Literally?

This is just another word rant.

According to the dictionary, the word "literal" means "in accordance with, involving, or being the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical." Thus, "literally" would be the adverb form meaning "in the literal sense" or "in the sense that is in the primary or strict meaning of the word or words." So how is it that we've gotten to the place that "literally" can now mean "Used for emphasis while not being literally true." How did we get from "literally" meaning "literally" to now meaning "not literally"? But literally every day I hear someone say that something is literally true by which they mean it is only virtually true ... which means that it is not literally true ... like I just did here.

We have several English words with "gamy" as a suffix like "monogamy," "bigamy," or "polygamy." The suffix comes from Greek -- gamia -- and means "married." So "mono-gamy" would be "married to one" and "bi-gamy" would be "married to two" and "poly-gamy" would be "married to many." Not hard; you get the idea. Except somewhere along the way "monogamy" shifted to where it now means "The practice or state of having a sexual relationship with only one partner." Now, that's strange, since "married sex" and "extramarital sex" has always been distinct in our historical mindset. Indeed, in our day we recognize "serial monogamy" where you have sex with lots of people ... one at a time. How did we get from "monogamy" meaning "married to only one person" to "sex with a lot of people"? Is that a product of our culture's work at redefining marriage and sexual morality? I think so.

We have in modern English a gender problem. I'm not referring to sexism or even transgender issues. I'm referring to the word. There is, technically, a distinction between "gender" and "sex" in the language. "Sex" refers to the biology of it and "gender" refers to the maleness or femaleness of a person. "Sex" refers to the genitalia and other physical differences and "gender" is about roles and appearance and such. In the language. Our problem? We haven't got a clue. We understand that almost everyone is born with one or the other sexes. Binary sex. Undeniable. You can speak of the baby's sex, for instance, as a boy or a girl at birth. In a literal sense, it's there for all to see. Gender, on the other hand, isn't as clear to us. On one hand we rant and rave that there is no difference between the genders, that gender is a social construct, that maleness and femaleness is a largely arbitrary thing. But if a biological male decides he is actually of female gender, he will always switch over to the appearance and mannerisms of a female gender ... which we just determined wasn't real. We call it "gender dysphoria" and, yet, he/she is quite clear what gender he/she really is and what roles, appearance, and mannerisms that gender should display. That, dear reader, is real confusion.

Well, look, I'm going to go with it. Sure, I could afford to lose some weight, but I've decided I'm translender. I may weigh too much, but I identify as a slender person. I have slender dysphoria, and I'll thank the doctors not to refer to me as "overweight." Right? No? Why not??! Because ... words have literal meaning and how I feel about it doesn't matter.