I was recently in a conversation on social media that – rather magically, I thought – did not instantly zig into infantile spew. It did, however, take the predicted zag into a stream of superficial (if rather more maturely presented) fatuous nonsense that gave me enough pause to suggest this post.

There is, especially among persons of an especially right-wing political leaning, an inclination to demand simple, clear, and absolute definitions with regard to all terms in general, but especially those with even a patina of political significance. Thus, with the histrionic attacks on that vanishingly small minority of persons who identify as “trans” (a group that comprises <0.5% the last time I looked it up) the demand by persons of a neo-fascist inclination (and TERF’s; politics makes for strange bedfellows) the self-righteous demand to “define” “woman.”

(Funny how they never demand a definition of “man.” But then, it is only women whose rights they wish to strip away, after all.)

Back in Aristotle’s day there was yet some hope of justifying a faith in definitions as being foundational to rationality. That said, Diogenes going about Athens with a plucked chicken (a ‘featherles biped’) mocking Plato by shouting, “Behold! A man!” might have inspired a measure of humility. But these days, any such sophomoric dependence upon definitions is patently childish, if not downright infantile. Let us call such juvenile insistence the “Dictionary Game.”