Words On Words April 23, 2011
Posted by FCM in books!, meta, politics, porn, prostitution, rape.Tags: dworkin, language, life and death, radiolab
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this is a video and a radiolab podcast about words, and how language literally shapes and organizes our experience of the world. the podcast is an hour long but its worth a listen, and it includes a few segments that are all very interesting. dont mind the horrible bagpipe intermission, its not the end! it keeps going! the video i wasnt that impressed with, but it did get me in the mood to talk about words. oh, and i havent read dale spenders “man-made language” yet, but i am sure its relevant to the discussion.
anyway, lets start with the video. i didnt like it. at best, i think its a nice collection of images…but these images arent connected, in any way, except by language. which is actually very boring isnt it? these images, when organized only by the words identifying them, do not convey ideas, or thoughts, in a coherent way. actually, i think the video illustrates how arbitrary words really are. they dont convey much information at all, until you put them in order, and in a way that makes sense to other people. words dont even identify things very well, in the absence of context, but at the very least words should be expected to do that much shouldnt they? to name things? i mean really.
a “fly” that flies around your house, and the zippered “fly” in your jeans have nothing in common, and they are not even identified well at all by their own names, which i find bizarre. in context, where we add-in our preexisting knowledge about how the world works, and where flies are known to fly, the flying-flies seem properly named…but do flies fly in every language? are oranges “orange” in any other language, besides english? the pictures show way more than the words do, as far as identification goes. (i guess thats the whole “worth a thousand words” bit ay?)
but apparently, as inadequate as they might be, words and language are absolutely critical to the way our brains interpret the world. if you listen to the podcast, in the first 10 minutes or so, we hear about an experiment done on rats (and humans) that indicates that something happens to “islands of thought” that exist in your brain, when you develop language. in humans, we have islands of thought such as “color” and “direction” that dont interact with each other at all, until we are about 6 years old. before that, we cannot conceptualize the phrase “left of the blue wall.” after that, we can. and apparently, if you wake up one day having a stroke, having lost your language skills and therefore the ability to verbally conceptualize “its morning and the sun is shining” and instead just experience it without verbalizing it in your mind-chatter, you feel absolute, unmitigated joy. interesting!
now, being that language is so important to everyones interpretation and experience of the world, and of ourselves, we could probably also talk about the effects on all of us, where misogynist men made up language, and where every single commonly used word in every language was created from a perspective of male-centrism, and misogynistic woman-hate. couldnt we? i mean…this cant be good can it? unfortunately, stuff about brains and cognitive development is above my pay grade, and i dont even have anything coherent to say about it (maybe someone else does?)
luckily, there are other things to say about words. dworkin frequently wrote about them, and how important they are in many contexts. regarding naming, she writes in her anthology “life and death” about the murder of nicole brown simpson:
certainly, calling wife-beating “domestic discord” is problematic. but if naming anything, even flies, is meaningless without context, what kind of an uphill battle do women face in naming the abuse they suffer, at the hands of men? the context of womens lives is violence, but womens context is not the context anyone cares about. for all intents and purposes, we are all living in a male-centric context, where husbands dont kill you (because men only have wives, DUH!) and where women who are killed by their husbands are invisible (thats the whole point of hiding the body…isnt it fun to look at the world through mens eyes? NOT!) its the context that gives these things meaning. and we are all living in a male-centric, pornified nightmare. and doing so, as men. ie. none of this hurts. that is our context.
now, dworkin also notes that its been her strategy as a writer to use words not to describe emotion, but to evoke it. to use words that resonate with the subject matter she is writing about, and not just explain it:
and andrea dworkin was a skilled writer, for sure. but she didnt make this up: it is, in fact, possible to use language in a way that it resonates with your subject matter. so that the vibration of the word is the same as or similar to the vibration of whatever you are discussing. to use words to evoke an emotion, an experience, and not just a two-dimensional image in the readers mind (or nothing at all). it is possible to do this.
so. being that this is the case, why doesnt the word “rape” evoke red and black suffocating death, for everyone? why doesnt the word “sex” cause your stomach to turn inside out and evoke a sense of obligation, foreboding and terror, for everyone? i mean the actual words? why not? if we can call an orange fruit “orange” why cant we call child sexual abuse what it really looks like? if we can call a flying insect “fly” why cant we call PIV what it does? men made up these words, and not only are they not evocative of anything (unless youve experienced them) the context in which they are spoken is the context of porn. the POV kind, where we are all men. in other words, its all extremely sexxxay, and doesnt hurt *us* at all, so who cares?
interestingly, one common side-effect of being violently sexually abused is that you lose your ability to speak. to use words. and its interesting, isnt it, that a narrative is required in these situations, if the harm is ever to be acknowledged and addressed? something more…wordy? wordish? word-ly? than say, “she spent the weekend at her fathers and shes never been the same.” no, thats not even close to being good enough. i have heard about this muteness-problem more than once, and dworkin has written about it too, for example, where she herself was terribly sexually abused after being arrested at an anti-war protest when she was 18:
men must know, mustnt they, that the forseeable outcome of sexual abuse is to render the victims mute. and yet they require that we talk about it, using words that describe it (rather than evoke it) if we are ever going to satisfactorily “report it.” to them. and ultimately, even when we can speak, no matter what has happened to us, being that we are women, living in a male-centric world, where the male POV is the only POV, we have a credibility problem.
so, being that the verbal deck is so stacked against women, and specifically against women speaking about the sexual abuse we suffer at the hands of men, will words ever be useful to us? if so, how?
again, in “life and death” dworkin reports what she decided to do. i read it three times. from the essay “my life as a writer”:
overcoming muteness, using words that resonated with her subject matter, and that were stronger and more terrifying than whatever she was talking about. words…and strategy. word!
