The word ‘gender’ has been part of the English language since at least 1390. It appears to have started at a grammatical term to distinguish between ‘the classes (typically masculine, feminine, neuter, common) of nouns and pronouns distinguished by the different inflections which they have’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Later, in the 1400s, ‘gender’ came to apply to ‘males or females viewed as a group’ (OED again). But today there is a battle in  the so-called ‘gender wars’ over whether folk can decide their gender by means of self-identification. Hence the disputes over whether males who self-identify as females can play in female sporting teams, or go to female hospital wards or prisons, or use female toilets and change rooms. We have seen ugly demonstrations on our streets in which screaming crowds insist that not accepting people’s gender self-identification is bigoted prejudice. On the other side are women worried about their safety and the safety of young girls. Is there a linguistic solution? Here is one suggestion for a labelling (or wording) to fix this dispute. Our DNA has 46 genomes arranged in pairs. The 23rd pair of genomes are either XX (producing female, egg-producing characteristics) or XY (producing male, seed-producing characteristics). Anyone with a Y chromosome will be (on average) larger, faster and stronger than anyone lacking a Y chromosome. Couldn’t XX and XY be used instead of the disputed words? Instead of talking about the Australian ‘women’s cricket team’ could we talk about the ‘double-X team’? Could we have ‘XX prisons’ and ‘XY prisons’? Might that labelling defuse the current ‘gender wars’?

More on Vegemite: In the second world war it became part of the survival rations of Aussie soldiers, and in 1954 an advertising agency came up with a jingle for the product that put the phrase ‘we’re happy little Vegemites’ into Aussie English. The product also gave rise to the expression ‘a Vegemite moment’. Visitors don’t always react as enthusiastically to this thick, salty, black sandwich spread as the native-born. Upon trying some delicious Vegemite on toast visitors have been known to screw up their noses and ask us how we can eat that stuff. Well, this response has given rise to the expression: a Vegemite moment – which is a moment, a point in your personal experience, that you absolutely love or absolutely loath. In other words, there is no middle ground. That ‘love it or loath it’ response is what gives the moment its name as a Vegemite moment. And, for reasons I don’t quite understand, the spread has also given its name to school students: a student entering into their first year in high school can be called a Vegemite (often abbreviated to veggie.) Why? My guess is that the packed lunch they brought from home often contained Vegemite sandwiches. As for the future of the spread – it looks healthy. The Australian’s food critic John Lethlean describes himself as a ‘Vegemite tragic’ who is working on a recipe for a risotto made with the yeasty spread.

This word ‘multiperspectival’ is both very new and very awkward. I’m tempted to call it an ugly word, but it is (I’m starting to think) a useful one. The prefix ‘multi-’ comes from Latin and means ‘many’, while ‘perspective’ came into English from Middle French and refers to the way things appear. In other words, being ‘multiperspectival’ means looking at things from several points of view. When we do that, we see more, and we see better. Our world is filled with angry activists unable to do that. The Greta Thunbergs of this world can see climate change only from the perspective of their own emotions and experiences. They are incapable of considering, for example, the pragmatic perspective or even from a factual, impartial scientific perspective. The activists insisting the Voice be embedded in the constitution are seeing things only from the perspective of their own emotions and experiences – whereas wisdom says there are other perspectives to be considered. For instance, the pragmatic perspective. This word ‘multiperspectival’ is not yet found in any of the major dictionaries—but surely it soon will be!