could be in the habit of promoting the use of the word only in the technical sense. And that person, being a woman, may find it convenient to rationalize her preferences with feminist-sounding reasons: using precise gynecological terminology is “empowering.” Also, practical ones: when you need to tell your doctor where you itch, you can be more verbally exact, reducing the chances of misdiagnosis.

And a person who has just written a book on the subject and is drawn into the dispute might rummage around for arguments to the defend what appears to be the righteous side and land on feminist sounding metaphysical reasons: using the word vagina generically is comparable to female genital mutilation. Using the word vagina as a catch-all denies the vulva a proper existence. Using the word vulva, by contrast, is empowering. It gives women agency.

And soon it becomes a tenet of faith that any person who says “vagina” rather than “vulva” is committing a heresy. An obligation to use “vulva” becomes sect orthodoxy. It becomes religiously incorrect to say “vagina” generically. This sense of how things seems to be behind journalist Paula Schmitt’s response to Irish author Lynn Enright’s advocacy:

The problem with this type of propriety lesson is that once it becomes widespread among the ‘literati’ who consume such tripe (aka idioti), everyone else has to follow the rule or they’d be considered inappropriate or politically incorrect, when they are just people with better things to do.^[20]

So the question is whether there is sufficient reason to violate existing practice. While some are claiming that the correct word is “vulva,” I am saying the correct word is “vagina.” It's a battle of assertions of correctnesses. But using the word “correct” may cause confusion. One side is opposing one common meaning of vagina, while the other side (me) is defending it. The main reason to defend the use of “correct” is that it was used in my original tweet. I think it was a plausible use of the word, but it is not worth getting into an extensive debate about that one word. It may be better to think in terms of what is the best policy and why. Correct suggests it is a straightforward matter. Only on the weakest sense of “correct” is it straightforward. The main dispute lies above the straightforward level. It is a question of whether or not common usage should be changed. A person could say, yes that usage is common and so no you can’t tell someone they are being incorrect by speaking that way, BUT you can still advocate a change. So at some point arguing over the word “correct” yields diminishing returns. The question is what good reasons are there to make a change. And I think it is reasonable to say that the burden of proof lies with those who want to change usage by imposing new norms.

In this case, I’m a bit like the person who might tell me that I should pronounce “long-lived” with a short “i” on the grounds that it is universal practice—and so it doesn’t matter what is technically correct. They are like me in insisting on pronouncing “long-lived” with a long “i” despite common practice. And perhaps they are like me in insisting that “begs the question” is incorrect (when meaning “gives rise to the question”) and that it should only be used to talk about the fallacy of informal logic in which the very thing that must be proved is used as a premise.^[21] So I would say that the idea that correctness is determined by usage is a presumptive position. For one thing, there are some people whose sensibilities might count for more. They are like the linguistic conscience. Although there is some variance among the standards of the individuals in this group, it might be a useful way of looking things even if it doesn’t resolve all disputes. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a usage panel, which gets polled on areas where language is changing to see what is deemed acceptable by people who are more sensitive to language matters. So one’s descriptivist notion of usage need not completely democratic.

Why one might want to keep the status quo

There must be something useful about this sort of genus–species arrangement since it occurs with other words too. There is no good basis for asserting that people who use the generic meanings of words are (necessarily) speaking incorrectly. And that general attitude applies in this case too. To adjudicate this issue properly, it would probably be necessary to understand why languages produce so many words that have genus and species meanings or situations that have genus and species applications of a word.^[22] That might illuminate what would be lost by removing the genus meaning. The ideological decision to remove the genus meaning of “he” and “man” has led to all sorts of awkwardness: “he and she” or “s/he” or varying back and forth or only using a generic “she” or or “they.” So I myself use the traditional manner when there is no easy alternative. It is only sexist if you decide to think it is. Likewise, “Oriental” only became “racist” when activists decided to make it so. Activists are constantly looking for things to complain about.

Here are some problems that might arise from banning the generic use of “vagina.”

The broader (genus) meaning of the word vagina is not synonymous with the word vulva. It includes more than the vulva. For example, it also includes the vagina (narrow sense). It also includes the mound of venus and the perineum. It includes “everything girls have” (to quote Harriet Lerner). As a result, the word vagina fulfills a useful function that cannot be fulfilled by the word vulva. If you want to refer to the vulva and the vagina (narrow) together (at least), the available word has been vagina.

Generic vagina is not synonymous with vulva. It includes the vulva, but also more. [[The use of vulva where one would normally expect vagina is a bit jarring to most people, in part because vulva is a less commonly used, more technical, word. (Even Lynn Enright, who knew she was “supposed to” say vulva thought it “sounded a bit stuffy, a bit pedantic” and Mary Katharine Tramontana acknowledges that some might find it “too clinical.^[23])So using vulva in those situations is not correct, if by correct we mean consistent with prevailing expectations. The correct word, in that sense, is vagina. The claim should be seen as trivially true, assuming its factual basis is right. In addition to being correct, the word would be apt if standard usage is something that should be kept. It is only the question of aptness that should be controversial—for some people.]]

There may be a time when you need to refer to exactly what vulva covers, not to a part of the vulva, and not to anything beyond it. In that case, vulva is available, although it might need introducing, depending upon the audience. Whether there is any need to increase the use of the word vulva, I don’t know. But even if there is, it would not remove the need for the generic use of vagina.

For those who want to maintain that people should stop using the word vagina generally, it would be helpful to understand why the language keeps producing words that have both genus and species meanings. I’m assuming there’s a good reason. One should consider the awkwardness introduced by the refusal to accept that “he,” “his,” “man,” and “men” have both generic and specific meanings (including or excluding females).

If the generic meaning of vagina is lost, there is no non-slang word to refer to the genitals generally. The need for such a word is presumably what gave rise to using vagina in a generic way in the first place. This happens with many words. The utility of the generic meaning is reflected in a recent video from Planned Parenthood about the vagina and the vulva in which they had to resort to a meowing cat to refer to what generic vagina refers.^[24] A picture of cat implying “pussy” is not a good substitute for the word vagina. When a person speaks, he cannot pull out a photo of a cat. A non-verbal euphemism for a slang word is not an improvement over the non slang word of the status quo.

If we eliminate the genus meaning of vagina, women will have one less word to use and no non-slang replacement. So the most plausible change position would be to increase the use of vulva without banning the generic use of vagina. Another might be to use genitals instead of generic vagina, although that is even more formal sounding than vagina.

Until sufficient reasons can be provided to change, people should not feel intimidated by specialists, activists, academics and people with vested interests (e.g., books to promote) into thinking they should not use the word generically—unless reasons can be provided that withstand critical scrutiny. So you can speak of the life still within you as a baby and its location your belly. You should not feel pressured into speaking about the fetus in your uterus—or the itch on your vulva.]]]

Possible objections to my position

As my position has two components, descriptive and normative, people could object to it in two main ways.

(1) Descriptive objections

People could conceivably object to my position by claiming that usage is not as I say it is. They could say that people or women don’t commonly use “vagina” in the generic sense that I say they do. Or they could say that usage in England is different from what it is in the United States. (One person raised this possibility—pointing out that the article being responded to was published in England.) Or they could say that there is a subculture among women who have already changed usage. For example, it could be that activists have widely adopted a new usage. Generally, when it comes to these subjects, the thinking and practice of activist (including academic) women, especially if they go by the label feminist, is different from that of other women. Among some of them a new norm seems to have been accepted. The Twitter account the Whores of Yore shows evidence of this. As does Planned Parenthood, at least in one of their videos. And the Vagina Museum speaks of “vaginas and vulvas” in their blurb.^[25] And, of course, the Guardian article that I originally commented on. The Irish author Lynn Enright says that while she had long used the word vagina, “I knew that I was supposed to call it a vulva.”^[26] Her saying this could indicate that it is a norm in certain circles.

I am limiting myself to non-slang words. It may well be that most women use slang words more often than “vagina.” One women polled her office in England and found that most used “fanny.” In the UK, that is a slang synonym for generic vagina. (In the US, the term is informal for buttocks. You would not sell “fanny packs” in England.) Likewise, it may well be that most women say “boobs” rather than “breasts.” This discussion is limited to non-slang usage. (I get the sense that women speak of these sort of parts self-deprecatingly. I myself do not use slang words for genitals precisely because they seem to be deprecating. But self-deprecation is more acceptable than other-deprecation.)

If someone were to insist, based on their own experiences with the English language, that the term was not widely used by women, I would start to doubt the factual foundation for my normative position. If my descriptive claim is wrong, my argument falls apart. But although some individuals have suggested otherwise, my factual claim about widespread usage seems correct. I am not claiming that everyone speaks this way, only that most do.

John Lyons, in his Structural Semantics, speaks of a principle “familiar in linguistics: to accept everything that the native speaker says in his language but to treat with reserve anything he says about his language, until this has been checked.”^[27] So while it was informative to hear some women on Twitter say they did not speak the manner I am claim is standard, I could not follow their suggestion that therefore that’s how most women (and men) spoke. What they say contradicts my own experience and the claims of other below.

Evidence in support of my factual claim about existing usage^[28]

Even critics of my stance have said “Vagina is [the] much more common and much more acceptable word” and “You're right, people often use vagina to mean what medical personnel and others refer to as vulva.”^[29] In her second Twitter response to me, Jen Gunter spoke of the “common use vagina.”^[30] That means how the word vagina is found in common use. In other words, it is what I call the generic meaning of vagina. In her 2015 blog with the Venn Diagram, she said “‘I’m sick of people forgetting the poor vulva and referring to everything in the female lower reproductive tract as vagina.”^[31] And Jen Gunter’s book released on Aug. 20/27, 2019, The Vagina Bible (Random House Canada/Citadel), she basically takes the same position as me:^[32]

The UK television program featuring Laura Dodsworth’s 100 Vulvas^[33] photographs is titled “100 Vaginas.”^[34] When asked why it was not called “100 Vulvas,” Dodsworth replied that “Most people (incorrectly) use the word vagina.”^[35] The film reviewer in the Guardian (Lucy Mangan) wrote that

The documentary 100 Vaginas (Channel 4) was not about 100 vaginas—it was about 100 vulvas....Presumably the powers that be thought calling it 100 Vulvas would lead too many unsuspecting viewers to settle down in anticipation of a programme about the history of Swedish engineering.^[36]

This makes sense if, as I have said, the expected word is “vagina.” So it is “correct” in the trivial sense of being standard spoken English (which in itself does not mean one ought not seek a change). In fact, if you speak the “word” vulva into Apple iPhone’s voice recognition, no matter how you pronounce it, you get “Volvo.” There is no problem with the word vagina.

In answer to the question "Why isn’t it called the Vulva Museum?", the Vagina Museum says “We thought it [‘vagina’] was a more recognisable word than vulva which is important to make the museum accessible.”^[37]

In her Guardian article (“Why it matters to call external female genitalia ‘vulva’ not ‘vagina’”) published in response to the controversy, Lynn Enright said this:

It is here, I must concede, that Bullen has a point. The word vagina is regularly misused. In fact, until I wrote a book about vaginas and vulvas, I called my own vulva a vagina. I knew that I was supposed to call it a vulva but I thought that the word ‘vulva’ sounded a bit stuffy, a bit pedantic. Given the dearth of words women have to describe their genitals…most of us have relied on ‘vagina,’ even if it isn’t anatomically correct.^[38]

Putting aside her normative assessments, she is bearing witness to the fact that ‘vagina’ is widely used to cover the female genitals generally (and so includes the vulva).