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femonade 
Excellent. You are a Weird Wyrd Woman. That is a complement.
Patriarchal language is for men.When we use it, we are not heard, unless we use screaming language and then we are shrill.
I learned a new word today. Gynility. Louky Bersianik made it up. I read it in an essay she wrote for Trivia Magazine. It means the quality of being female. Somewhat like what men call themselves with the word virility. It is not femininity, nor femme and definitely not masculinity. It is about the amazing female brain and being. I felt quite light headed as I repeated it out loud many times. ( I pronounce gyn as in gin the drink.) Had to share.
I have been stricken with aphasia many times. I just did not have the words to describe the situation and when you use many words, you are thought of as a nut case or too emotional. Women’s experience cannot fit into male frames.
Thanks rhondda! I think?
I think we (as a group) have been making a little progress in this area lately, although more for terms and concepts rather than standalone words. M2T for example, does exactly what we want it to convey. We are getting there, slowly.
Inventing words and terms is easier now than it was 30 years ago, because there is a lot more invention “allowed” or accepted with English.
That “domestic discord” is totally sinister. I have more lately been using the old-fashioned “wife beater” because it is far clearer than DV which is surrounded by neutrality of victim and perp.
Newspapers are forever playing ‘hide the rape’ too, most of it is softened to “sexually assaulted”, which probably sounds more like a consensual bdsm thing going on. I do hate the term SA. It is probably on the list of changes to be made.
Sorry, fcm. I am so into dictionaries made by women. Daly’s Wickedary is my bedside reading. I can go to sleep laughing. A personal coping mechanism for sure.
i hope people listen to the podcast, its really interesting! maybe someone smarter than i am might have something to say about it? it was fascinating, really!
The trouble with “wife beater” is that it now means tank top in the US. Thanks corporate teevee shows that condition our children to feel no empathy whatsoever with women.
I think the podcast was about Plato’s Theory of Forms (though they didn’t mention that). Plato believed there are pre-existing ideal forms for all that we see. So there is a form for a Table, which is abstract and that any table that we experience is just a shadow of or representation of this universal pre-existing form. We all share the same world of forms.
But I disagree that these forms are innate. I think it’s ALL cultural and ALL learned AFTER we’re born. The ability to aquire language is definitely innate, yes: that’s why all languages around the world are so similar (once you learn a couple of languages it becomes easier to learn a fourth or a fifth because you already know the patterns) but there are no innate forms and concepts, in my opinion.
But throughout history *men* have been doing the naming of forms and concepts.
And this relates to Gender and the way appears as if from nowhere.
My daughter is being raised in Japan, as a Japanese, and she sees these pre-ordained forms quite differently to us, and yet they seem strikingly Japanese to me.
For example
me (one year ago) : what’s your favourite animal?
My daughter age 3: a pink rabbit
me (in my mind): never heard or seen that before. what a wacky imagination! Cool…]
fast-forward one year and it’s not as far-out as I orginally thought. Since she planted the concept of pink rabbits into my head (something non-existant in British culture) I’ve started “noticing” pink rabbits about. They pop up on clothing, in the subtlest of places. Or once in a random library book, just a small one, but there it was: a pink rabbit! She had been noticing this cultural quirk that even somen Japanese people don’t notice, from the age of three.
I reckon it works like that with gender, and language too. Many children will tell you doctors are men despite themselves only ever seeing real doctors who are women. I mean, my daughter has only ever seen brown rabbits
I’ve been using the term “real women” a lot recently while writing on the radfem blogs or simply “women”. And it’s interesting to see, that for all the posing of the trans activists and their misuse of language, everybody who speaks English knows exactly what I’m talking about, and in *any* context those words very clearly *don’t* include M2T.
One term I like is “mother tongue”, and it’s true that language is passed from mother to child. I alter language whenever I feel like it to change the prism through which my daughter views the world.
Hmm, now I am wondering if I did the link right? Did the podcast you heard last about an hour, with multiple segments?
The first segment mentioned “forms” but what I took away from it was that people can eat off of a table every day and understand the form (or object) of “table” but that once you have a word for it, you understand it differently than you did before. That something about the process of naming things changes the meaning of the thing, and it doesn’t matter what you call it for this to happen. It’s the fact that it has a name, or something about the idea or process of naming changes what it is, to you, cognitively.
The guy in the segment was deaf, not blind, so I am not sure how innate forms come into play here, if at all? He saw the form of “table” every day for 27 years before he realized there was a name for it. The naming part was what the researchers thought was important. Again, my brain isnt big enough to agree or disagree in this area, I’m just listening!
Well, I thought I’d have a stab, and your brain is bigger than mine so I was hoping YOU could tell me what I was talking about 😉
I realise I’ve been looking at it all from a different angle. I’ve been thinking along the lines of how the world has been named by men and therefore we all see it through their eyes . He saw the table, but when it was named he saw it in a new light. So whoever has the power (in society) to name, has the power over how we all see everything.
But actually, you meant that if something doesn’t even have a name (such as domestic violence) then it can’t even be seen.
I suppose it’s the difference between re-naming words and ideas, and actually naming things for the first time
i think all of that is relevant. concepts and objects are different. you will see a table (assuming you arent literally blind) regardless of whether it has a name, then naming it, changes it. concepts like DV “are” largely invisible, DV for instance mostly happens in private, then its swept under the rug, minimized and misconstrued when its publically spoken about. for a concept, you kind of need information (criteria, what it is) as well as context (what it does, what it means) and credibility too i guess (to get people to bellieve something exists, when they never see it personally). then you can give it a name. so i guess we are giving “form” to concepts too, as well as just naming them, while objects already have form and just receive names. if this is the case, and naming works the same way for everything thats named, then this very interesting isnt it? what happens to DV when you understand the form, then realize it has a name? what happens when the actual form of it is created by misogynistic woman haters too, and not just the name?
also, did you listen to the whole podcast? there were more segments than the first one about form and naming, the second part is about a woman who has a stroke and loses language, then the third segment is about a school for the deaf in nicaragua from the 70s to date.
