The Watering-Down Phenomenon

CONTENT WARNING: There is a brief discussion of sexual violence in this post.

Let’s suppose a woman named Stephanie was groped by a man named Sean on the subway. Sean obviously does something disgusting, perverted, and wrong when he does this. If people were to find out that Sean did this to Stephanie, I would argue that he should be socially sanctioned in some way. After all, he did something that he shouldn’t have done that threatens Stephanie’s bodily integrity, safety, and comfort.

What if, however, rather than telling others that Sean specifically groped her, Stephanie told others that Sean raped her? After all, he treated Stephanie’s body with a considerable amount of disrespect, and was responsible for a level of harm and trauma that was significant to Stephanie. Would it be appropriate for Stephanie to classify Sean’s action as rape?

To my mind, there are two problems with Stephanie’s classification of Sean’s action as rape. First, there seems to be a definitional issue. That is to say, what happened to Stephanie lacks, in large part, those characteristics that distinguish rape from other acts – namely, Sean did not force Stephanie to copulate with him. Let’s suppose, however, that we redefined the term “rape” to be inclusive of acts of sexual violence as various as groping and forced copulation. The definitional issue with Stephanie’s classification would no longer exist.

There is still another, more profound issue with Stephanie’s classification of Sean’s action as rape. Stephanie is watering down a term which, over time, has developed a rightfully negative connotation. This is not to say that Stephanie does not deserve justice for being groped on a subway, or that what was done to her wasn’t wrong. Indeed, groping people without their consent, especially when they are most vulnerable in public, is unquestionably wrong. And she deserves justice. But it is not rape.

There are details that distinguish the act of rape from the act of groping which allow us to rightly classify the act of rape as uniquely wicked and vile. When Stephanie classifies her incident with Sean as rape, she contributes to potentially lessening the visceral response that people would have when another person claims that they are raped in the future. If rape could mean anything from groping to forced copulation, people may show hesitation about the exigency with which the respond to the wrong because it is not clear what the extent of the wrong is.

Two days ago, J.K. Rowling tweeted: “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth. The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women - ie, to male violence - ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences - is a nonsense. I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

In response to this tweet (and another tweet where, admittedly, she made a brazen joke), her critics have been charging her with transphobia and calling her a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist, which seems like it may just be a descriptor but it is actually used more commonly as a derogatory slur). But is believing that biological sex plays an important role in many people coming to understand who they are, and articulating that belief, in any way meaningfully transphobic?

Somebody might thoughtfully and respectfully disagree with what Rowling has to say, on grounds that sex does not or should not figure as centrally in self-understanding. Or, they could draw attention to science that complicates our understanding of the gender binary and suggest that Rowling’s view is overly-simplistic. Or, they could try to make the argument that Rowling is conflating two concepts that are distinct from one another: sex and gender. And so on. But it seems like a reach, to me, to claim that a woman who says, “ I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans” – is transphobic or anti-trans. Moreover, it appears as though using the term “transphobic” to describe J.K. Rowling’s commitments waters the term down and makes it less likely in the future for people to take charges of severe, materially harmful anti-trans behavior seriously.

I see this watering-down phenomenon even in our discussions about racial justice in this country. White people who have not publicly advocated for Black Lives Matter on social media are called pro-racist. People who are ultimately in favor of defunding the police but who are wary of the “Defund the Police” slogan for political purposes are accused of treating “‘defund the police’ with the same detached avoidance of your racist family at Christmas.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am ecstatic that people want to defund the police, that people want to hold police officers accountable for their actions, that people are interested in dissolving police unions, in ending qualified immunity, in even abolishing the police. It is mistake, however, to call opposition to any of these reforms necessarily racist. It saps the label of its brute force. Somebody could be interested in funding police departments more responsibly and giving them power to better serve and protect black communities; is their support of expanding police authority in these ways tantamount to racism? I don’t think so.

All of this is to say, the culture uses terminology that should be reserved for a narrow set of circumstances too liberally, and this might have some dangerous consequences for the sanctioning of evil downstream. This is not to say that we should eliminate words like “rape” and “transphobia” and “racism” from our vocabulary. It is merely to urge caution so that these words are used in a way that allows people to respond appropriately to the most egregious wrongs that take hold in society.