Harriet Lerner says in the same 2003 article that Lynn Enright quotes from, “I've now interviewed hundreds of mostly white, middle-class parents and the vast majority misused the word vagina to refer to ‘everything girls have’.”^[39] And her reference age and ethnicity is not meant to suggest that other groups would speak differently. The point is that these are educated people.

In an article titled “Calling vulvas vaginas is linguistic clitorectomy,” Jessica Pin writes, “In our culture, little girls grow up learning that boys have penises and girls have vaginas….There is no doubt that ‘vagina’ is the most frequently used colloquial term for the female genitalia.”^[40] Pin goes even farther than I was aware of to say “Even in some academic texts and medical committee opinions, the term ‘vagina’ is used as a catchall term for female genitals.”

So despite the many individual women who have tweeted me to tell me they don’t use “vagina” as a catch-all word, the least one can say is that there is a lot of evidence beyond my own experience as an English speaker of several decades in support of my descriptive claim. The activists would not be making such a big deal of people using the word “vagina” when not speaking only of the narrow sense of the word, if there were not a reality they felt needed changing.

Additional evidence:

the Vagina Dialogues,
the Great Wall of Vagina^[41]
vagina cupcakes,
vagestic as the compliment to phallic (see vagestic embroidery)
Vajayjay (popularized, but not coined, by Oprah): See: Vajayjay | Amazon.ca Official Site.^[42]

vajayjay

NOUN / US / informal

A woman's genitals.

Origin: Early 21st century: humorous alteration of vagina.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/vajayjay

Wikipedia:

“Although by its dictionary and anatomical definitions, the term vagina refers exclusively to the specific internal structure, it is colloquially used to refer to the vulva or to both the vagina and vulva.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina#Etymology_and_definition

“Colloquially” here means how ordinary, or lay, people speak. “Colloquial...(of language) used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary” (New Oxford American Dictionary).

“Vagina” is used incorrectly so often that it should come as no surprise that my highly educated professor used the wrong term. Even feminist texts and artworks, like The Vagina Monologues and The Great Wall of Vagina, fall into the same trap. Pretty much every time you see “vagina” in the media, it's misplaced for vulva.^[43]

The same author concludes:

Maybe, at the end of the day, the word “vulva” is too clinical for you. No problem. How about “pussy,” “yoni,” or a list of other words? Personally, I've always gone the reclaiming route. I say “cunt.” The word “cunt” shares an etymological root with queen, kin, and country. Cunt shouldn't be the most offensive word in the English language. Cunts are great!

I think 100 Vaginas made a better name for the documentary than either 100 Vulvas or 100 Cunts. And, fortunately, 100 Vaginas is the status quo way of speaking.

Op-ed in the June 25, 2019 New York Times: Jackie Rotman “Vaginas Deserve Giant Ads, Too.” “New York City’s subway walls are plastered with massive cactuses. Where are all the papayas? [/] Ms. Rotman is the founder and chief executive of a sexual wellness advocacy nonprofit.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/opinion/women-sex-toys-advertisements.html

Also:

What do you call the area between a woman's legs? Nope—not a vagina. It's called a vulva. Why is it that most of us don't know this?^[44]

Vagina China (vaginachina.org)

“Our art honors the vagina, and all her variations of shape, size and figure.”

They make plates (“china”) which have casts of women’s vaginas on them. And what you see is identical with what is technically called the vulva. Roughly, they say “the vagina, specifically the vulva.” That’s standard usage generic vagina includes the vulva (as well as the specific vagina).

“Vagina China is a large-scale community art project by The Women's Art League.

We are creating an exhibition that celebrates, honors and demystifies the female body—specifically, the vulva (more commonly known as the vagina.)”

To be looked at more closely for its argument, but the headline supports my factual basis: Mary Katharine Tramontana, “Stop Calling It a 'Vagina,'” Vice, March 9, 2015.

For years, people—feminists included—have been using the wrong word to refer to female genitalia.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/exmjye/stop-calling-it-a-vagina

More evidence from an Aug. 31, 2019 New York Times piece by a contributing opinion writer. This educated youngish (judging by the photo) woman, Julia Baird, takes it for granted that the vagina includes the vulva.

“SYDNEY, Australia — I defy you to find any female leader in politics or in business whose vagina is currently discussed over dinner tables. Not the idea of her vagina, but her actual vagina; its folds, curves, colors and depths.” —Julia Baird, “What I Know About Famous Men’s Penises And sincerely wish I didn’t,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 2019.

* * * * *

As I’ve shown, my descriptive claim is not maintained just by me. So if I’ve been deluded about the language, I’m not the only one. The very cause of promoting “vulva” makes sense only if (many) people aren’t using it. I feel like I am arguing that the sky is blue, but there are people who tell me that it isn’t.

So I think the only serious dispute is in the area I discuss next, which has to do with whether it was appropriate for the various people quoted above to add the characterizations “misused,” “not…correct,” and “incorrectly” to the use of vagina with the broader meaning. I have been saying that the existing generic usage is fine. It is not wrong, a misuse, or incorrect. So we have here an issue (in the rhetorical and dialectical sense). One person is saying there’s nothing wrong with usage. The side is saying there is.

(2) Normative objections

So people could agree about the factual claim about usage, but disagree about the normative claim. They could say, “yes, you are right about current usage, but it is better to shift to using only the narrower meaning of vagina and to stop using the broader meaning.” And they could give reasons. It is possible I would be persuaded by those reasons.

There are two possible extents of change that could be sought by the supporters of “vulva.” In the sort of contexts I am reacting to, they could hold

(1) that using vulva is correct also or

(2) that using vulva is correct only.

That is to say, they could take the view that

the use of vulva is perfectly fine, even in informal contexts, but that the generic use of vagina is fine too. So I was wrong to say “the correct word if vagina,” but that the authors could have used the word vagina.

Or they could take the position that

the use of vulva is fine, but that the generic use of vagina is never fine.

While my position is that vulva is incorrect in the limited sense I specify for informal situations, the position of my current opponents is that (generic) vagina is incorrect—in all circumstances. So I was wrong to say “the correct word is vagina.”

My view is that if you have some reason to be highly specific, using “vulva” is fine. And I am not saying that individual people should not speak the way they want to. But if most people use the word a certain way, as a presumptive matter one ought call it incorrect. It would seem that the most one could say is that one would like people to stop doing it—for one or more reasons that are provided.

The linguistic argument against using vagina generically

The main reason for saying “vagina” is incorrect seems to be that there is a narrower technical usage. Now, that way of putting it yields only what is called an enthymeme (as that word is used in developments in rhetoric later than Aristotle): it is an incomplete syllogism. The audience is expected to supply the missing premise.

Here’s the enthymeme:

In addition to the non-technical meaning of the word vagina, there is a technical meaning.
Therefore, non-technical meaning of the word vagina is incorrect.

The missing premise would have something like

If, in addition to a non-technical meaning, a word has a technical meaning, the non-technical meaning is incorrect.

So the complete syllogism would be:

[major premise] If, in addition to a non-technical meaning, a word has a technical meaning, the non-technical meaning is incorrect.
[minor premise] In addition to the non-technical meaning of the word vagina, there is a technical meaning.
[conclusion] Therefore, the non-technical meaning of the word vagina is incorrect.

But my view is that the major premise is false.

If, in addition to a non-technical meaning, a word has a technical meaning, the non-technical meaning is incorrect.

The existence of a narrower, more technical use of a word does not (by itself) make the broader use incorrect. It is one thing to try to persuade people to change the word they use, but it is another thing to accuse English speakers who speak English in the standard way of being incorrect.^[45] I would say this is something like a specialist fallacy. In this case, the specialist would be a gynecologist. However, I do think the existence of technical meanings does sometimes have bearing on the correctness of colloquial use. For example, I object to common uses of “exponential” and “parameter” and “begs the question.” So my position is that the mere existence of a technical meaning does not make the non-technical meaning incorrect. You would have to provide some sort of argument. The attitude of presumptive descriptivism would apply here. We assume the colloquial use is correct, but it is a defeasible assumption. But the burden is on those who object to common use to make a case.

Even if people were to become more used to using the word vulva, and they used it when they were only wanting to refer precisely to the vulva, even then the generic use of vagina should stand. Vulva and generic vagina are not equivalent. There are times when a person wants to refer to everything, and that role can only be fulfilled by the word vagina—if we rule out rude words. And sometimes the person may want to refer to a part by using the word for the whole. The idea that because there is also a stricter use of the word, the broader use of the word must cause problems seems linguistically confused.

So those who disagree with the view that “the correct word is vagina” would have to come up with arguments for why millions of women should start speaking differently. It is not plausible to say that millions of women are simply incorrect.

Non-linguistic arguments against using vagina generically

But it turns out there are non-linguistic arguments. They involve pointing out the bad things that will happen to women if they use the word vagina generically (see below). Here’s the argument Lynn Enright gives in her article “Why it matters to call external female genitalia ‘vulva’ not ‘vagina’”:

The American feminist and psychologist Harriet Lerner believes that neglecting the word vulva has serious consequences, calling it a “psychic genital mutilation.^[46] “What is not named does not exist,” she argues. The vagina is essential for heterosexual penis-in-vagina sex and childbirth and so the word has come to be tolerated if not exactly celebrated. The vulva—with its clitoris—represents something more taboo than even sex and menstruation: female pleasure. It is a place of independent female sexuality, a place that can exist—happily—unperturbed by a penis. And so the vulva has been sidelined.…Both Dodsworth and Atalanta have spoken about how an ignorance of basic biology has serious ramifications for people—in terms of pleasure, confidence and gender equality. And as women recognise the lack of information they’ve been given about their own bodies and the consequences that has had—particularly in the wake of the #MeToo movement—there is an increased focus on our biology and the language we use to describe it. Using the words vulva and vagina interchangeably^[47] isn’t a harmless linguistic quirk: it’s actually a technique for diminishing a woman’s sexual agency. Anyone who cares about language—and women—should recognise that.

At this point, we are getting into territory where I would rather not tread. I don’t have skin in the game, as they say. All I can say is that I find almost every reason given here by Enright and Lerner for a change to be nonsensical. They at least would require some sort of argument or evidence. Perhaps those and better arguments have been given somewhere. This is only a Guardian article, after all.

[Added Aug. 5, 2019: There is another person who makes this sort of argument: Jessica Pin. Here argument is capable of at least some logical criticism; but as suggested, there is only so far I would like to go in this subject as it would require knowing more than I do (in part because I am male, not female). So please consider my points tentative and it should be remembered that my involvement is somewhat accidental. For what it is worth, here is what a woman says in disagreement with Pin:

FraPelecanus

2 points

11 months ago [copied Aug. 5, 2019]

“A catchall term for female genitals was always womb (uterus), because genitals are reproductive organs and the most important function of it is conception and development of the fetus; without reproduction human beings would be extinct. Vagina became a catchall term because our culture divides erotic pleasure from reproduction and puts emphasis on pleasure. Using your style of thinking, vagina as a catchall term for female genitalia would be a ‘linguistic’ hysterectomy.