FCM, do you speak a second language? Beyond just learning it at school etc, being within that culture.
I don’t have such a strict attachment to the nouns (english nouns). The second language verbs did not get as rooted, and verbs I always think of in english (mainly).
fab, i do not understand a word you just said. was it in english? (seriously, huh?)
at one time, i could get by on my spanish and my german too, but not anymore. my sister recently told me that she forgot all her spanish after not using it for several years, even though at one time she was completely fluent, and professionally teaching schoolchildren in both english and spanish. i found that strange, but i guess its really not.
interestingly, my MIL (if you can call her that) is italian, from italy, and she never really learned english. her husband essentially sequestered her, from what i gather, and didnt let her learn it. she also has social anxiety and avoids situations where she might have to communicate with other people, but i am not clear on whether this was always the case, or whehter it was caused by her eventual language problem, which apparently was caused by this: she spoke italian to her husband and to her children (my nigel). but she insisted that her children speak english and not italian, so that they would assimilate better (a common expectation of first gen americans). so they spoke english to her, and she spoke italian to them. anyway, when her husband died, she no longer had anyone to speak italian WITH, as in both listening and speaking italian. so she lost all of her italian. as in, she can no longer communicate in italian, with italian relatives. but she cant speak english either. this woman literally has no language. when i first realized this i was shocked. she speaks in a kind of gibberish that only her children understand. and she barely understands english, even from her own children anymore. english speakers dont understand her, italian speakers dont understand her, people who can speak and understand both languages cant understand her, and people who speak and understand “itali-nglish” (like spanglish but with italian) dont understand her. what little language she uses, she apparently made up.
i am still furious with nigels dad for doing this to her. it horrifies me every time i think about it.
The italngish MIL aside, the second language only seems to really ‘take’ when you live there, and few if anyone will speak english to you. You have to start thinking in it, because doing all the translating back and forth into english is too slow.
Plus, in the Bwain of Fab Libber, there seems to only be room for one language at a time. Just a short trip to France a few years ago (and no, I don’t speak much french beyond stuff to get me by) and I was having difficulty finding english words with the customs dudes on the way back. wtf that was about, I will never know, given my poor command of french.
The italnglish MIL reminds me of an episode of The League of Gentlemen (comedy programme from a few years back), second season, where the abducted ‘wife’ spoke jibberish back and forth to the abductor. I might see if I can find it on youtube.
Thanks, FCM. I’ll listen to this while I fill my meds boxes, and do some indoor gardening this afternoon.
Ah! That was excellent. (And now I know that it takes slightly less than an hour to do my meds.)
I caught several logical / conceptual inconsistencies as it went along, but I’m not an artsie and I don’t take notes, so sorry, they’re gone :-P.
But what an excellent piece of work! One thing. They (or some prick) makes the assumption that if one is no longer languageless, that one can no longer remember that state of being or way of thinking. Not true!!!
I resisted the use of language for many years. I was almost ready for kindergarten before I relented and became willing to listen to and speak human language. I remember that period of my life vividly. I remember the profundity of thoughts that I had, “discourses” that I had within my own mind (without getting cluttered up with words) that were *far* beyond anything considered to be accessible to pre-verbal or even verbal children of that age. Actually, accessible to few adults of any age. Although now as an aged adult, I have encountered some descriptions of some of those concepts in words.
I hate words. Thoughts are so much faster, less ambiguous, far richer and communicate with each other so much more fluently without words.
Get ready for it.
When the money system collapses, and 90% of your verbal vocabulary becomes useless, what are you going to *think*? Because you’ll need to.
did you notice the part where a female researcher started saying “i think they are putting too much emphasis on language…” and they fade her out? HA! i wonder what she was going to say? also, alot of the comments on the radiolab post disagree too, citing autism/aspergers and saying that “nonverbal kids do too think!” but thats not what i heard the researcher saying. he very self-consciously qualified his statement, and clarified that he meant that PRE-verbal children dont think the way HE defines “think.” which is apparently that thinking = the “islands of thought interacting with each other.”
glad you enjoyed the podcast!
“this woman literally has no language. when i first realized this i was shocked. she speaks in a kind of gibberish that only her children understand. ”
OMG!
Pre-verbal children do think, they have to “read our minds” in order to understand what we’re doing when we talk to them.
I’m suspicious about anything men say about babies and the way childrens’ minds work because they’ve been SO CONSISTENTLY WRONG over the centuries.
Up until the mid twentieth century doctors were certain that newborns *didn’t* *feel* *pain*, so they would operate on them without anaesthetic. Their mothers, of course, knew that what these madmen were saying could not possibly be true. Babies understand all kinds of complicated concepts. They will sign what they want before being able to speak and if they’re lucky there will be a sensitive adult there willing to interpret their communications.
I have not yet had a chance to listen to the podcast. I need to figure out how to download it and will do so soon.
There is something I read decades ago in Co-evolution Quarterly, and it stayed with me: Apparently being multilingual is the more natural state for humans, especially evidenced by humans in non-civilized cultures. This is in cultures where there is no formal education, especially no education to formally learn a language. People are multilingual and shift easily from one language to another from a young age.
I think that in civilized cultures (ones marked by sexism, and they all seem to be) there is tight control over language and it is a tool of female and class oppression, partly via the education system. This control over language does something unspeakable to women. My thought is that tribal cultures, which are now seen to be sexist after contact with civilization, but were likely not so originally, there must have been a more fluid way of thinking, one that is embedded in context, in which there were contextually-nuanced meanings. What we have now is so horrible and rigid. I really love the part about Dworkin creating her own way with language, one that doesn’t gloss over women’s experience but instead shouts it out, even coldly. It certainly makes me think about the prison of my own language with so much “niceness” built into it, and learning to be a warm person even to those who abused me, learned this from my earliest age.
