I think one key point that’s missing in this otherwise very thorough post is that there is a larger context and historical progression of word definitions and categories about sex, sexuality, and gender. Those categories worked in many ways but were imperfect in others. Creating new words makes sense in principle, like fish vs dag, but it’s even harder to get people to adopt new words consistently than it is to change definitions. In any case, this makes any attempt to alter those definitions and categories a matter of public discourse, in which you get about five words https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ZvJab25tDebB8FGE/you-get-about-five-words.
If that isn’t enough (and it isn’t), then sometimes the best you can do is spend however many weeks to decades it takes for the implications of those five words to diffuse through society and then move on to the next five words. Move too slow, and you lose momentum. Move too fast, and some fraction of society can’t keep up. That fraction gets too large, and you get backlash. Lacking perfect agreement and coordination, some forums and subpopulations move faster than others. Repeat forever to asymptotically approach better definitions, we hope.
I think one key point that’s missing in this otherwise very thorough post is that there is a larger context and historical progression of word definitions and categories about sex, sexuality, and gender. Those categories worked in many ways but were imperfect in others. Creating new words makes sense in principle, like fish vs dag, but it’s even harder to get people to adopt new words consistently than it is to change definitions. In any case, this makes any attempt to alter those definitions and categories a matter of public discourse, in which you get about five words https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ZvJab25tDebB8FGE/you-get-about-five-words.
If that isn’t enough (and it isn’t), then sometimes the best you can do is spend however many weeks to decades it takes for the implications of those five words to diffuse through society and then move on to the next five words. Move too slow, and you lose momentum. Move too fast, and some fraction of society can’t keep up. That fraction gets too large, and you get backlash. Lacking perfect agreement and coordination, some forums and subpopulations move faster than others. Repeat forever to asymptotically approach better definitions, we hope.