[The reason] People don't use terma vulva [is] because vagina sounds better to them (repeat both words quickly aloud). Vagina is used for vulva & vagina. Uterus and other inner genitalia are not covered by it. Using vagina as a counterpart to penis is logical: it is derived from the mechanism of intercourse (penetration) as the most important act for procreation. External female genitalia are hidden or indistinct in crotch and pubic hair if a woman doesn't intentionally pose to show it. To hide male external genitalia on a nude figure is impossible. Labia minora hidden by labia majora are one of normal fully adult forms of female external genitalia. There is nothing childlike. The duality of ‘absence’ and ‘presence’ is natural. A heterosexual aroused woman feels strong urge to be "filled" and man feels urge to penetrate. If they didn't, intercourse would have been impossible” https://www.reddit.com/r/Feminism/comments/9cpsfa/calling_vulvas_vaginas_is_linguistic_clitorectomy/

To give a proper response to Pin’s article would take more time than I have now, but let me just assert my general reactions. I see a common problem with what could perhaps be called question begging, or at least treating as axiomatic something I don’t accept: namely, that the correct meaning of “vagina” is the narrow or even technical meaning. Also, much of the talk about the bad effects of terminology are speculative. And some of the ramifyings based on the sort of talk you would get from a women’s studies program. Some of it could be true, but I am skeptical. I should mention that am assuming that the biological core of what Pin is concerned about it correct. It is only the linguistic and cultural generalizations that I am skeptical about. Her primary mission would be unaffected even if her linguistic and cultural speculations were false. I repeat that there is only so far, that it is is appropriate for me to pursue these matters. And I should also point out that I have no objection to women being familiar with technical terms. I just see no harm (and some benefit) in using ‘vagina’ in both narrow and broad ways. The broad sense of ‘vagina’ includes the vulva.]

But let me respond to part of what is said by Enright, as I have received similar comment tweet from a one Gillian Nora^[48]

“Do you understand that not only is vagina anatomically incorrect but it is also androcentric in that it uses the only part of the female anatomy that men care about to refer to the whole thing?”

Enright writes above:

The vagina is essential for heterosexual penis-in-vagina sex and childbirth and so the word has come to be tolerated if not exactly celebrated. The vulva—with its clitoris—represents something more taboo than even sex and menstruation: female pleasure. It is a place of independent female sexuality, a place that can exist—happily—unperturbed by a penis. And so the vulva has been sidelined.

I see no reason to think the fact that people (including women) have unconsciously satisfied the need for a general term by giving a specific term an additional meaning (a common practice in languages) to have any sinister feminist anti-male conspiratorial significance. Such an explanation is purely speculative and doesn't even correspond to my own experiences and observations of the world. Men are not just interested in the vagina in the narrow sense, and if they were, it's not clear how that explains the usage. It is implausible (to me). This view seems to be almost anti-vagina (in the narrow sense) in that it is tainted by association with men: that’s where they put their penises. Somehow the fact that women can stimulate themselves without men give the vulva a dignity higher than the vagina. My conspiratorial explanation for the new enthusiasm for the word ‘vulva’ comes from this: it is a gynocentric feminist and Lesbian desire to separate female sexuality from the opposite sex—the ones responsible for the oppression of women since at least the end of the last ice age via something called patriarchy..

[My main task here is to clarify my reasoning, not to provide a complete research-based advocacy of a position. This is an informal presentation, in that sense. If somebody is aware of better arguments, please let me know. I can at least put them in the footnotes as additional reading.]

Here is one more case for using “vulva” and not using generic “vagina”:

I’m sick of people forgetting the poor vulva and referring to everything in the female lower reproductive tract as vagina.

To help people sort it out I have created this Venn diagram.

There are many reason to know the difference.

Knowing your own personal anatomy is empowering.
If you have a partner you want them to know your anatomy. If they think it’s all about the vagina you may need a different partner. After all, the vulva has the clitoris.
If you tell your doctor that your vagina itches when it is really your vulva (or vice versa) you may end up with the wrong diagnosis.
No one confuses male anatomy, when people say penis they don’t really mean the testicles.
Female anatomy shouldn’t be reduced to annoying euphemisms. Yes, va-jay-jay is horrible, but vagina as a catch all means it doesn’t matter enough to get it right or that we can only talk about female anatomy in some silly way.

So it’s not the Great Wall of Vagina, it’s the Great Wall of Vulva. And if you bake vagina cupcakes they better not have lips (labia).”^[49]

I’m sure if a woman tells her doctor that her vagina itches, he will be smart enough to inquire as to which part of her vagina is itching before operating. The idea that you would change husbands or boyfriends because he uses the word “vagina” in the standard way that women do suggests the doctor is expert in body parts but not human relations. There are few men who fail to realize that the vagina in the sense commonly used includes the clitoris. They may have had a hard time finding it, but they have faith that it exists and roughly where it is supposed to be. And if a man is uninformed, explaining it to him is more humane than ending the relationship. This really seems like a person familiar with technical terms who doesn’t like common usage for mainly sociology of knowledge reasons that are reinforced by ideological rationalizations.^[50]

Also, the comparison with male anatomy is not correct. Sometimes people do actually use the word “penis” to refer to male genitals generally, and not only to refer to one part. For example, if someone were to comment about being able to see David’s penis in Michelangelo’s statue, they would not mean to exclude the testicles.^[51] As with the female, a narrower term is borrowed for a broader need. As with the female body, there is no non-slang alternative.

I don’t know how empowering knowing your anatomy is, but there is nothing about standard English that stops women from knowing their anatomy. If you want to be vague or cover everything, you use “vagina”. If you have reason to be specific you can use whatever other words you want. Should a woman say “outer labia” if the part of the vulva she is referring to be that part? It’s a pragmatic question. I would really like to hear evidence of traffic accidents being caused by the current state of the vocabulary.

Whether women need to know more about their reproductive system, I have no idea. But that is a separate matter. Recently, a nurse who commented listed various terms for parts of the male genitalia I’d never heard of. I really don’t need that information, and I’m sure I’m not unempowered by not knowing it. Some people do need to know it, but not everyone.^[52] I have a limited interest in this subject, but as an outsider, so to speak, this is how it seems to me. (Outsiders are allowed to have opinions too, and they don’t have to bow down in front a random expert. Of course, a relevant expert should be listened to. But experts disagree and they should be able to present actual reasons, not just appeals to authority.) What’s wrong with the occasional euphemism? Of course, specialists like exact, technical language. But their authority does not extend to common language usage.

One person who contacted me said she did a survey of women in her office (in the UK). Most of them used the word “fanny.” A man told me that most women want him to use the word “pussy.” Is this really a problem? Should they all say “vulva”? And if they say “vagina,” is that really a problem? Is it a problem that other words also have this dual, genus-species usage?

A number of people have given me more pragmatic arguments for using vagina only in its technical or quasi-technical sense. Here is one

You are ignorant of a movement that has been brewing for some time for women and girls to learn about their anatomy properly. Too many have grown up not knowing the basics about their own bodily functions leading to the lack of diagnosis of multiple gynaecological and hormonal conditions that when left undiagnosed can lead to awful symptoms. Therefore there is a movement to start using anatomy and technical terms correctly by way of education and empowerment for future generations. Krissy

@KristineMaria https://twitter.com/KristineMaria/status/1113661811742728192

These sort of arguments are at least plausible. Personally, I don’t think there’s a serious problem with the existing language, but I am open to hearing arguments to the contrary.

BACKGROUND

How I came to comment

My background reactionary attitude toward certain language changes

This section does not aim to persuade the reader of the soundness of my attitudes. It’s purpose is to answer some people’s questions of what motivated me to tweet “The correct word is vagina” in reaction to the Feb. 9 2019 Guardian article title “Me and my Vulva: 100 Women Reveal All.”^[53] If you just want to see my argument, you can go straight to the “Foreground” section, which begins on page 7.

I often resist changes in the language that are being made for what I take to be the wrong reasons. For example, some English speaking Canadians started pronouncing Quebec the way the French speakers do (kebek). And some Americans started pronouncing Chile the way Spanish speakers do (cheelay). They have the mistaken notion that if a name is pronounced a certain way by the natives, it is appropriate to imitate them. But English speakers will never pronounce France the way the French do. French people don’t even say “United States” with a French accent (they say Étas-Unis with a French accent). There is nothing wrong with that. Each language can name and pronounce things as it wants. Also, just because the US Postal Service came up with a two-letter abbreviation for states, it is no reason that bibliographic citations should follow their example. So I write, Berkeley, Calif., not Berkeley, CA. A person may be willing to go along with saying disabled person rather than handicapped person, but balk at saying person with disabilities.^[54] A person may be willing to go along with saying black rather than negro, but balk at saying African American (just because Jesse Jackson wrote a 1988 New York Times op ed piece advocating it). There is a general neurosis caused by activists who like to announce every few years that an existing usage is problematic and should be replaced by what they dictate. Many times the ostensibly politically correct has little to do with what the rank and file prefer. Most American Indians are happy with the term Indian.^[55] They don’t even mind the name Washington Redskins. It’s often social justice warriors that stir up trouble over names. For them everything is racist—even knitting.^[56] There is no reason to think that average Gypsy is clamoring to be called Roma. I don’t even know if prostitutes are asking to be called sex workers, although I can understand why they might. If anything has a pejorative meaning, prostitute does (because of its metaphorical use. I might prostitute myself by taking a certain sort of job, but a case could be made that at least some prostitutes provide useful and challenging service that does not involve any metaphorical prostituting). Even in my view, there can’t be any general rule in these situations, but lessening the power of social justice warriors is a social imperative.

[Also: pressure to use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD; Pinyin over Wade-Giles. Calcutta to Kolkata, Bombay to Mumbai, Rangoon to Yangon, Canton to Guangzhou; buzzwords in business (“solution” for product or service), obfuscatory jargon in social sciences, trite expressions, changing names of mountains that include the word ‘squaw.’ Changing the names of campus buildings since the person owned slaves. Tearing down statues because they are of Civil War generals, not putting someone on the air because his name is Robert Lee. Switching the way Canadian Indian languages are represented so that they are no longer easily pronounceable (they even include numbers)]

Sometimes an attempt to change usage is made for ideological reasons combined with arguments about technical correctness. Activists who want to destigmatize people who have entered the country illegally say that “illegal alien” should not be used on that grounds people can’t be illegal, only actions. But they are quite happy to replace it with the even less apt “undocumented immigrant” (nobody documented the entry of this “immigrant”?).^[57] Usually (but not always) I’m happy with the existing language and see no need to change it—while knowing full well that it will change of its own accord. However, I could be convinced otherwise in particular cases, including this one. But I don’t jump every time an ideological faction says jump. I got off the euphemism treadmill awhile ago.

This instance

When, within that last year, I had seen “vulva” on a Twitter account (The Whores of Yore) where normally “vagina” would be seen, I suspected something was afoot. I’ve lived decades in which “vagina” was an uncontroversial choice. I had never heard anyone say anything was wrong with it. I figured the apparent innovation was based on specious linguistic reasoning. I had a negative attitude toward what I took to be an incipient change in usage, but I did not comment, in part because of the subject matter. But when I saw it again in a Guardian headline in a tweet, I was moved to comment: “The correct word is vagina.”^[58]

I assumed no one would notice or care about my opinion, and that there would therefore be no response. I would at least be able to point to the akashic record when accounts were taken at the End of Time. When, to my surprise, someone did respond, I felt obligated to humbly and quickly clarify how my position was less stark than my original naked assertion might suggest. So I began by saying the limited sense in which I meant “correct.”