Another thought is that women appear to understand language-in-context in ways that men do not. I had a great Aunt who barely ever spoke. But she would wink at me when the other adults were being particularly stupid in what they were saying. This was when I was a very young child, but we both got it. Men try to rigidly control context so they don’t lose control. Really, it is pitiful to see the shallowness of their concepts, the rigidity of their thinking and writing. This is the received view, but I’ve never bought it, no matter how it is idolized. However, I feel myself robbed of my own words to express a different view.
Thank you for the thought-provoking blog, FCM.
P.S. I just remembered after posting that my great aunt was a “spinster” actually called that by some back then. She was just out of high school when women first got the right to vote in the U.S. But for me, I thought she seemed in some way freer than other women in my family. For one thing, she had the freedom to be mute, not to have to explain herself to a husband. For another, she did not have to put up with listening to some man blather on all the time, since she was single. My father was always opining on some “weightly matter” it seemed. It was a different kind of assault that he expected women to listen to him with such respect, particularly the two women who lived with him, my mother and me. It really was unbearable at times to have to listen to him but never be listened to with anything resembling respect. Of course, we were glad to do it because at least he wasn’t yelling and swearing when he was opining.
I used to think words were really powerful because they could trigger an emotional response in people, but I’ve grown much more cynical and discouraged in the last few years. Like how “wife beater” should get the point across, but now it’s just a casual reference to a tee shirt. Like how young girls refer to themselves as “bitches” and “hos” as if those words are cool. I think part of the problem is that we’re transitioning, we’re living in the information age and people’s emotions are getting overwhelmed. Everybody plays on your emotions, from advertisers to politicians to shock jocks. I think there’s a certain amount of numbness developing. It bothers me.
I love words the most for what they reveal about a culture. We might not pay attention to them, but words are really truthful. Like you could tell me women are equal all you want but I can read the words, MANkind and huMANkind and learn the truth.
I say I’m cynical about words and doubtful about the power of language, but of course every now and then I read something so fabulous, something that just resonates so well, I think darn, that really needed to be said! It’s like encountering something you’ve always known, you’ve just been patiently waiting for someone to come along and say it. It’s kind of magical.
YES! this is the case isnt it? and you have hit on the big ones, refering to only men as human. “fucked” and “screwed” are big ones too, being references to both PIV and seriously harming someone. (is this the case in other languages too? in every language? i suspect it is…) its really very obvious isnt it? its like this is all a big sick joke, at womens expense. they are doing all of this right out in the open, and then denying it exists, and they must have a great laugh when we believe them when they say “its just a word, it doesnt mean anything.” most women know better of course, they just have no other options but to play along, or think they dont.
yes, again! this is what radical feminism is, to me. nothing else means anything to me anymore. its all so boring, so banal, and i do often think “what a waste of words!” when reading the shit over at feministing etc. they use fifty billion words to say NOTHING, and its all so (obviously) convoluted and seems wasteful to me. because there *are* some things that just need to be said, and if you arent saying one of those things, then why can you just shut the fuck up? in general, i dont understand this, at all. i dont understand loud people either, like why do you have to be fucking talking all the time? heh. maybe that last one isnt fair, as i am more of an introvert and just dont get extroverted people. but seriously. excessive talking about nothing seems like a defense mechanism to me, or like a drug that numbs people and insulates them from ever having to say or even think anything real.
hi katie
re the podcast, if you just want to listen to it on your computer, just hit the “play” button on the linked page. i did download it on my computer too, but you dont have to. i was hoping i could just embed it here actually, but wordpress makes you buy an upgrade for that. pfft! yeah right, like i am really going to ever pay a single fucking dime to wordpress for anything. not!
dworkin says amazing things about writing, and words, and her life as a writer. she committed to it 100%, and to women 100% and she makes that so clear. and unlike say mackinnon, who was a lawyer and an academic first, dworkin was a writer, first. she began writing from a very young age, and (obviously) became quite skilled. and as she describes in the last scan, she deliberately used her words as a weapon, as if she were strategically fighting a war. which she was. i myself have never been good at strategy, but she had both.
are you the same “katie” that came over from hugos place?
Here are the instructions for embedding podcasts FCM:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/
It is rather simple, just
[audio URL] with the space between audio & the URL.
have you ever tried it though fab? it doesnt give you a play button, its just a link. thats what happened when i tried it anyway. maybe i did it wrong? if you want mp3 files, you need the upgrade, and i think thats what i would need to get the effect i wanted?
It embeds, I did it in the ‘where have all the radicals gone’ post. And yes, it was an mp3 file.
No need for upgrades.
But, the key seems to be it has to be uploaded ‘somewhere’ on the internutz. If you are linking to another site, that’s easy, it’s just the URL of where they have the mp3 file. If you don’t want to, and I have not tried this, then you probably have to upload the actual mp3 file into your ‘media’ first, then link to where ever WP puts the file.
I downloaded the mp3. It’s 56 megs, & I don’t know whether WP gives you that much media storage. If they do, then it will work. Otherwise you need to upload it to a server that *will* give you that amount.
Actually, the Windows Live dealio give you 500 megs or 1 Terrabyte or something. I have such an account. It’s free. It’s so that “families” can share videos & photos, etc.
I’ll try uploading it, & give you the link, FCM, & we can see if it works.
Nope. Upload limit is 50 megs per file.
My media library won’t upload mp3 without the upgrade. It says so right there in black and white.
OK, yeah, I did not bother to try it (given I have so many graphics, I have to keep an eye on remaining space, I will run out!).
