Black and white thinking may die hard, yet never has society been quite as comfortable with the concept of the spectrum than the present.
According to researchers at Merriam-Webster, use of the word “spectrum”, in a wide range of contexts, has grown dramatically within the current decade. Coined by Isaac Newton in 1672 to describe refractions of light, today referencing a “spectrum” is almost always shorthand for acknowledging a metaphorical range of nuances.
While the word is most commonly used in relation to autism spectrum disorder, political ideologies and gender expression, there’s really no end to things that have been described as falling on a spectrum, from perfectionism, to homelessness, to social media use.
“It seems that English speakers are increasingly finding useful the breadth in meaning and understanding that’s present in the term,” the Merriam-Webster descriptivist Emily Brewster says in an email.
Especially in a polarized intellectual climate, the language of the spectrum may be used when a speaker hopes to convey empathetic, inclusive thought, as by the 50% of millennials who, when polled in 2015, agreed with the statement “gender is a spectrum”.
“The word’s rejection of the binary and its embracing of shades of difference appear to make it especially serviceable,” says Brewster.
Although striving to better understand humanity’s nuances is certainly a worthy pursuit, “spectrum” is not as all-encompassing as it may seem at first glance. And, as a linguistic signal of wokeness, it can also easily be co-opted.
For instance, as Otamere Guobadia recently observed in Dazed, the sexuality spectrum’s “haziness and flexibility” connects to pop stars like Ariana Grande and Harry Styles being able to claim vaguely queer identities to court LGBTQ+ fans in an exploitative move known as queerbaiting.
Conceptualizing gender and sexuality on a spectrum does allow for more diversity than binary thinking. Yet just as not everybody fits into one category, such as male or female, straight or gay, not everybody relates to the idea of falling on a spectrum between such points, either. Individuals who identify as non-binary are drawn to a more fluid sense of identity, one that defies the idea of a spectrum. (If that sounds a little flakey, consider the words of Walt Whitman: “I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Or: people change.)
“Even the idea of the spectrum may be too narrow,” says the lexicographer Kory Stamper. Because “a spectrum falls between two points”, it implies a regimented, linear order against which characteristics are judged, which may exclude more radical or amorphous thought. “If you’re used to a binary, it doesn’t matter how you cut up the space in between, you still think in binary terms,” says Stamper.
For the medical community, “spectrum” is less about semantics and more about clinical specificity – the term has led to improved understanding of the variances within diagnoses of mental health disorders such as anxiety, ADHD, and most notably autism.
Yet although “there has been great value in better understanding patients who are in the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum”, according to Dr Jeffery Baker, director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at Duke University, “spectrum” language still has some adverse side effects.
The relatively recent shift in understanding autism as a spectrum disorder has “contributed to the perception that there’s an autism epidemic”, says Baker. “And that perception has had some negative effects, such as helping drive controversy about vaccines,” and putting pressure on limited resources.
Despite their limitations, spectrums can encourage greater flexibility in our understanding of the world. And while they’re not the be-all and end-all of progressive thought, their increased use may – more or less – reflect a growing sophistication of our conceptual discourse. Spectrums can be useful, but they’re not the only way to see the light.
