Rewiring the American Mind

By Tom Gilbreath

 

The government of Wisconsin sees certain words as offensive. So do I. But their list and mine are not the same. Theirs includes some notorious ones like, “mother” and “husband.” In a proposed Wisconsin statute, Governor Tony Evers wants to replace the word “mother” with “inseminated person” and “father” with “spouse.”

 

“If I called my mother an inseminated person, she'd probably slap me for good reason,” said State Senator Andre Jacque. He went on to say that it was the best example of “woke virtue signaling” that he has seen.

 

The idea is to make the word “mother” more “inclusive.” But for a word to have meaning, other meanings are, by necessity, excluded. Mother has always been an exclusive term. Throughout history, every language has a word that corresponds to mother, and that word has never included everybody. It’s a precious word to most of us because it only describes certain people. Not everyone gets to claim motherhood. And, in all those languages, the word mother never meant “inseminated person.” 

 

The state calls this “gender neutral language,” but being a mom is not gender neutral. It never has been. The governor says that this wording is necessary to give “legal certainty that moms are able to get the care they need.” Really? He just used the word “moms.” That’s an informal variation of the word “mother.” He uses those words because we all know what they mean. Since we know what “mother” means, it is not necessary to change the word in a statute. 

 

So far, the bruhaha is over one statute in one state. It may not seem too important. But it’s part of something much bigger. Green Bay’s Fox 11 News reports, “Evers wants to change other parts of state law, as well. One state Republican lawmaker counted at least 30 times mother is replaced with a gender-neutral term. Father was subbed out more than 120 times.”

 

Culture is being changed as the language changes. And it’s happening in dozens of important areas. In this case, the words “mother” and “father” are being erased in a statute about family and children. That’s significant. 

 

In 1946, George Orwell wrote, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought…. The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” 

 

As a society’s language falls apart, so does its citizens’ ability to reason and think clearly. Orwell was right about foolish thoughts arising from slovenliness of language. Consider this. In 2022, Fox News Digital asked many prominent politicians including Senator Raphael Warnock and Governor Kathy Hochul to give a definition of the word woman. They were unable or unwilling to do so. During her confirmation hearing, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked what a woman is. She answered, “I’m not a biologist.”

 

So now it takes a biology degree to know what a woman is? How did we come to this? As a society, we claim to honor and celebrate women, but how can we do those things if we don’t know what makes women unique?

 

We think conceptually, but also with words. To rewire human minds, rewrite their dictionaries.