So, linking to the file (and embedding that one) is the only way to do it freebie.
Here’s a direct link to where I uploaded it to 4share. If you click on this, it will immediately play like a youtube file.
http://www.4shared.com/embed/579860730/4c5e9b1e
Here’s the embed code:
http://www.4shared.com/embed/579860730/4c5e9b1e
I have a 4shared.com account. It’s an excellent service. You get 10 Gigs free storage, and it’s a huge filesize limit: 2 G I think for the free account. The free account is all you need, unless you are uploading DVD files. DVD files don’t really make sense anymore because you can just convert them to avi’s, which are smaller. At lease that’s what the torrent boyz are doing.
Eek! I pasted the text of the embed code, but WP then scraped off the embed code and just posted a link to the file, i.e. went ahead and did the embedding.
Here’s a link to the text to the embed code:
http://www.4shared.com/account/document/cmq8ChMU/EmbedCode.html?sId=fw30K36IodbghS8C
It’s a text file. That should get it for you.
Hmmm …
Tried another server, and this link will open a download box for you to the mp3.
http://www.webfilehost.com/download.php?id=8454011&time=1303746134
That link is the one that the give you *after* you wait 60 seconds because you’re using the free and not premium service. 😛
The “time” parameter may be rigged in some way, I don’t know, but it works for me now.
FCM, these last few comments are all just a lot of techy rubbish – take what you want if anything, and delete all these comments.
The podcast was interesting, Fact.
I had seen Dr. Taylor’s talk on her experience a few years ago. I recommend it highly and it can be found at TED and other places.
When she speaks of the silence and experiencing/relating to *the sunny day* as BEING joy, I understand exactly what she means because this happens when animals communicate with me.
Here is where I attempt to put words onto a communication that defies or perhaps better said, finds completely incomprehensible, words and a language built on naming:
It’s sort of like a possession only they don’t possess me, it’s more like I *become* them; I feel what they feel and I know what they know. And there are no words, only pure understanding. It’s the best feeling in the world.
I have no say so over when this happens (although I am working at developing that) and it doesn’t happen every day necessarily, so it comes a bit of a shock when I get hit with a particularly strong *signal*. And although I am still very much *present* in my/our environment, time becomes completely irrelevant. Their world moves much more slowly than ours. Something like true Universal Time, maybe.
Anyway, my very first real paying gig was tutoring a boy who was deaf, legally blind and suffered cerebral palsy in, yes, language. All the kids called him Veggie Man and he lived in a foster home with 13 other kids. He was 17 and at 4th grade comprehension. I was 14 years old with no experience in anything except I knew sign language and I got As in English. My objective was to advance him 4 levels over one summer so that he would qualify to continue to high school. They gave me some workbooks and wished me luck.
In the end I think it was best that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing because he and I were forced to go about it in an organic way. I don’t remember now which fundamental key exactly was missing from his understanding of *language* at that point but I do vividly recall the day we found it; that’s what “wonder” looks like.
I listened to part of the tape FCM. It reminded me of how my own kids figured this out. I used to read to them from the time they were able to hold their heads up. One day I was doing the abc book and got to the word fish for f. That was it. The connection was made because I had an aquarium of fish in the room. Both of them did this. They pointed to the picture and then to the fish and me going yes, yes, yes. Just imagine how fucked up kids can become when they are given the wrong names for things. My own mother totally misnamed feelings. I was greedy because I delighted in beauty as if what I admired I wanted to possess. It so confused me and I was punished for disagreeing with her. I needed the word beauty or delightful not greedy. Whether she did it deliberately or not is up for grabs. It is not greedy to delight in beauty.
It is not greedy to delight in beauty.
Right. That’s what it’s there for!
yes, my dad told me that what i was experiencing as basically “sufficiently-internalized misogyny” was called “vanity” and THEN he used it as an excuse to hate me. luckily, i was smarter than he was, even back then, and knew enough not to give a flying fuck what he thought. i was 13 at the time. and i was *definitely* NOT vain. omg! hello!
its difficult to imagine growing up in a world, really, where things are called what they really are, or look like, or do. the point of language (i guess?) is to create a shorthand so it doesnt take 5 hours to exchange your morning pleasantries etc…but still! as it is, language seems even a WOEFULLY inadequate shorthand, if it doesnt even get the basic idea across. like, that rape is bad. and so is PIV.
and i meant to give you all an example of a word that resonates with its subject matter…femonade. 🙂 i made that one up myself.
But, Fact, it occurs to me that maybe it was your intelligence (and your awareness of it) that was the *vanity* he disaproved of.
Selfish is a word that parents use to abuse their children with or expressing their needs. Females continue to be punished with this word for most of their lives.
For, that would be for. The f key on this laptop has a crumb lodged under it and all the huffing and puffing of the big bad woluf cannot blow it out. Sorry.
Thanks FCM, I got it downloaded and will listen tomorrow when I have some extra time. It does seem to work fine, no problems at all. I have a new computer and it seems much better than the really old one at doing this stuff.
I’m not that katie you mention, though. I’ve just started to read the radfem blogs. I love the “femonade” word, very cool.
About your dad–mine would call me selfish which is about as far from the truth as you can get. But that selfish word stuck in my brain somehow. I’ve had to work hard to remember to take care of myself at all, rather than putting everyone else first. My dad would say this whenever he wasn’t the center of attention, I think. Perhaps your dad wanted the limelight or something and you were not cooperating. I dunno, the whole dad thing was pretty weird. Maybe we weren’t meant to have dads. At least that’s what I always thought as a kid. Moms would have been better off without them. Mine would have, and some others who were enslaved to savages worse than my dad would have for sure been better off. These were great women that I liked, never liked the dads much, and some left me stone cold with fear. One was really like a serial killer. Leaves an impression on you as a kid that you never forget.