Informal discussions

I have commented on hundreds of words over the years. Often such comments are made on my Language (and editing) mailing list. In that place I often get people disagreeing or agreeing with me. Sometimes the others get persuaded. Sometimes I get persuaded. And sometimes there is a process of thesis→ antithesis→ synthesis. But the context is that of fairly rational discussion among people who are familiar with each other.

I take brief posts to be at most gambits in hoped-for informal discussions. They are not apodictic. In informal situations it is not necessary to have the same confidence as with an article published in a scientific journal. In fact, the whole point of having a discussion is to hear the perspectives of others and find out whether there are overlooked weaknesses in one’s position. My claims are always tentative. They open to being changed when confronted by information or arguments that reveal they are partially or fully wrong. But I usually have reasons for the opinions I hold. I don’t hold them thoughtlessly.

The first part of a rational discussion almost always involves clarifying the issue.^[59] It may be clear to the person who makes the opening move what his claim is, but that clarity is almost always lost on the hearer. So discussions usually spend a lot of time at the beginning just getting to the point where both sides understand what proposition is under consideration. When participants arrive at a common understanding of that, they can see whether there is, in fact, an issue. And it is only when they determine there is one that the real discussion can begin. In informal discussions, if a responder presents good enough objections, the initiator should modify his position. His unwillingness to do so is a sign that the discussion may not be productive. The same is true if the responder fails to accept good arguments. But even when neither side is convinced by the other, through the dialogue they can clarify their thinking and end up disagreeing on a higher level. They may have made more clear the nature of their disagreement—and therefore made more clear the sort of evidence or arguments that would be needed to go beyond their impasse. Often issue clarification is never completed, and abusive attacks are made against a position that the initiator does not actually hold. To have a rational discussion requires that both sides be temperate, concerned with the truth, and willing to change.

The response

[perhaps combine this section with two later sections: fallacious responses and how people came to reject]

So I’m thinking dialectic; but apparently most people on Twitter are thinking war (or eristics). In dialectic you survive by good reasons. In war, you use any means necessary to crush your opponent. All is fair in war.

So Twitter people are generally ready to quickly categorize someone as friend or foe. If someone is determined to be in the foe category, the goal is to neutralize him by any means necessary. Once a warrior is committed to someone’s being an enemy, there’s no turning back.

The first casualty is truth. Invariably people misconstrue what they are reacting to. Either because moving too soon, they misunderstand; or in order to defeat, they create a strawman—with varying degrees of awareness. Some of what they say may be in the realm of what is covered by the technical term bullshit.^[60] In other words, it’s not that they believe or don’t believe what they are saying. It’s that they are not really concerned about the truth, as you might find in certain kinds of salesmen.

There was an imagined interpretation of my original words that was just too tempting to believe, or at least stick with, to be undone by my clarifications: the vision of a man unaware of basic biological facts foolish enough to comment on female matters. Once the die was cast, it became almost as difficult for people to accept that that interpretation was not correct as it has been for people to accept that the president did not say that neo-nazis were fine people.^[61] Soon it became a false memory.^[62] And it was being widely reported even in the press (see the end of this essay).

Given the unquestioned acceptance of the illusion, my efforts to make my position clearer and to correct misinterpretations were treated as an outrageous expression of intransigeance and an inability to accept error. I was supposed to have quickly said “I’m sorry. I now realize I was wrong.” Instead of trying to understand what I was claiming and calmly responding in agreement or disagreement, people gave heated responses to something I wasn’t even claiming. Virtually everyone was attacking me for something that I was not saying.

Soon there was talk about digging in, doubling down, digging an even deeper hole, and dying on a hill (Twitter mobs have a limited choice of verbal options). This, of course, gives rise to the next weapon in the war: the ratio! If you get many comments but few likes, this is supposed to be indicative of the value of what you are saying. This then justifies comments such as “just stop,” “move on,” and so on. Sensitivity to triteness is in short supply on Twitter.

Fallacious responses

There were two kinds of bad responses to my post.

(1) People complaining about a position I did not take: irrelevant response; straw man.

[Many of the following points were made earlier. See if you can consolidate. The only thing to add here is a consideration of informal fallacies]

Virtually all headlines in newspapers and blogs were based on a false understanding. They were expressed in what was the prototype headline: “Man Tried to Explain the Difference between a Vagina and a Vulva.”^[63] And the idea was that in doing so I betrayed anatomical confusion. So the framing was the ridiculous spectacle of a man mistakenly “explaining” to women the geography of their own bodies. And this pathetic situation was magnified when the man failed to admit error, not only in the face of corrections by many women, but also in the face of an “international expert on both the vagina and vulva” (a gynecologist). So the standard response included or implied the idea of “what an idiot!” This was somehow the epitome of the supposed tendency of males to think they know everything and can condescendingly set confused women straight. The common element was that I didn’t know the difference between a vagina and a vulva. The presumed basis for this was that my initial post was “the correct term is vagina”—indicating that vulva was the wrong word, and suggesting I didn’t know the difference between referents of the two words.

But my point was never that what could be seen in the photographs were not vulvas. My point was that standard usage would have indicated the word vagina, the word vagina having a generic meaning that includes the vulva. Vulva is not a word commonly used outside biological and technical circumstances. A woman is more likely to speak of parts of the vulva (e.g., “the lips” or the clitoris) than of the vulva as a whole. If I were reading a chapter in an anatomy textbook, I would have not had thought “the correct word is vagina.” In that context the narrow, stricter term would be expected.

My position was that, in the context I was commenting on, vulva was a solecism and the usual word was fine. I was taking a descriptive and normative position on language use. I was not confused about anatomy or terminology. Also, I was not speaking to women in particular. I was just expressing my view to whoever was interested. So people were fighting against a straw man. Almost every response was irrelevant.

However, here is a response that a woman would be qualified to make: “I myself do not use the word vagina in such situations. I always use the word vulva. I only use the word vagina in its technical sense.” That would not by itself disprove my factual claim. That would involve a sort of fallacy of composition (I think), but it would at least be relevant. The more women who said that, the more it would tend to disprove my point. But I don’t think that the descriptive claim should be controversial. It’s more a question how big the small minority of women is who would say what this imaginary woman says. If a convincing poll were taken, and, say, 80% of the respondents said they regularly use the word “vulva” and never use “vagina” generically, that would be highly relevant and would require me to alter my understanding of the factual situation. By the way, I consider this a question for English speakers, not just female English speakers. The sort of arguments for change would most likely be made in terms of the interests of the sex that has the parts being referred to, but still male English speakers are relevant too.

(2) People were saying that I did not have the right to express an opinion: genetic fallacy; poisoning the well; argument from authority; abusive ad hominem.

One of the common responses was to say that my position is invalidated on the grounds that women were objecting. There seemed to be the idea that any single woman objecting was sufficient to show me I was wrong. But the fact that many women did, made my failure to fall to my knees even more of an affront. And once an “international expert on both the vagina and [the] vulva” weighed in, I had no option but confess my error. In fact, my status was even worse than that. Even if no woman had disagreed with me, I was already at fault. Being a man, I didn’t even have the right to express an opinion in the first place.

This reality is indicated by the frequently used term “mansplaining.” Although this term may have originally put its finger on a real phenomenon, the term is not only used in situations where there is cause for complaint. As used now, it is a way to bypass responding to the argument, shut down discussion, and claim victory. It seems to be a “poisoning the well” type of ad hominem argument.^[64] You are man explaining things to a woman, so ipso facto what you say can be ignored. When I pointed out that even if we accept the notion of mansplaining, it required more than just a man explaining things, the response was to rationalize its use by reading into my simple and calm comments all sorts of things (e.g., condescension) that (a) there was no evidence for and (b) I know were not present.

That kind of fallacy was combined with a fallacious appeal to authority: a gynecologist has spoken. Nothing more can be said. But at most an expert can shift the burden of proof. In this case, the authority did not actually engage with what I was saying. Her being a gynecologist was part of the problem: she is comfortable around technical terms and thinks people who are using words in non-technical ways are making a mistake. Her area of training was only tangentially relevant. I was speaking about word usage, not anatomy per se. To deal with that she claimed she was also an expert on terminology. But the most she could have meant by that is that she knew the terms of her art. I wasn’t arguing about terms of art.

In addition, in her case I had had a prior experience that indicated not only this problem, but a problem of ideological tendentiousness. I had coincidentally disagreed on linguistic grounds with the same gynecologist a few days earlier (Feb. 6). She had said President Trump was uneducated on the ground that he did not understand the meaning of “fetus:” in his State of the Union Speech he had spoken of “unborn babies.” There is nothing incorrect in a pregnant woman referring to the new life within her as a baby.^[65] Scientific terminology mainly has a place in scientific circumstances. When I used the word “stomach” (as is common practice), it was insisted that the word “uterus” should have been used. I can’t imagine any expectant mother speaking about the “fetus in her uterus.” Even a doctor would not say “Would you like to see your fetus?” when offering an ultrasound. This has a direct parallel with Gunter’s scolding women for saying “vagina” instead of “vulva.” She thinks that just because she is in the habit of using technical terms appropriate to her discipline, ordinary people should speak that way too.^[66] But that shows her myopia, not her relevance as an expert. Why would anyone bow to such a false authority? I have no reason to doubt that she knows what to recommend if a woman has a pain in her reproductive tract. But that doesn’t mean she has special status in the realm of ordinary language and dialectical reasoning. She might have a good idea, but that should be decided on its merits, not because of any appeal to authority.

Scientism and ideological advocacy are behind the attempts to have vulva eclipse vagina and fetus eclipse baby. The other thing behind it is a simple failure to accept that a word can have more than one use. The gynecologist could have given reasons that were relevant. And if she had, I would have listened to them. But I am not struck dumb by experts, especially when their expertise is tangential. But I will listen to what they have to say and then make up my mind. I will listen to what anyone has to say. I’ve spent decades among real experts. Not once did they make appeals to their authority or pull rank. When you appeal to authority rather than deal with the reasons, you are cheating.

Another argument from authority by at least one person was that I was showing insufficient humility before a “reputable” newspaper. This too is an argument from authority. But to me the Guardian is not a reputable paper. A few of the easier examples of their disreputableness are their treatment of Julian Assange, Jeremy Corbyn, and Paul Manafort.

Dictionary

The appeal to the dictionary is also an argument from authority—which can be fallacious if pushed too hard.

The starting point of meaning in this essay is phenomenological. I take meaning to be what is typically in the minds of people who use words, not what is in the dictionary. However, if one can assume an ideal dictionary, the dictionary has a role too. The phenomenological approach has affinities with descriptivism.

What’s interesting is that despite the claim by dictionaries to be describing the language as it actually exists, dictionaries do not record the broader meaning of “vagina.” This I already knew. Completely unrelated to the minor controversy I caused by saying “the correct word is vagina,” I’ve long been critical of dictionaries and the way people use them. They are not written by God. When I began my language (and editing) mailing list (“listserv”) twelve years ago, I made some mildly disparaging remarks about dictionaries and dictionary use. A number of people immediately unsubscribed in disgust. If we can’t trust dictionaries, what can we trust! It’s like trying to play soccer without umpire. Dictionaries have a sacred significance for some people. But especially for words we frequently use, we should look at dictionary entries critically. Often multiple (two or more) dictionaries should be compared—and even then one is able to have an independent opinion. I don’t consider quoting a dictionary to be a conversation stopper. If one is a competent, native speaker of English, one is an authority.^[67] Dictionaries can, however, sometimes let us know that we were using a word incorrectly. Not because of their incontrovertible authority, but because they lead us to realizing that people in the world have actually been using the word differently than we thought. That’s how I came to understand the nuances of the word “specious.” A specious argument is not just a bad one, but one that also looks good. And dictionaries can let us know that a word or expression has additional meanings we did not know about. Among those meanings sometimes are technical terms. (A technical term, or term of art, is a word that is in use with a special meaning in a certain language subcommunity [e.g., physicists, engineers, computer scientists, or gynecologists].) Dictionaries can at least put us in the right ballpark. They can let us know that when Anthony Trollope in the 19th century speaks of “coming of age,” he does not mean what people who write movie blurbs in the 21st century mean. But invoking the dictionary in this instance could be called a dictionary fallacy. As far as I know the dictionaries are roughly correct on their definitions of the relevant words—except for failing to record the most common use of the word vagina, namely, the generic one. My guess is the dictionary writers also fell for the technical-use fallacy. It’s an interesting question given how descriptivism is in ascendancy.

