Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) took to Twitter to denounce an international group of scientists that is working to make language in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology more precise and inclusive… and it seems she didn’t really understand what they are doing.
“The ‘party of women’ really wants to erase women,” she tweeted in reply to a screenshot from a headline from the U.K.’s Telegraph.
There is a lot wrong with that statement that could be found in just a few minutes of searching online.
First, she is referring to the Democratic Party in the U.S. with the expression “party of women,” but the article she is sharing is about the EEB (ecology and evolutionary biology) Language Project, which is being led by an international group of ecology and evolutionary biology researchers. The British newspaper article she was referring to even presented quotes from English and Canadian scientists. None were from the U.S. or associated with the Democratic Party.
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Second, the article isn’t about an attempt to erase any language in common speech, but instead about a discussion of language used in scientific articles. That is, literature that Boebert herself is not likely to ever encounter.
Third, the specific complaint about “egg-producing” and “sperm-producing” replacing “female” and “male” isn’t about women, which is a word used for humans. Since they’re biologists, they are often talking about other species that express sexual dimorphism.
Part of the issue is that biologists often use words associated with human genders and apply them to organisms that aren’t human and whose sexes aren’t analogous to our own, including even some plant species and invertebrates. Using language like “male” and “female” for these organisms can imply that humans’ socially constructed gender binary has relevance to, say, praying mantises and that their biological sexes exist in a binary.
“These terms are used to reinforce societally-imposed ideas of a sex binary, emphasizing cis-normative and hetero-normative views,” the EEB Language Project says of the terms “male” and “female.”
Last, the entire EEB Language Project has no legal power over anyone; it’s part of a discussion among biologists with one group of biologists trying to convince others of their point of view. Despite the strong implication of victimization in Boebert’s tweet, these biologists aren’t going to force Boebert or anyone she knows to use or not use any word.
On Twitter, people mocked Boebert for being concerned with the language used by a branch of biology that she possibly didn’t even know existed until now.
