Yes. Glenn plays the devil's advocate well (but safely ducks offering a personal opinion). John dives in, claims it's a challenging issue, and so wants to default to kindness. He then somehow claims the usage of language is "just skin" and there is a deeper reality, defined by the individual. But really, John's thinking is appallingly shallow. He's playing a surface level technical linguist here, acknowledging the abuses but claiming that the language has nothing to do with it. That's ridiculous. The shared reality we know is what he dismisses as a simplistic view of chromosomes. The modern, "civil" way of looking at it is more complicated, to the point that it is "wise" to not be able to define the term woman. That is precisely the domain of language and law, which John casually abandons.
Yes. Glenn plays the devil's advocate well (but safely ducks offering a personal opinion). John dives in, claims it's a challenging issue, and so wants to default to kindness. He then somehow claims the usage of language is "just skin" and there is a deeper reality, defined by the individual. But really, John's thinking is appallingly shallow. He's playing a surface level technical linguist here, acknowledging the abuses but claiming that the language has nothing to do with it. That's ridiculous. The shared reality we know is what he dismisses as a simplistic view of chromosomes. The modern, "civil" way of looking at it is more complicated, to the point that it is "wise" to not be able to define the term woman. That is precisely the domain of language and law, which John casually abandons.