All of these appeals to authority are perhaps good enough as weak, defeasible arguments, shifting the burden of proof. But in these cases, I am able to easily show why the authorities should be discounted.

Side note: Because of all the fallacious appeals to authority I encountered, I facetiously change my Twitter handle from Paul Bullen to Dr. Paul Bullen. This is the first time I have referred to myself in public that way. Later I changed it to Herr Doktor Bullen (Paul). Since that made searches difficult, I went back to Paul Bullen. But when I realized that my pinned tweet made reference to my adding “Dr.”, I added Dr. again. It does have the slight advantage of making me stand out. And I can then use my authority explain to people about the nature of fallacious appeals to authority.

A common view was that if so many Tweeters are reacting negatively to me, I must be wrong. Obviously, if most women in the English speaking world objected about standard usage (or it could be known that those who did were a perfect statistical sample), it would not be a fallacy—precisely because we are talking about standard usage. But a Twitter mob is not a representative group. For one thing, people who disagree with the mob tend to keep quiet. It was felt that the “ratio” (with a technical sense that is new to me) was a basis for truth determination—even if no one was responding to my actual position.

According to an even more insidious argument, merely because I was a man I should defer to what any woman says. I should defer to a woman if she understands what I am saying and provides good reasons for me to conclude that what I am saying is wrong. If a woman has an opinion about men, there is nothing wrong with it. If her opinion is wrong, it should be pointed out by addressing her argument, not by pointing out that she is a woman.^[68] And if her opinion is a bit off due to her not being a man, that should be met with understanding. It should not be met with contempt: how dare you speak about things that are none of your business! You must always accept what any man says on the subject of men! Of course, sometimes these differences are relevant. Sometimes one person is in a better position to know certain things. Women will generally have more knowledge about certain female matters than men. And so some amount of deference to women is appropriate. But the idea was promoted on Twitter that because I am male and the subject related to the female body, I may not express an independent opinion. Men may actually be in a better position to know certain female things. When I showed the original article to my friend, she said “Hmm, I thought they all looked the same.” Men may be more aware of the variety among vaginas than women. Obversely, a woman may be in a better position to make comparative comments about penises. In fact, women often do when speaking with their girlfriends.

In addition, remarkably, for some people being white made me even less qualified to have an opinion. But that’s probably because it is considered hip to make racist comments when it involves a certain race—and sexist comments when it involves a certain sex.^[69] Politically correct racism and sexism. I was in the wrong forum, so to speak.^[70]

Countless vulgar, vicious, and highly personal (abusive ad hominem) responses were made based on the posters’ imaginations about me. I found the responses depressing, lacking in humanity or reasonableness. And all I was saying was that I thought that it was best to continue the language usage of what I understand to be that of most actually existing people. That view should not be a basis for getting upset. I was open to hearing counter arguments.

The Mansplaining abomination

People were quick to give my behavior a significance: I was telling women how they should refer to parts of their body. I was explaining things to women. But, in fact, I was not. I was doing what I often do: commenting on word use. The fact that it was about female bodies was incidental. I was not explaining anything to women. I was expressing my views to people in general, some of whom were women. Women were free to tell me, based on their experiences and thinking, why what I saying was partly or wholly wrong. I was expressing my opinions calmly to whoever would listen. I was not lecturing women. It’s a cheapshot to fall back on the stance that one doesn’t have the right to have an opinion on this subject because one is a man. The facile term “mansplaining” must have been used a few hundred times. And on not one occasion was the word used according to its original possibly legitimate meaning. It was rather funny to be accused of mansplaining mansplaining. Apparently, men are not even allowed to defend themselves against an accusation that is specifically leveled at them.

Around one thousand years ago, after the Gileadites defeated the invader tribe of Ephraimites, a way they could tell a person was a surviving Ephraimite was how they pronounced the word Shibboleth.^[71] A way to know that you are dealing with a member of the tribe of argumentatively defectives is find them using the word “mansplaining.” The mansplaining response is akin to saying “We don’t listen to niggers around here” (reversing John Lennon’s song).

A number of women took issue with talk about mansplaining, including one who wrote this:

I can't believe I’m the first to point out here that the term “mansplaining” is inherently sexist; that the masculine take on things, especially here with the Paul Bullen chap, is as valid as the female take on things. There is an absurd pseudo-feminist hostility that is rampant.

Okay, I mean come on: Do men expect you to break it down into glans, urethral meatus, frenulum, shaft? No, you just say a man has a penis. Y’all try to be reasonable and loving.

Women, please try to recognize that men...are within their etiquette to assign the loving and pleasant vernacular to your anatomy. As a registered nurse and a medical editor, I am educated as to the distinction between vulva and vagina, but y’all are pedantic.

Well, some new words for me. But her point is that men have a right to have opinions on female subjects. Likewise, women have a right to have opinions about male subjects. And it’s true, there is some parallel between the generic use of “vagina” and a generic use of “penis.” “Penis” does have both a genus use and a species use, although not as obviously as does “vagina.”

Conclusion

Recap

To summarize, I was making a descriptive claim and a normative claim:

Descriptive claim: the word “vagina” is widely used in two ways: broadly (genus) and narrowly (species).

Normative claim: The broad (genus) meaning of vagina is a legitimate one that should not be replaced by the less common technical word “vulva,” which in any case is not a synonym. There is a weaker normative claim based on a quasi-descriptivist reasoning: If everyone speaks a certain way, it is ipso facto “correct.” But that is a subtle and narrow sense of “correct.” One could say, yes vagina is currently correct in that sense, but I think we should create a new correctness. And the way to bring that about it is to convince people to start speaking in an incorrect way. But the real issue is whether there is any reason to tell women that they should not use the word “vagina” as a catch-all term—as well as a technical term.

It is quite possible to agree with the descriptive claim (which most people do) and disagree with the normative one.

I am quite open to changing my view on this matter. But somebody has to actually understand what I’m saying and provide good counter arguments or contrary evidence. And I don’t have a strict standard for that evidence. Personal experiences with general usage would have counted. This was only an informal discussion. I was not expecting charts and statistics. One Southern Belle with a pragmatic orientation could easily take me aside and point out all the problems that are caused by the current regime and I would say, “OK, you’ve convinced me: I will never say vagina again unless I am using it in the way it is defined in the dictionary.” But a myriad Furies, Banshees, Badgers, Shrews, and screaming mimis make no dent.

One lesson from the February 2019 kerfuffle might have been that Twitter is not the place for rational discussion. But I’ve actually had reasonable interaction with people in other parts of Twitter. (I’ve also run several internet discussion groups [“listservs”], some for longer than 20 years.) If I were to go by the responses from women in this “discussion,” I might conclude that women are morally and intellectually defective. The reason I don’t come to that conclusion is that I don’t take these women to be representative, and responses from men were equally perverse.

But part of the perversity displayed by both women and men is that it wasn’t just that my opinion (which they never understood) was incorrect, but that I didn’t even have the right to have an opinion, or at least to voice it. Only women should express opinions on this subject. That is ridiculous. Of course, when discussing this subject, feedback from women may have special value; but the idea that being male disqualifies a person from discussing a subject is nonsense. I welcome female opinions on male matters (and often get it). And I especially welcome female opinions about female matters. [<--see if this point can’t be made at only one place]

Principle of charity

[This section could do with some serious thought and work]

There is these days a strong need for people to study, absorb, and practice something called the principle of charity.^[72] As the man who taught it to me (the philosopher Donald Davidson) pointed out, there’s no real charity involved. It’s really a principle of rationality. Although the notion of the principle of charity that I use crystallized in my mind during an after-class talk I had with Davidson, it is a simplified version of his idea, and it is primarily normative in nature. Davidson had deep analytical reasons for asserting the principle. It had to do with his notion of “radical interpretation” (which had its roots in Quine’s radical translation.)^[73] My purposes are somewhat different. In order to understand another person we should adopt the stance that he is saying something at least minimally coherent and true. But we must make an effort to understand and make sense of what he is saying. Once we discover what that he is saying (perhaps by translating his jargon into regular words), then we can take a position on it. Too many people now are motivated to give the most unreasonable and damning interpretation possible of what others have said. As it takes discipline to resist this impulse, I suppose an attitude of charity could motivate the discipline. So perhaps charity has an extrinsic relevance. Journalists and academics especially should practice this approach to utterances. If it seems that somebody is saying something ridiculous, implausible, or morally egregious, take time to be sure you are understanding him. One way to do that is by asking him to clarify what he meant.

Stoic acceding to the appearances

This approach overlaps with the Stoic practice of taking time to decide whether to accept the appearances.^[74]

Actual charity

I was reminded by this experience about the importance of treating people with kindness, when possible. For one thing, you never know what else is going on in their lives. So many people went out of their way to contact me just to say nasty things. What is the point?

This is the verbal residue of a “vision” I had on March 11, 2019:

The highest happiness comes from making other people happy. That's just the way we are made.

You can make other people happy by making the effort to understand them.

They’re planting stories in the press (news reports)

(See: Bob Dylan, “Idiot Wind”)

Liv Little (interviewing Laura Dodsworth), “Me and my vulva: 100 women reveal all,” Guardian, Feb.9, 2019.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/09/me-and-my-vulva-100-women-reveal-all-photographs

Lynn Enright, “Why it matters to call external female genitalia ‘vulva’ not ‘vagina,’” Guardian, Feb. 12, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/12/external-female-genitalia-vulva-vagina-sexual-agency

https://twitter.com/lynnenright?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Courtney Pochin, “Man Tried to Explain the Difference between a Vagina and a Vulva—It Didn’t Go Well,” Mirror, Feb. 12, 2019.

