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More on “sexual identity”
Wittgenstein notoriously argued that a private language is impossible. The problem is that if I am the sole authority for the meaning of a word there is no way to distinguish a case in which I am using it correctly from one in which I am not. If that’s so, though, the word can’t be of any use to anyone. Whatever the validity and scope of the argument, something like it seems to apply to the current notion of “sexual identity.” That notion implies that what I feel (e.g., certain sorts of sexual desire) makes me what I am, so that saying there is something wrong with those feelings is the same as saying I am essentially bad. I thus become the only real authority for what I am, because only I know how I feel. The consequence, though, is that “what I am” becomes meaningless. It becomes an assertion the grounds and significance of which can’t be known by others, so it can’t convey anything. And that indeed seems to be the consequence some are drawing with regard to sexual identity. People are losing the ability to apply the concept, even to themselves: Wesleyan establishes non-gendered dormitory for students who don’t want to be categorized as one sex or another. (Also see the entry on The abolition of woman at Smith College.) “Without God, man is nothing” is true in a quite exact sense: unless
the world has meaning, a condition that seems to require something very
like the existence of God, any statement that has meaning will falsify
reality. In particular, a statement that we are anything that matters
becomes groundless. Purely private meanings are nonsensical, and we
can’t bootstrap ourselves into any meaning that others must recognize simply by willing it. Meaning must precede our choices and desires if it is to mean anything. The claim that it is our desires that define what we are, a claim implicit in the notion of “sexual identity,” is thus not only wrong, it’s incomprehensible.
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