Verbal Brainwashing

You likely don't recognize it, but most of us are victims of verbal brainwashing. It's very subtle, this brainwashing. You hear a term used a particular way and you hear it repeated. It becomes a part of the vocabulary and pretty soon you're unaware that you've accepted new concepts as true.

One that has struck me of late is the term "actor". For most of my life there were two forms of the word. One was "actor" and the other was "actress". The difference between the two was simply gender. "Actress" was simply defined as "a woman who is an actor". You don't hear "actress" used much anymore. Actresses have discarded the term. They don't want to be recognized as women who are actors. Gender is irrelevant, you see. Despite the protests, the move to eliminate gender differences has gotten a firm foothold in Hollywood simply by eliminating a term -- "actress". Of course, that elimination has been popping up all over the place. You won't likely find a spokesman or spokeswoman anymore. They are all spokespersons. You no longer have a mailman. They are all mail carriers. It's everywhere. The language is shifting to eliminate gender differences, and we go with it, hardly aware that it's happening.

One of the most obvious places it occurs is in the language of homosexuality. Think about it. I bet you use the terminology pretty freely without even considering its ramifications. The first one is pretty easy to see. I've complained about it before. "Gay" used to mean "happy" and now ... it doesn't. But "gay" has shifted even more. While I think of it as "homosexual" (and only use that term), there appears to be only gay men because homosexual women prefer to be termed "lesbian". (Thus the LGBT -- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual -- designation.) But we've also appropriated an entire philosophy into our language that is hard to avoid. You are probably quite comfortable with the term "gay lifestyle" or the like. It references not a way of living, but a complete person. Mandatory in the term is the position that a person who has homosexual desires is born that way and is fundamentally different in how they live than those who have heterosexual desires. In other words, the term "lifestyle" in that context requires that "gay" or "homosexual" is a condition, not a choice or activity. If you use the term "lifestyle" in that context, you are agreeing that a person who has homosexual desires is a person with the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc., that together constitute the mode of living of a group we recognize as "gay". If you would like, from that point, to argue that "homosexual" is a choice, you've already lost the argument. It is a lifestyle, not a preference.

Oh, and we've bought it there, too. A simple shift in terminology and we've gone from "sexual preference" to "sexual orientation". No one speaks about "sexual preference" anymore. It's not a matter of the gender with whom you prefer to have sex, you see. It is an "orientation". By succumbing to the "orientation" terminology, you are admitting that there is something inborn, something fundamental, something intrinsic in this. This is flawed at its core. You see, I may have a tendency to be attracted to females rather than males, but I don't have to act on it. What one does with one's preferences is a choice. But we accept "orientation" and "lifestyle" and are happily moving toward philosophical positions that are neither true nor relevant.

Step from there to "gay marriage" and you've gone farther. You haven't brought equality to people who have a sexual preference for the same gender. You've loosed the term "marriage" from its original moorings and cut it adrift. It is no longer the core of society, the life-long joining of two people into one unit for the purpose of procreation and perpetuation. All of that is gone ... with a simple acceptance of a term.

Try it sometime. See how far you get. I know I have to work hard at not using terms that admit to beliefs I don't have. The minute you use the term "homosexuals", for instance, as a reference to a group, you've likely used it to mean a group of people who not only have sexual preferences, but also have their own "lifestyle", their own morals, their own attitudes, their own orientation, and so on. They are born that way and have no control of their actions. That is, they cannot choose not to act on their sexual desires for the same gender. In fact, you've made sex a divine right. I mean, you can't ask someone who has sexual desires for the same gender to be celibate, can you? That wouldn't be fair! Now, you may not have meant it that way, but that's the way it will be interpreted. The same is true with "gays", "gay lifestyle", "sexual orientation", and so on. We've been moved from personal responsibility, individual choice, and sex as an option to automatons who have no options in their preferences or the way they live ... simply by use of language.

And it doesn't stop there ...