[This article was revised to be more fair after they asked for and got my comments (after publication). They still kept the false headline, however]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/man-tried-explain-difference-between-13990077

Rebecca Flood, “Bloke ridiculed after ‘mansplaining’ the difference between a vagina and vulva to a female gynaecologist,” Sun, Feb. 13, 2019.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/8416387/man-mansplain-vagina-twitter-vulva/

Danielle Zoellner, “‘You mansplained to me!’ 48-year-old man is brutally SHUT DOWN on Twitter after he patronizingly tried to explain the difference between a vagina and vulva—to a female gynecologist,” Daily Mirror, Feb. 13, 2019

[This newspaper managed to get my age wrong, my location wrong, the spelling of my name wrong, falsely claimed I had deleted my tweets. That’s in addition to the fundamental error that made by all press reports: that I had made a basic error about anatomy. All they had to do is ask me. In fact, even after asking me some places continued with their erroneous headlines. I wish I had kept quiet since the egregious errors were funny. They were only willing to fix the easily verifiable superficial errors. Since they had no basis for my age, they simply removed any claim.]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6700517/Man-ridiculed-attempting-explain-difference-vagina-vulva.html

Merrill Perlman, “‘Mansplaining’ and its offspring,” Columbia Journalism Review, Feb. 18, 2019.

https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/mansplaining.php

Perlman writes, “Perhaps the ultimate example of “mansplaining” can be found on Twitter: a man tried to explain the difference between a “vulva” and a “vagina,” arguing with a woman who is a gynecologist.” She provides a link to:

Anonymous, “This chap tried to mansplain the difference between vulva and vagina and the takedowns were brutal,” The Poke, no date (but mid-Feb, 2019)

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2019/02/11/chap-tried-mansplain-difference-vulva-vagina-takedowns-brutal/

Anonymous, “A confused dude on Twitter tried to explain the female anatomy to a [gynecologist], UK and World News, ExpressUK.org, Feb. 12, 2019

https://expressuk.org/news/confused-dude-twitter-explain-female-anatomy

Grace Black, “This Man Just Mansplained What A Vagina Is And The Internet Isn't Having It,” Marie Claire, Feb. 13, 2019

https://www.marieclaire.com.au/mansplaining-vagina

https://www.good.is/articles/twitter-vagina-vulva-gynecologist

https://bestnewsghana.com/2019/02/13/man-tried-to-explain-difference-between-vagina-and-vulva/

https://twitter.com/DrJenGunter/status/1094831250945191936

https://www.someecards.com/news/news/a-man-tried-to-explain-the-difference-between-vagina-and-vulva-women-destroyed-him/

https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/man-tries-to-explain-what-a-vagina-is-to-a-gynaecologist-it-does-not-go-well/

https://www.mamamia.com.au/difference-between-vulva-and-vagina/

https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/hold-on-to-your-fedoras-mates-2019-already-has-its-mansplaining-champion/

https://wokesloth.com/guy-mansplains-vaginas-to-women-and-gynecologists/jessi/

https://twentytwowords.com/guy-tries-mansplain-difference-vulva-vagina-gets-brutally-taken/

https://www.latestly.com/social-viral/guy-tries-to-mansplains-the-difference-between-a-vagina-and-vulva-to-a-female-gynaecologist-gets-trolled-on-twitter-648415.html

https://www.scarymommy.com/vulva-versus-vagina-twitter/

http://www.pretty52.com/life/real-life-man-mansplains-what-a-vagina-is-and-the-internet-is-losing-it-20190212

https://www.good.is/articles/twitter-vagina-vulva-gynecologist

http://www.pajiba.com/web_culture/arrogant-mansplainer-gets-dragged-on-twitter-for-mansplaining-vulvas.php

https://twitter.com/paulbullen/status/1094455911580483584

https://womenintheworld.com/2019/02/13/twitter-erupts-after-man-tries-to-mansplain-female-anatomy-and-the-term-mansplaining-to-women/

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/mansplain-vulva-gynecologist/

https://www.shethepeople.tv/blog/men-mansplaining-female-anatomy-women

https://me.me/i/tweet-the-guardian-guardian-1d-me-and-my-vulva-100-99377f61796c49a1b30302feaaf75953

https://mistakinghistories.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/vulvagate-why-the-words-we-use-for-our-bodies-matter/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=305YsOc_DPM

https://www.rearfront.com/guy-mansplains-women-about-female-anatomy/

https://blogs.20minutos.es/el-blog-de-lilih-blue/2019/02/15/mansplaining-que-es-machismo/

https://www.seiska.fi/Oho/Mansplaining-meni-metsaan-Vaginan-ja-vulvan-ero-hakusessa-Paul-rakas-12-vuotiaanikin-tietaa

https://www.nsmbl.nl/man-uitleg-vagina/

https://net.hr/magazin/zdravlje-i-ljepota/znate-li-vi-razliku-izmedu-vagine-i-vulve-nastavnik-pokusao-objasniti-i-nije-dobro-proslo-reagirali-ginekolozi/

https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/paul-on-miesselittajien-kuningas-yritti-selittaa-naisille-vulvan-ja-vaginan-eroa/7279106

https://community.babycentre.co.uk/post/a32171226/vagina-or-vulva

https://www.facebook.com/DestroyTheJoint/posts/2208583112522754

https://helloverajuice.wordpress.com

https://perezhilton.com/mansplaining-twitter-vagina-vulva-tweet/

https://www.terrafemina.com/article/un-homme-explique-la-difference-entre-vulve-et-vagin-et-se-fait-atomiser-sur-twitter_a348221/1

https://framasphere.org/tags/guardian

https://framasphere.org/tags/homme

http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2019/02/11/vulvagate-when-mansplaining-goes-so-wrong-the-dictionary-itself-has-to-step-in/

https://honey.nine.com.au/2019/02/20/10/05/man-tries-to-mansplain-female-anatomy

https://localstory24.com/man-tried-to-explain-difference-between-vagina-and-vulva-and-it-didnt-go-well/

http://www.twipu.com/tag/paulbullen

https://theoldreader.com/profile/50e2e9c4bd9279050b0096e7

http://www.herizons.ca/aggregator/sources/1

https://www.catchupnews.org/catchupnews-blog/entry/man-tried-to-explain-the-difference-between-a-vagina-and-vulva-and-it-didn-t-go-well.html

https://community.drownedinsound.com/t/terrible-things-people-post-on-social-media/2096/5467

https://hyperbolicarboretum.home.blog/2019/02/10/paul-bullen-is-a-cunt/

https://thedailyripple.org/index.php/component/content/article/102-gender-issues/370605-this-dude-mansplains-women-about-female-anatomy-gets-put-in-place

https://www.femalista.com/this-dude-mansplains-women-about-female-anatomy-gets-put-in-place/

https://wn.com/vulva

http://www.nebeep.com/what-annoyed-the-internet-this-week-15/

https://tweettunnel.com/lynnenright

http://www.thenewsletter.co.za/page/2/

http://4.5.drk-pink.de/schematics/venn-diagram-terms.html

http://bestlifestylebuzz.com/entertainment/man-tried-to-explain-difference-between-vagina-and-vulva-and-it-didnt-go-well/

https://www.zonebourse.com/mods_a/scoopnest/finance_master_sg.php?height=360&first_tab=latest&id_company=17397&lang=fr,en&id_country=GB&mnemo=GNS&type=id_company&codezb=9590154

https://groupthink.kinja.com/twitter-hilarity-mansplaining-edition-1832514394

https://twitter.com/paulbullen/status/1094738460475219968

http://yaipoo.com/2019/02/11/this-chap-tried-to-mansplain-the-difference-between-vulva-and-vagina-and-its-just-epic-the-poke/

http://notifeed.net/article/b15f7c8ced13c12daa61e09f8af9cc8d

http://pplplaza.com/this-woman-found-the-most-mansplaining-mansplainer-on-the-planet/

https://metrojournal24.com/man-tried-to-explain-difference-between-vagina-and-vulva-and-it-didnt-go-well/

https://jumpic.com/hashtag.php?q=Bullen

http://ie.shafaqna.com/EN/AL/1192471

https://www.archynety.com/tech/a-confused-guy-on-twitter-tried-to-explain-female-anatomy-to-a-gynecologist-who-is-also-a-woman/

https://www.fiercebotanics.com/index.php/author/fierceadmin/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Feminism/comments/apm4zb/and_the_biggest_mansplainer_award_goes_to/

https://headtopics.com/br/bloke-ridiculed-after-mansplaining-the-vagina-to-a-female-gynaecologist-4201491

https://muckrack.com/lynn-enright

http://snewsi.com/id/19186324847/Bloke-ridiculed-after-mansplaining-the-vagina-to-a-female-gynecologist

http://2peasrefugees.boards.net/thread/89580/best-example-mansplaining?page=2

https://www.trendsmap.com/twitter/tweet/1094578027743330304

http://2.6.drk-pink.de/schematics/outer-body-diagram-female.html

https://www.fark.com/comments/10317307/If-theres-a-finer-example-of-mansplaining-out-there-Subby-has-yet-to-see-it-possibly-NSFW

https://newstral.com/es/article/es/1119614429/el-hombre-que-dice-a-las-mujeres-la-diferencia-entre-vulva-y-vagina

https://newslookup.com/cat/twitter?ssiteid=2462

https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=59796

Added Feb. 25, 2020

https://www.insider.com/mansplain-vulva-gynecologist-twitter-2019-3

Feb. 26

http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2019/02/28/mansplainin-2-electric-vulvaloo-the-dude-who-had-a-twitter-meltdown-over-the-word-vulva-is-back/

http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2019/02/11/vulvagate-when-mansplaining-goes-so-wrong-the-dictionary-itself-has-to-step-in/

Added Aug. 12, 2021

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mansplain-vulva-gynecologist-twitter-2019-3

[1] That debate arose again in August 2019.

[2] “Although we may entertain and experience all sorts of presentations [or appearances, phantasiai], we do not necessarily accept or respond to them all. Hence the Stoics held that some phantasiai receive assent and some do not. Assent occurs when the mind accepts a phantasia as true (or more accurately accepts the subsisting lekton as true). Assent is also a specifically human activity, that is, it assume the power of reason.” “Stoic Philosophy of Mind” Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy https://www.iep.utm.edu/stoicmind/ I say more about this aspect of Stoicism in the conclusion.

[3] See the section “(1) Descriptive objections” beginning on page 13 for evidence in support of my claim that vagina is the commonly used word. Please note that usage among younger people is no doubt different from usage among older people, and usage among those females different from usage among those males. It is a matter or more or less. Younger “woke” girls may well speak differently from others.

[4] Lynn Enright says “‘vulva’ sounded a bit stuffy, a bit pedantic” in her “Why it matters to call external female genitalia ‘vulva’ not ‘vagina,’” (“Why it matters to call external female genitalia ‘vulva’ not ‘vagina,’” Guardian, Feb. 12, 2019). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/12/external-female-genitalia-vulva-vagina-sexual-agency Mary Katharine Tramontana says “Maybe, at the end of the day, the word “vulva” is too clinical for you. No problem. How about…” (the rest is quoted below) (“Pussy Profiles and the Clitoral Truth'” Vice, March 7, 2015). https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bn5w8m/meet-the-woman-behind-berlins-cunt-month-495

In this essay I am using “solecism” in what may be not quite apt (ironically, as they say). Malapropism might be closer. I am talking about when you read or hear something and instead of the expected (and appropriate) word, you get something that’s at least a bit off. This is common from people for whom English is their second language, but also some people notoriously just get things wrong. You would expect “vagina” and you get “vulva.” Yeah, the dictionary says it technically correct, that there’s still something odd about it. It’s like reading a translation that was made using dictionary.

[5] In math, some proofs are more enlightening than others.

[6] I am using the genus–species distinction as it is found in Aristotle and others, not as it is used in modern biology—although there is a connection between the two uses. Each substantial being is said to be defined by its genus and differentia. The differentia are what distinguish one species from another within the same genus. But I am also using it in that sense loosely. It is a bit like set and subset. See Porphyry’s Isagoge: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/porphyry_isagogue_02_translation.htm

[7] Unfortunately, I did not keep a list of the many words I came across over the years. I am gradually compiling one now.

