WEBVTT

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Hi, faithful listeners. Sometimes the words we

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already have just in the way. Hmm. Mathematician

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Eugenia Chang encountered this when she was thinking

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and writing about gender. We have familiar words

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like masculine and feminine. We also have words

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like feminism. But these words carry history.

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They can carry assumptions and emotions, even

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disagreements, before we even explained what

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we mean. So Chang tried something different.

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She introduced two words, ingressive and congressive.

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Ingressive describes behaviors that tend toward

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competition, independence, self -reliance, and

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individual achievement. Congressive describes

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behaviors that tend towards cooperation, interdependence,

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community, and helping others succeed. What's

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interesting is that Chang intentionally separated

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these ideas from gender. A man can be congressive,

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a woman can be ingressive, and the same person

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can be both, depending on the situation. The

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new words allow us to notice a pattern without

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immediately putting people into our familiar

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categories. Mathematics does this all the time.

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We notice something and we give it a name. And

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suddenly, we can examine it more carefully. Prime

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numbers was an example that we used earlier this

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week. Once we name a pattern, we can talk about

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it and compare it and understand it better. But

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there's also a danger. Naming a pattern is not

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the same thing as defining the object that has

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the pattern. And that's particularly important

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when the object is a person. Suppose I notice

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that someone frequently wants things done a certain

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way. I might say, they're controlling. And maybe

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I've noticed a real pattern. But something happened

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when I changed sometimes acts in a controlling

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way into, quote, is controlling. A description

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became a definition. And once I've defined the

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person that way, I may begin interpreting everything

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they do through that label. Yes, definitions

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help us see, but sometimes they can also keep

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us from seeing. So perhaps the question is not

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whether we should label patterns. Label can be

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incredibly useful. But maybe a better question

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is... Am I using this word to understand someone

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better or have I allowed the word to become the

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person? Think people are always larger than the

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words that we use to describe them.