I’m still mulling the use of words as weapons. I will have to read Dworkin’s essay soon.
My mother in law also weilds the accusation of her daughters’ “selfishness” to keep the attention focused on HER. It’s wildly manipulative and intentionally hurtful. An utter reversal of reality. I can’t tell if she really believes it, but the allegation is abusive either way. Seems to be a parental pattern, huh?
The selfishness one is interesting isn’t it? And it definitely seems like a pattern. Perhaps like calling women “prudes” (when in fact female sexuality seems essentially boundless in its natural state) the point seems to be to force women to grab onto a man, and prove everyone wrong.
Also, I so recommend dworkins essay “my life as a writer.” She talks about how that image of the woman on a cliff became her novel “mercy” and how the whole writing process is, for her, like chipping away stone to uncover the sculpture. Not like creating, but like skillfully uncovering. Really great stuff.
The selfish one is indeed an interesting one. It is an accusation normally levelled at girls only, and I think (as Katie alluded to) that it actually forms the main grooming of girls to put everyone else’s needs before one’s own.
I don’t recall the selfish label being levelled at boys. No matter how actually selfish their behaviour, they were always “boys will be boys” and EXPECTED to assert their independence, as well as having all their needs and wants met.
Selfish is never a word I hear leveled at males. I can’t recall one time I ever heard this in casual conversation. I see men as domineering and selfish all the time, and the tactic of calling women selfish or prudes is just a diversionary tactic to keep women in their places.
Another thing I’ve noticed is groups of women who are always talking about “giving back” — something I find odd, since women shouldn’t be giving things away so easily. 75-77 cents on the dollar should be a wake-up call, 50 cents on the dollar for Latina women… “giving back” is pressure on women to settle for less, to be caretakers of society, so that men can have “real” careers. I don’t buy it, but it would be a very revolutionary statement for me to say, “give back to whom? and Why?”
If you look at who is hogging access to all the resources worldwide, I think you’d have to say that men are the most selfish creatures of all. When mothers tell their daughters to stop being so selfish, they are really doing the work of keeping women in line for patriarchal exploitation. “Boys will be boys” should be changed to “selfish pigs are acting up and need to be kept down for the sake of global survival.” Quite a mouthfull 🙂
It is clarifying to hear everyone say this about the “selfish” word. Reading this, I’m aware that I never once heard my brothers being labeled as selfish. However, I did the lion’s share of the housework from a very young age, not my brothers. My brother who was a year younger than I was supposed to do the dishes part of the time but would not do them and I ended up doing them. I did much of the housecleaning, they never did a bit of it, and on and on. . . Grooming women for caretaking roles, indeed!
Sheila, that thing about giving back really is a big deal. Though I have few resources, I continually feel guilty that I cannot give to the many “causes” that are out there. So true about men, in their entitled role taking it all for themselves, aka, “selfish pigs who are acting up and need to be kept down for the sake of global survival.” Women need to change that “giving back” to “taking back.” It’s in line with “taking back the night” but how about taking back whatever we deem rightful.
I’ll think that when I start to feel guilt about charities I cannot afford give to, I need to get in touch with “taking back.” Not that women should not give to women’s shelters. We need to take care of our own.
I listened to the podcast and then read and re-read the transcript. Good, good stuff… I’ve been thinking about all this for days now. Every time I considered commenting, I stopped and thought, is that really what I want to say about this? Words getting in the way of words. And thought some more and realized this little thing. I approach words in various ways in my life. As a writer, they’re vital for getting across what’s in my head, like now, and hoping there’s a community to hear it (just as Dworkin said). As a visual artist, I love the moments when I’m making something and all word-based language evaporates from my brain and I have that experience like she describes in the podcast. (I have those moments in nature, too, but not as reliably.) As someone who reads a lot of theory, for me words are fascinating pathways to things I haven’t thought of before or ways of seeing that are new and interesting and transforming. For example, I’ve enjoyed studying semiotic theory, which has a lot to say about how words stand in for concepts and make the world what it is to us. While thinking about this post, I came across a page about Feminist Philosophy of Language, which talks about the names for the specific types of silencing that we experience because of pornography and how that relates it to rape. Amazing how things all connect at times (there’s a word for that, too). And as an angry radfem in the world, words are like sharp claps of thunder. I’ve called my male relatives “selfish” more times than I can count, to their faces, but mostly to the women in my family. It’s a word I use in a steady drumbeat with them, hoping it will filter deeper and deeper into their unconscious until they wake up one day and see it for themselves.
oooh, thats good! excellent. i hope it works, seriously. there should be a serious propaganda campaign centered around this actually. not sure propaganda is the right WORD here…but you get my drift. like something we can all put on a widget in our sidebars. its SO, SO important that women start getting this. its the reversal to end all reversals, and i think its time is about up. maybe i can come up with a graphic, let me think about it…
also, this is making me think about my comments policy, and how much thought i require people to put in, before they comment. as i have said before, my policy is essentially this: “take us all to a higher place, or STFU” is that too harsh? i dont think it is, and the proof is in the pudding: the conversations here, with the people who read here, are some of the best i have ever read.
thanks for your thoughtful comment, noan.
ok i posted a graphic about selfishness…here ya go:
Ha! 😀 thanks for that.
You work fast.
LOL on the graphic… LOL
I think we have to question every word! And I mean every damn one. Whoever started talking about “selfish” and how this is applied to women and men…. well it made me think that I have been listening to this for sometime.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I think for the past year, I’ve started to feel a kind of inner building anger every time I hear someone (usually straight malestream) women talk about “giving back.” It’s all over the place now, and it bothered me. Hey, as a lesbian, I have to guard my resources with a double ax, so “giving back” within a lesbian context is not the same thing at all.