[8] Bob Dylan song. https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/man-gave-names-all-animals/

[9] Perhaps worth looking at synecdoche (“a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning “Cleveland's baseball team”)—American Oxford Dictionary) and metonymy (the substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing). Countries are often referred to by their capitals. So genitals are referred to by their centers.

[10] If a young girl tells her friend, “I saw the statue of David!” and her friend asks “Did you see the penis?” she doesn’t mean just one part of the genitals. The male and female situation with usage is not symmetrical, but neither are male and female bodies and life experiences.

[11] A pandemic is a species of epidemic.But because it exists as a specific kind of epidemic, when people say epidemic, sometimes they mean as opposed to pandemic. So "epidemic" has both genus and species uses. An epidemic is generally considered to be an unexpected, widespread rise in disease incidence at a given time. A pandemic is best thought of as a very large epidemic." (Christian W.McMillen, Pandemics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, p. 1). Genus (epidemic): unexpected, widespread rise in disease incidence at a given time Differentia: very large. Genus + differentia = species (pandemic). But although epidemics includes pandemics, the word epidemic can be used in the sense of not big enough to be a pandemic.

[12] The Greek for Plato’s book does not mean ‘republic.’ ‘Politeia’ just means political system (or polity) in this context. It could also be translated ‘constitution’—in the older more British sense.

[13] Justice (dikaiosyne) in Aristotle has both a broad sense (lawfulness) and a narrow sense (equality) For a good discussion, see 4.2 in Aristotle: Political Philosophy by Richard Kraut (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). But I'm not sure this is an example of my genus and species meanings.

[14] A number of women on Twitter, who were otherwise critical of me, acknowledged my factual claim, but misconstrued other parts of what I was saying: “Paul, I understand your point. Vagina is much more common and much more acceptable word.” “No one is saying the word vagina isn’t sometimes used for the whole area….” https://twitter.com/MakesNotes/status/1094866063395880960 “Hi! I'm a linguist and a woman (and daughter of midwife). You're right, people often use vagina to mean what medical personnel and others refer to as vulva. That's okay….” https://twitter.com/search?q=hedvig%20vagina&src=typd

[15] I have been assuming that readers are familiar with the distinction between descriptivism and prescriptivism. I will add something, but here’s something for now: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/descriptivism-vs-prescriptivism-war-is-over-if-you-want-it/ I have been critical of the distinction in the past. And I think my “presumptive descriptivism” is a good, if indeterminate, compromise. Roughly descriptivists are more tolerant about language changes and view their job as mainly recording how language actually operates. Prescriptivists are more inclined to criticize usage from some external standard. So the prescriptivist may say that is wrong to split infinitives despite widespread use, while the descriptivist says that if everyone’s doing it, it is a legitimate part of the language. The distinction may have some usefulness, but I can’t see how an absolute distinction can be maintained. My presumptive descriptivism holds that if everyone is speaking a certain way, one is ipso facto correct (presumptively). However, there is room for people to complain, but the burden is on them to make a case why a million fans can be wrong.

[16] For those unfamiliar, this alludes to the summary of David Hume’s position in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) 3:1:1 that you can’t get an ought from an is (not his wording). In other words, to derive a prescriptive inference from a descriptive claim you must first add a prescriptive premise. I will add the citation. For a discussion, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem

[17] See, by comparison, my old jurisprudence professor Frederick Schauer’s “presumptive positivism” in his Playing by the Rules: A Philosophical Examination of Rule-Based Decision-Making in Law and in Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991).

[18] Theodore Bernstein, Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer's Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears and Outmoded Rules of English Usage (New York: Farar, Straus and Giroux, 1971).

[19] [Question for me: Should this section be combined with the “normative objections” subsection below?]

[20] https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1095376707333341184. Schmitt works for a Brazilian newspaper and often writes in Portuguese. But she speaks English like a native, so I am assuming she is not be Brazilian by birth. She writes in English better than I do, for example.

[21] Begging the question is an old translation of the Latin petitio principii.

[22] In math, thinking can be contrasted with calculation. But 'thinking' can also be used to cover both. Perhaps 'understanding' could be used to contrast with 'doing'. Sometimes ambiguity can be a problem, but often it can be handled. See chapter one of Keith Devlin, Introduction to Mathematical Thinking (Petaluma, Calif.: Keith Devlin, 2012).

[23] “Why it Matters to Call External Female Genitalia ‘Vulva’ not ‘Vagina,’” Guardian, Feb. 12, 2019.) See below for more from her, and a link to the article. See elsewhere in this essay for Tramontina’s article.

[24] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiOE7DsCJlM

[25] https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk My interpretation is this: The museum is about the female genitals. They picked the obvious generic word, vagina. But under pressure they are accommodating various people: “Welcome to the project to create the world's first bricks and mortar museum dedicated to vaginas, vulvas and the gynaecological anatomy.” So while the title uses vagina in the genus sense, they show they are up-to-date by using the word in the specific sense in the blurb, giving a nod to the word “vulva” (as though that is not covered by the title of the museum). Nobody thinks that the museum is about just the vagina in the narrow sense. They also add: “The museum is dedicated to being gender inclusive and intersectional.” Ah, I see they address this question: “Why isn't it called the Vulva Museum?” https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/faq It supports the interpretation I gave before reading it. People use the obvious word, but are made to feel guilty about it. Still they do it, since there is no alternative. My point: No need to feel guilty.

[26] Lynn Enright, “Why it matters to call external female genitalia ‘vulva’ not ‘vagina,’” Guardian, Feb. 12, 2019. I quote the context below.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/12/external-female-genitalia-vulva-vagina-sexual-agency

[27] John Lyons, Structural Semantics: An Analysis of Part of the Vocabulary of Plato (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), p. 40.

[28] Additional to the evidence provided by my having spoken English in English speaking environments for several decades.

[29] Try to provide links or screen shots.

[30] “So @paulbullen here is where you mansplained to me—the correct use for the article was vulva, the common use vagina would not have applied here as it was specifically about loving vulvas and not a general lower repro tract article.”

[31] Despite the many journal articles like the one below that fail to include it, I am taking the lower lower reproductive (genital) tract to include the vulva as well as the vagina and the ectocervix. “The female reproductive tract comprises the fallopian tubes, the uterus, and the vagina…..While the upper female reproductive tract includes the uterine tubes, the uterus, and the endocervix,...the lower reproductive tract includes the ectocervix and the vagina.” Sung Ki Lee, Chul Jung Kim, Dong-Jae Kim, and Jee-hyun Kang, “Immune Cells in the Female Reproductive Tract” Immune Network 2015 Feb; 15(1): 16–26. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4338264/

[32] Comment by Tess L Fairbridge, September 2, 2019: “There's all sorts of useful information in this book but it's all overshadowed, for me, by Dr. Gunter's ignorance about female anatomy, the vagus nerve, and the cervix. The fact that the cervix is an INDEPENDENTLY orgasmic organ is completely ignored by Dr. Gunter, despite it being scientifically proven and experienced by millions of women around the world. The medical community and Dr. Gunter's lack of acknowledgement of the literally thousands of pathways to orgasm that the female body holds has real world effects on people, our pleasure and joy with life and our bodies, and the pleasure pathways we focus on - which science has also proven (and I've personally experienced) has very real consequences for mental health. The vagus nerve and the cervix cannot be erased simply because you yourself have no experience with them Dr. Gunter and I hope for your sake you find the entheogenic effect of the cervical orgasm soon because it will change your life, and your life is having a big impact on others' lives.”

[33] Liv Little (interviewing Laura Dodsworth), “Me and my vulva: 100 women reveal all,” Guardian, Feb.9, 2019. The article features Laura Dodsworth photographs.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/09/me-and-my-vulva-100-women-reveal-all-photographs

[34] https://twitter.com/BareReality/status/1095732205861683201

[35] This was in a tweet.

[36] Lucy Mangan, “100 Vaginas review—An Extraordinary and Empowering Spread of the Legs,” Guardian, Feb. 19, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/feb/19/100-vaginas-review-an-extraordinary-and-empowering-spread-of-the-legs-laura-dodsworth

[37] https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/faq

[38] Lynn Enright, “Why it Matters to Call External Female Genitalia ‘Vulva’ not ‘Vagina,’” Guardian, Feb. 12, 2019.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/12/external-female-genitalia-vulva-vagina-sexual-agency [The article has a drop-head that says “Yes, some people use the term vagina, but getting it right is vital to female sexual agency” (italics in original).” It is more than just some people. In the article itself, the author says “regularly.” It is almost all people (I maintain). But I suppose that in logic the vast majority is still “some.”]

[39] Harriet Lerner, “Practicing ‘psychic genital mutilation,’” Chicago Tribune, WomanNews section, July 2, 2003. Available at https://condor.depaul.edu/mwilson/Humansex/vulva.html See also: Harriet Goldhor Lerner, “And what do little girls have?” Agenda, 1994, Pages 30-32 | Published online: 20 Apr 2011 / Harriet Goldhor Lerner (1994) And what do little girls have?, Agenda, 10:23, 30-32, DOI: 10.1080/10130950.1994.9675367 Abstract: Do you know the difference between your vulva and your vagina? American feminist Harriet Goldhor Lerner asks why we struggle to find the right words to talk about women's genitalia https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.1994.9675367 See also: Virginia Braun & Celia Kitzinger (2001) “Snatch,” “Hole,” or “Honey‐pot”? Semantic categories and the problem of nonspecificity in female genital slang, The Journal of Sex Research, 38:2, 146-158, DOI: 10.1080/00224490109552082“Snatch,” “Hole,” or “Honey‐pot”? Semantic categories and the problem of nonspecificity in female genital slang Virginia Braun & Celia Kitzinger Pages 146-158 | Accepted 13 Apr 2001, Published online: 11 Jan 2010 / Martha Cornog (1986) Naming sexual body parts: Preliminary patterns and implications, The Journal of Sex Research, 22:3, 393-398, DOI: 10.1080/00224498609551318 [Mentions Jesperson]

[40] Jessica Pin, “Calling vulvas vaginas is linguistic clitorectomy,” Medium, June 8, 2018. https://medium.com/@jessica86/how-the-conception-of-female-genitalia-as-vagina-leads-to-ignorance-of-the-vulva-f3774ed802ae She provides support for her factual claim (which is the same as mine) in Shirley Matile Ogletree and Harvey J. Ginsburg, “Kept Under the Hood: Neglect of the Clitoris in Common Vernacular, Sex Roles, December 2000, Volume 43, Issue 11–12, pp 917–926. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1011093123517

[41] Cait Munro,“Meet Jamie McCartney, the Artist Who Wants to Cast Vaginas in Every Country in the World,” ArtNet News Aug. 3, 2015 https://news.artnet.com/market/jamie-mccartney-vagina-sculptures-321901

[42] Stephanie Rosenbloom, “What Did You Call It?” New York Times, Oct. 28, 2007 https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/fashion/28vajayjay.html

[43] Mary Katharine Tramontana, “Stop Calling It a 'Vagina,'” Vice, March 9, 2015. “For years, people—feminists included—have been using the wrong word to refer to female genitalia.”

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/exmjye/stop-calling-it-a-vagina

[44] Mary Katharine Tramontana, “Pussy Profiles and The Clitoral Truth: Meet the Woman Behind 'Cunt Month,'” Vice, March 7, 2015. “Laura Méritt has been organising a celebration of the vulva every March for nearly ten years.” https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bn5w8m/meet-the-woman-behind-berlins-cunt-month-495

[45] This whole issue of correctness in language use is tricky and subtle, and I do not think I have explicated it clearly enough. But I hope people will get a rough sense of the considerations. I don’t want to overstate my case.

