Some thoughts about words and their meanings.

So much is falling into place. About how the wish to self identify as a man or a woman is simply the tip of an iceberg named Chaos.

Some people are angry on my timeline about the definition of rape in UK law.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 clearly sees non consensual penetration of your body by a penis as something uniquely horrible, giving this its own (and first) section of the Act.

I can understand why some object to this. They claim to worry it diminishes other victims.

But I worry what they are really angry about is that this focus on the penis makes it harder to push the narrative that sex is ‘fuzzy’, that observable biology is redundant - even bigoted?

I don’t necessarily agree with this narrative that being raped with a penis is the worst possible fate, that a woman’s life is ‘ruined’ for ever - that in itself is misogyny, assuming that women are judged and valued by their sexual purity.

But there is no doubt that for centuries, male rape of women has been recognised as a particularly horrible crime and continues to be used to this day as a tool of violence and oppression against women. Not about the sexual act, but a demonstration of power and control.

So it makes Judith Butler’s assertion that women’s fears about this are simply some ‘rich fantasy’ all the more disturbing.

As Naomi Cunningham commented so powerfully for @legalfeminist

And words cannot mean whatever you would like them to. With no agreed definition of words we can have no law.

With no law, no fetters on the activities of the powerful.

And this I think explains where we are now. What continues to baffle me is why so many women support it.