So we need to counterattack, and I think at the height of radical feminism “take back” was used, and I find this change telling. I can’t remember the last time I heard any woman say “take back.”
And with men, you are dealing with people who have stolen everything from women, and who continue to steal everything not nailed down.
I think the next time someone tells me to “give back” I’m going to respond with, “Hey stop stealing my lesbian energy for your patriarchal programs…” or some such thing…
Selfish is really self-preservation for women I think.
its too big to fit in a widget, but its the best i could do in 30 seconds. 😛 i am still thinking about the widget sidebar idea…would other bloggers be interested in a sidebar campaign?
Yes, definitely up for a sidebar campaign.
I’ve decided to give less energy to all teh menz. Part of the purpose of that whole trans sherade is to drain the finite energy of radical women.
I’m going to concentrate more on describing the “background” that Mary Daly talked about, the place where women spin and weave. Trans women and ordinary men don’t have access to the background, partly because they’re not women and partly because of the excellent point you made FCM, that women’s closeness to one another probably stems from our oppression.
The problem I have since I decided ( as of today) to write about the background is the scarcity of words to describe it. How do you encompass the nuanced emotions and experiences of two XX women spending an afternoon together? Today I cooked lunch for my friend, and next Wednesday she has offered to cook lunch for me. I’m going to attempt to find new words to describe this background ( *without* *giving* *too* *much* *away* because apparently trans women trawl radfem blogs to glean info about FABS from us women-identified women)
Although we can’t just dissappear into the background, that’s not activism is it! We also need radfems fighting on the front line.
It is about energy Cherryblossomlife– to be aware of the source of energy,of getting to the background (Mary Daly) style. It took me a long time to understand a lot of what she meant.
Again, in lesbian connection and bonding, it has nothing to do with the male or being oppressed by men, it has to do with powerful female energy put together with sisterhood, sexuality, spirituality and intuitive power… lesbian nation is a natural power source of female energy that has not been place in a “male” reactor.
Naturally, this newest assault by the MTFs is an attempt to steal lesbian energy.
My challenge is really to know how to direct my energy, what causes power to increase in a cooperative way with all concerned women. And female conditioning is so all pervasive, that we have to be careful. If we have a feeling of inner anger or being used, we need to pay attention to this.
If we cook a lunch for a woman friend, and she does so in return, we have a flow of gift economy that is natural. There is nothing to “get” out of the exhange other than sisterhood. Compare this with going out on a “date” with a man who pays for dinner… he expects to use your body for $25.00, for example. No such thing exists with a lunch between women 🙂
i have mentioned here before that i just totally DO NOT GET songwriting. i dont get it! i cant do it, (yes i have actually tried), it seems really really hard to me, and i dont even know where to start. and i dont understand how anyone can do it. NEVERTHELESS, there are people who can do it! and do it well!
for some reason, this album has been really doing it for me lately: its by “stars of track and field” and apparently this is the ONLY album they ever did that sounds like this one, and they are actually embarassed about it because its all about “peace and justice” and stupid crap like that. WTF? douchebags. heres a track off the album “centuries before love and war”:
LYRICS:
Somewhere somehow sometime ago
back when the field was filled with snow
I hardly knew what I had to say
I hardly knew what I had….
I was with you when you were
down down down
to see you again
I was there I heard you say
Hey hey hey
Wish you were here
Sleep in sleep well sleep best alone
Don’t cry your eyes are made of stone
I hardly cared when you left me there
I almost left
I was with you when you were
down down down
to see you again
I was there I heard you say
Hey hey hey
Wish you were here
to me, the most important lines here are “i was with you” and “i heard you”. these make me fucking cry. its involuntary. oh, and this:
yes, this is what regret sounds like, i get it. i dont know why the other words are even there, but i like them anyway. see, i could never be a songwriter!
SheilaG said
Anyway, I saw this website today and right away thought about this conversation. “Crowdwise(tm) If you don’t give back, no one will like you.” Doesn’t that hook the meme we’ve been talking about here. They are in the top 5 webby awards in their category, charity. There is some self-promotion on here, Paul Rudd and Moosejaw/Patagonia, and also some individuals.
I listened to the word podcast. Really fascinating podcast. It made me wish I could get my brain to shut up more often and just enjoy the sun on my skin. The podcast evoked a sense of wonder in me at various places, about how the islands are connected up, etc. The idea that we need to have a certain level of language to begin to think is certain ways is a fascinating one. What does that mean about all the stereotypes that children get from birth and the language that goes with them? I’ve always hated the “too PC” argument, because I don’t think you can be too PC about sexist language, especially around kids. It’s not superficially about language, but deeply about meaning. How deep do these sexist concepts go? How deep are they internalized in FAABs and MAABs?
Oops, a number of errors, sorry. That’s “Crowdrise ™: if you don’t give back, no one will like you” also “The idea that we need to have a certain level of language to begin to think IN certain ways. . .”
Also, the quote function didn’t work for Sheila’s quote. I’ll need to figure that one out, too.
Katie, the tag is *blockquote* with a pointy bracket either side .
i fixed them katie. i do ask that people dont use html if they arent sure how to do it though. its a pain in my ass. thanks!
also, your response to the podcast was pretty much my response too, especially the part about very young children, and what kinds of words are literally shaping their cognition. the part where it says “you are only the story you tell yourself” was striking in this context too. for women, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, IF they are based in any way on the messages we are receiving cannot be woman-loving or positive in any way, can they? this seems to go much deeper than “socialization” to the very core of us as sentient beings with cognition. and of course in the literal way, the stories of “us” are comprised of our histories, our memories, and all the mindchatter too…what does all this mean for women, when so many of us are raped? battered? or have our sexualities stolen and replaced by PIV, medical events and trauma bonding? and when so many words are euphemisms for harming us, and hating us? its kind of overwhelming to consider, and it doesnt help that its all sciency either, and that even within the podcast there seemed to be some dissent as to what this all means.
omg. the royal wedding is on right this minute…run away kate! its not too late!
