Language Matters

Have you ever paused to think about how language influences your daily life? While general communication is common to many animal species, the ability to create a specific language around abstract ideas (i.e. things we can’t see) is unique to humans. This special tool has a profound impact on our experience of the world, and evidence of this can be found in how speakers of different languages view the same differently-gendered objects .

The language we use shapes how we view and respond to the world around us. Our everyday language, something we may not often pause to think about, reflects our shared culture, and social hierarchies. This is, in my opinion, a truly beautiful thing. But, we must be aware of how language can also cause us to internalise and re-emit long-standing prejudice, inequality, and bias. Thus, language has the power to reinforce historical systems of inequality which we ourselves continue to be victims of. So how do we stop this?

This year, after reading Florence Given’s Women Don’t Owe You Pretty, and this article, which explores the gendered nature of many of the swear words we use without thinking, I have become more conscious of the power that certain words can have. Recently, I have noticed how frequently women weaponise misogynistic language against each other, with words such as ‘bitch’ and ‘psycho’ being wielded without hesitation. While these words were most often used to describe women who were behaving albeit inappropriately, I couldn’t help but think there are better ones to use. ‘She’s behaving destructively’ or ‘she’s being rude/malicious/inconsiderate’ are just some suggestions I could offer as a starter.

While ‘bitch’ has been used historically to demean women who behave assertively, and, frankly, like men, ‘psycho’ has a tense history of gaslighting women’s valid emotional responses to traumatic situations, and stigmatising their mental health problems. I’m not saying that no one should use these words, ever, just that we should be conscious of their implications when they are so steeped in a history of misogyny. If we, as women, use these words to put others down, are we not in part re-perpetuating the system that used them to oppress us in the first place?

If more than half of white women managed to vote for Trump despite his abhorrent language around gender, sexual assault, and female bodily autonomy, then clearly we have some work to do around becoming conscious of and unpicking the language we absorb. This statistic is evidence that this violent rhetoric has been internalised to the extent that women themselves do not see, and in fact buy into, the systemic danger it poses them.

If our knee-jerk reaction is to call a woman a ‘bitch’ or a ‘whore’, for example, can we ask ourselves why? By using this word do we excuse ourselves from trying to understand the reasons behind her actions? Carelessly brandishing gendered insults allows us to box people away in categories of ‘bad’ and ‘undesirable’; we assign them their status and metaphorically rise above it.

These words and their gendered associations lean towards harmful, historical essentialism, where someone’s behaviour can be seen to only stem from some automatic quality of their gender. It’s easier to put behaviours and personalities that we see as below us down to ‘nature’ than to actually try and engage productively with the reasons — social and psychological — for it. But, if we refrain from unthinkingly using language which is steeped in misogyny, perhaps we can begin to build conversation and understanding, and undo the tightly knit straitjacket of gendered assumptions that holds us all back.

There are a plethora of amazing words out there (plethora being one of them), and new ones being created every day. If we focus on expanding our vocabulary for the better, I don’t even think these old words will be missed.

Originally published at https://ncdickinson4.wixsite.com on November 21, 2020.