Some words, like dead horses, are beaten far past the point of viability. Part of this is due to a linguistic phenomenon called "semantic infiltration," in which a word is co-opted from its original, strict definition to imply other shades of meaning. In no small part, this is an inevitable aspect of language development, particularly in English. The history of the British Isles, after waves and waves of invaders including Picts, Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Jutes, and Angles - even the French - has yielded a language that, as the old saying goes, does not simply borrow from other languages, but that chases other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
Sometimes this is done more or less deliberately. Some words are co-opted to serve an agenda. Case in point: "Inclusive," which is being redefined to mean, "We must allow anyone to do anything, no matter how ridiculous that thing may be." For example, allowing men to play in women's sports.
For example, on Monday, we see that yet another actual female athlete is under fire for insufficient zeal for "inclusiveness," because she claims (correctly) that women's sports should be for women.
A National Women’s Soccer League club has grown divided after one of its players called on the league to "adopt gender standards" to protect the integrity of the organization and grow the sport.
Elizabeth Eddy’s column appeared in the New York Post last week and she asked, "How do we preserve women’s rights and competitive fairness while fostering meaningful inclusion?"
Eddy wrote that controversies in swimming and track and field have shed light that women’s professional soccer lacks standards when it comes to intersex and transgender athletes. She wrote that the NWSL "must adopt a clear standard," adding that only players born with ovaries should be allowed to play, following the standard in the Women’s Super League in the United Kingdom, or the league should adopt an SRY gene test, like World Athletics and World Boxing.
That's what any sane person would think. But here's where Elizabeth Eddy went wrong:
"Fairness and inclusion are core American values. Reasonable people can disagree about where to draw lines, but avoiding the conversation altogether by shutting out diverse views does not serve us. In fact, we owe it to current and future female athletes to solve this," the 11-year veteran wrote.
We can concede that fairness is an American value, and in this context, fairness would mean that only women compete in women's sports. But "inclusion" is not, should not, and can not be an American value. In fact, in this context, "inclusion" is meaningless.
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We don't "include" people from a wide range of things for all manner of reasons. This is necessary for the survival of a civilization. Exclusion is done all the time for all manner of reasons; we exclude people who are typhus carriers from working as nurses, we exclude people who can't pass a minimal physical fitness test from serving in the military (at least, we do now) and we exclude convicted criminals from all manner of things, from owning firearms to voting. And we should exclude men from playing in women's sports - and from using women's locker rooms, restrooms, and showers.
These things must be based on objective standards. In this context, they can only be based on biology. If a person has a Y chromosome, they are male. That's biology. That is based on fact. Anyone can claim to be a woman, a three-spirit forest sprite, a ham sandwich, or the Crab Nebula, and it doesn't change that fact. Claiming otherwise in the name of "inclusion" is a lunatic twisting of the English language.
Much of this has arisen from this insistence on "inclusion" at all costs. Even the people arguing the right side of this particular issue are doing it, as you see above. The proper statement, what Elizabeth Eddy should have written, is:
"Fairness is a core American value. Reasonable people can argue in some cases, but this isn't one of them. Allowing men in women's sports is cruelly unfair to the women who have practiced and trained for years to compete, only to have titles and recognition stolen by men. That's fundamentally unfair. Inclusiveness, if we are to place any importance on it at all, must not be so distorted as to fly in the face of biological reality."
It's time we forget this nonsense about "inclusiveness." It's meaningless in this context. When there are no boundaries, when there are no standards, "inclusiveness" becomes distorted into "we must accept any lunacy without question."
Unlike a certain Supreme Court justice I could name, I am a biologist. But you don't have to be a biologist or a scholar of the English language to see the wrecking ball that the term "inclusive" is becoming through this process of semantic infiltration. The left will, of course, continue to use this term to push all-encompassing "inclusiveness" as though it were handed down from on high. The rest of us, though, shouldn't fall for it. Call them out on the "inclusiveness' hooraw. Don't let them keep pushing the term - and we should not use it ourselves.