[46] Enright is referring to Harriet Lerner, “Practicing ‘psychic genital mutilation,’” Chicago Tribune, WomanNews section, July 2, 2003. Here is some of the context: “It is true that Americans do not excise the clitoris and ablate the labia, as is practiced in other cultures on countless girls and women. Instead, we do the job linguistically—psychic genital mutilation, if you will. Language can be as powerful and swift as the surgeon's knife. What is not named does not exist.” This appears to me as hyperbole, or more likely nonsense. Women have no problem referring to various parts of their body, as needed. They use the word “vagina” to refer to everything and on the rare occasions that they need to refer to precisely what is covered by the term “vulva”, they can use that word. But how often is that technical precision needed. They more often refer to parts of the “vulva.” Of course specialists can try to affect word use, but they cannot claim that the existing language users are incorrect. https://condor.depaul.edu/mwilson/Humansex/vulva.html

[47] This is false: the words are not used interchangeably. The word vagina in the generic sense includes more than the word vulva does.

[48] May 19, 2019 (@Doggie_wumpus) https://twitter.com/Doggie_wumpus/status/1130141557300924417

[49] Jen Gunter, “Vulva/Vagina Venn Diagram,” Sept. 20, 2015, Dr. Jen Gunter https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/vulvavagina-venn-diagram/

[50] By sociology of knowledge reasons I mean that people’s outlook is influenced by their reference group. If you become a lawyer, you start to think as lawyers do. If you become a gynecologist, you start to speak gynecologist language—and expect others to too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_knowledge

[51] https://twitter.com/WhoresofYore/status/1119953550707175427 “Penis shaped breads are still baked every June in the Portuguese town of Amarante.” The “penis shape” includes the testicles.

[52] She used these words: glans, urethral meatus, frenulum, shaft. Although I am vaguely aware of a couple of them, I’ve never uttered any of them in my life. I don’t think learning them and using them would “empower” me in the slightest. In fact, I’m not even sure what empowering means. Sounds like a buzzword. No doubt the complications of the female parts are more serious and more knowledge is required. But I would like to hear serious arguments for why standard usage is a problem.

[53] Liv Little (based on Laura Dodsworth), “Me and My Vulva: 100 Women Reveal All,” Guardian, Feb. 9, 2019. The article features Laura Dodsworth photographs.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/09/me-and-my-vulva-100-women-reveal-all-photographs

[54] Rick Hodges, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Mentally Retarded’ How a term that replaced bad words became one—and how to stop it from happening again, Medium, July 10, 2015

https://medium.com/s/story/the-rise-and-fall-of-mentally-retarded-e3b9eea23018

[55] Russell Means, “I Am an American Indian, not a Native American” http://compusci.com/indian/ I must find the original complete essay, which I’ve read a number of times (on the Web).

[56] Jaya Saxena, “The Knitting Community is Reckoning with Racism,” Vox, Feb 25, 2019

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/25/18234950/knitting-racism-instagram-stories

[57] The March 5, 2019 New York Times front page went further and called them simply “migrants.”

[58] Liv Little (based on interview with Laura Dodsworth), “Me and My Vulva: 100 Women Reveal All,” Guardian, Feb. 9, 2019.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/09/me-and-my-vulva-100-women-reveal-all-photographs

[59] I am using the word issue in the older, rhetorical sense that precedes its euphemistic replacement of the word problem by technical support people. An issue exists when there is a claim that somebody else is disputing. Rhetoricians classified legal issues into types, such as law, fact, equity, and forum. Everyone could agree on what happened, but disagree about whether it was illegal. Or they could agree that an action is illegal, but deny it took place. They could agree that an action took place and that is was contrary to the law, but argue that it was an exceptional situation that the lawmakers did not intend to include and that enforcing the law would result in an injustice. Or they could be told they are in the wrong sort of court for that sort of problem. So the judges don’t even want to hear arguments about law or facts or equity. Until one is clear on the nature of the issue, one does not know what sort of argument or evidence is relevant.

[60] See Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005) and the follow-up On Truth (Princeton University Press, 2006). I excerpt key parts of these books in my treatise on mattresses—and I connect Frankfurt’s ideas with Plato’s distinction between a technē and an empeiria. Ask me if you would like a copy.

[61] https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1115968535597993985

[62] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

[63] Courtney Pochin, “Man Tried to Explain the Difference between a Vagina and a Vulva—It Didn’t Go Well,” Mirror, Feb. 12, 2019. In its updated form, this article is fair and humane. It seems others copied her title, but used “bloke” or “chap” or another synonym instead. BUT: The man/bloke/chap did not try to explain the difference between a vagina and vulva. That is fake news. The man took a position on existing language usage with respect to those to things. And the way it did not go well was that the people who responded behaved badly, both in not responding to my actual position and in their rudeness.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/man-tried-explain-difference-between-13990077

[64] See Douglas Walton, Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), for a good explanation of the informal fallacies, including poisoning the well. For the page numbers, check the index for “poisoning the well” (or do a search if you are using an e-book). The book is well worth owning, along with other things he has written. See his Web page for articles that can be downloaded for free: https://www.dougwalton.ca

[65] One possible reason for insisting on the word “fetus” is to make abortion more palatable. But abortion advocates and technically minded gynecologists are not in a position to dictate usage to ordinary women.

[66] THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, NPR: ‘A Baby Is Not a Baby Until It Is Born’, May 23, 2019 https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/05/23/npr-a-baby-is-not-a-baby-until-it-is-born/ From a series of tweets by me on this article. This is the sort of idiocy peddled by the “international expert on both the vagina and vulva.” And I was expected to bow down to her on a question of ordinary language. I am speaking of none other than Dr. Jen Gunter. I fully accept that word "fetus" is the technical term for "an unborn or unhatched young vertebrate especially after passing through the earliest developmental stages and attaining the basic structural plan of its kind". But that does not mean that a mother ought not speak of the _baby_ in her womb. Likewise, although the technical word for the Guardian photos is "vulva," that doesn't mean that anyone who uses the word "vagina" is wrong. Ordinary words and terms of art are different. Jen Gunter criticized president Trump for using the word "unborn baby" in the state of the union speech. She suggested he was ignorant of the definition of "fetus." A few days later she suggested I was ignorant of the word "vulva." Both of us knew the technical terms. But in ordinary speech people are not obligated to use technical terms. In fact, if they do, they will often be "incorrect" in the sense that they are speaking in the wrong mode, given the context. There is a reason the Vagina Museum has that name. What's the alternative? This why I tweeted the passages from Moby Dick. I love that Melville makes an argument for why a whale is a fish. I agree. And he gives a definition of the kind of fish. He gives a lengthy classification of whales in one of the chapters. And I might add, a tomato is a vegetable! Lest anyone think that I am anti-science (which I am not), scientists have their own needs. So I expect that scientists will say a tomato is a fruit and that a whale is a mammal, etc. So in biological and even gynecological settings, it is natural to hear about fetuses and vulvas

[67] It makes a difference to have been socialized in English, and preferably to have lived long enough to see changes to be educated about past practices. But some of the greatest experts on English have been foreigners. For example, Otto Jespersen. A Czech woman has a better understanding of why “as well as” is not a synonym for “and” than almost all current educated English speakers: Marina Pantcheva, “The correct use of as well as” English Language Help Desk (http://site.uit.no/english/grammar/aswellas/) And of course some native speakers have limited knowledge. But, for example, a person living in “the ghetto” is a natural expert in his dialect. So he would know what “you don’t have to lie to kick it” means—and perhaps “signifyin’.” And some people are better than others at picking up other languages and accents and dialects. Educated people can sometimes speak worse English than uneducated people.

[68] I am not speaking about personal relationships, about which it is often said that the the key to survival is to always (pretend to) agree with the woman. Married interaction, for example, is not generally a rational dialogue. And it is possible than even in argumentation, adjustments must be made for the sex of one’s interlocutor. Many men are more gentle when talking with women. They might punch or slap on the back their male friend, but be more gentle when touching a female friend. I’ve had female students burst into tears over small things. Perfectly legitimate (if sincere). Men and women are different, thank God.

[69] This might explain the replacing of “sexism” with “misogyny.” Sexism can work both ways, while misogyny cannot. Efforts to make the case that while whites can be racist against blacks, blacks are in principle incapable of being racist against whites have been accepted by many people.

[70] I am referring here to the catalogue of legal issues given in ancient rhetoric: there are issues of fact, law, equity, and forum: you are in the wrong court, or you don’t have standing. No need to consider the “merits.”

[71] “Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand” (Judges 12:6). One ought not slay people who say “mansplaining,” but one may conclude that rational discussion will not be possible.

[72] For an overview of Donald Davidson’s version of the principle of charity, see especially chapter 3 of Kathrin Glüer, Donald Davidson: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). See also other locations via the index. This book will lead you to the relevant essays by Davidson himself. He was my professor when I was at UC Berkeley. I discussed this notion with him and was in effect applying it in a research paper I was writing at the time on liberation theology. The course I took was on the Philosophy of Action, spring semester 1984. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

[73] https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/radical-translation-and-radical-interpretation/v-1

[74] I will add more on this, but for now let me provide this: “This exercise focuses on 'assenting to impressions', and continues the discussion already introduced in the section above on making proper use of impressions. 'Assent' translates the Greek sunkatathesis, which means 'approve', 'agree', or 'go along with'. Thus, when we assent to an impression (phantasia) we are committing ourselves to it as a correct representation of how things are, and are saying, 'Yes, this is how it is.' The Discipline of Assent, then, is an exercise applied to our impressions in which we interpret and judge them in order to move from having the impression of something or other, to a declaration that such-and-such is the case. “The third area of study has to do with assent, and what is plausible and attractive. For, just as Socrates used to say that we are not to lead an unexamined life [see Plato, Apology 38a], so neither are we to accept an unexamined impression, but to say, 'Stop, let me see what you are, and where you come from', just as the night-watch say, 'Show me your token.'” ([Epictetus] Discourses 3.12.14–15, trans. Hard) // “The key to transforming oneself into the Stoic sophos (wise person) is to learn what is 'in one's power', and this is 'the correct use of impressions' (phantasiai), which in outline involves not [immediately] judging as good or bad anything that appears to one.” https://www.iep.utm.edu/epictetu/

Preface and Abstract

Preface

Abstract

FOREGROUND

What I was not saying

What I was I saying

The missing argument

Many words have broad and narrow meanings

Vagina is one of those words

Getting an ought from an is

How it might be that some people have come to reject usage[19]

Why one might want to keep the status quo

Possible objections to my position

(1) Descriptive objections

Evidence in support of my factual claim about existing usage[28]

(2) Normative objections

The linguistic argument against using vagina generically

Non-linguistic arguments against using vagina generically

BACKGROUND

How I came to comment

My background reactionary attitude toward certain language changes

This instance

Informal discussions

The response

Fallacious responses

(1) People complaining about a position I did not take: irrelevant response; straw man.

(2) People were saying that I did not have the right to express an opinion: genetic fallacy; poisoning the well; argument from authority; abusive ad hominem.

Dictionary

The Mansplaining abomination

Conclusion

Recap

Principle of charity

Stoic acceding to the appearances

Actual charity

They’re planting stories in the press (news reports)

How it might be that some people have come to reject usage^[19]

Evidence in support of my factual claim about existing usage^[28]