Nope. Too late now.
She officially signed away to her individuality.
I have had such a foreboding about this marriage, and the implications of it for Kate just rock me to my core. The royal family literally owns her now. They must’ve thoroughly vetted her, and spelled out their expectations of her and she agreed: elsewise the wedding would never have happened. Does anyone think she’s free to change her mind about any of it now? This is what coersion looks like, for anyone who isn’t sure. This is state sanctioned rape, and state sanctioned forced childbearing. Do you suppose they confirmed her fertility? And if so, how? Shudder.
Do you suppose they confirmed her fertility?
I actually had that very thought a few hours ago, you can bet your bottom bippy they did. In the old days they just had to cross their fingers and hope for a fertile uterus. Now they can check.
The heir & a spare will be on its way by this time next year, any girl babies will be thoroughly immaterial in this quest for a male heir.
Speaking of the marriage & the pre-nup, the vows included something like [William] to share all his worldly possessions. Yeah. Right.
This is fucking classic marriage bullshit (and major myth). Now, does anyone think, in the event of a divorce, that Will will split 50-50? Of course not! So it’s not really ‘sharing’ is it? Or at best, it is ‘sharing [sort of] whilst together’. This relates to a couple of marriage threads Ballbuster has going, how women rarely if ever, get anywhere near a fair settlement. The MRAs paint a different picture, that of the gold-digger, which would perhaps happen in like 1% of cases, exceptionalism again!
And of course, the Middleton family are happy to pimp out their daughter for a bit of ‘status’. And puke-o-rama, the part of “who gives this woman…”
Ownership. Still. 21stC.
First owned by the father, then the husband.
Does not get clearer than that.
Fancy clothes and stupid hats aside…
Oh I think they’ll have girls, like Andrew did. Hee hee, that hat omg.
Any way. The giving of the hand in marriage etc, yup patriarchial. But I still would rather my daughters marry than live in a partnership IF they decide to do the hooking up and babies thing. Marriage does bring greater financial security to the woman should problems arise. This is the bit the patriarchy hate. It sends those stoopid MRAs in a tailspin.
Kate is now owned by the British people, the British press, the world press, I don’t know why anyone would do that. What does she get in return?
There’s no such thing as a gold digger. Any scrap of anything including cold hard cash that a woman gets before, during and after being married to a man, is earned. That and MORE. Another classic reversal! Men are the users, and take so much more than they ever give back.
a wedding present:
So who cares if “no one likes me”? What a crock. It’s more of the same old “women must be nice” routine. Nice as in noun, never changing, always a doormat. Not choosing to be nice to an individual who deserves it or in a certain isolated situation. No, not a verb at all, but an unrelenting, never changing, never allowed to change noun that keeps women in “their place.”
When I’m writing, I hope certain people don’t “like me” because that means I’ve hit hard on their hatred of women. That’s my entire intent: to reveal the hatred of women in all its insideous forms that we overlook because they are with us all day, every day, from the day we are born until the day we die.
Goddess, please keep me from ever arriving at the day when “being liked” is the most important thing in my life.
Oh, damn, I forgot the back slash and screwed up the html. Sorry, FCM. I know you hate that…just so damn ticked at the thought of women “needing” to be liked.
i fixed it loretta. 😛 thanks for posting! and i agree that the need to be “liked” should be at the bottom of our lists, as female-identified radical feminists. NO ONE is going to “like” us, and not even *we* particularly like the subjects we write about do we? its not an aesthetic or pleasurable endeavor. at all. thats not the point. i have found it fulfilling and validating to have a group across the radfem blogs who read and comment well, theres some real comraderie there, and sometimes have even found true synergy with other bloggers…but even then, when the chips are down i would fully expect to be thrown under the bus at any time, if something happens that somebody doesnt LIKE. its already happened. i just continue with the work. what else can you do right?
It is all we can do — and count getting someone to think in a new way as a victory.
Language literally channels our brain into tight pathways. It defines not only what we think but how we think. For instance, some languages do not contain the word “love.” When English is translated into those languages, it is translated as “duty.” Now I’ve never thought of love as a duty, but the people who have no word for love have no choice. To them, it is a duty.
On the other hand, some languages have many words for love. The people who speak those languages believe we are poorer because we only have one word for love. And indeed we are. We are forced to think of every type of love as the same — and yet they aren’t. The love I feel for you isn’t the same as the love I feel for my grandchild which isn’t the same as the love I feel for a sexual partner which isn’t the same as the love I feel while watching a hawk in flight, a horse nuzzling a child or a rose in its full glory.
They are all different, and yet I must describe them all using only one word — a very inadequate word at that.
The inadequacy of language and conformity of thought forced upon us by language is why the second wave of feminists tried to introduce new words describing our Selves: wimmin, wymon, etc.
People laughed but the concept was pure. Why should be continue to describe ourselves with patriarchal terms when patriarchy only seeks to devalue and degrade us? Why should we continue to be forced to think of our Selves in terms that mean “lesser than men”?
So I’m always glad to see a new term that takes us out of that ugly paradigm and infuses us with new thoughts and patterns of thought.
heres another graphic, about the bathroom dilemma UP is discussing over at her place:
speaking of WORDS, joanna russ, author of “how to supress womens writing” died today. TBW dropped a link on the other thread:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/04/joanna-russ-1937-2011
i just finished reading russ’s book loretta, at your recommend. it was really eye opening. thanks.
also, it makes perfect sense, doesnt it, that men and male-identified women would be absolutely territorial when it comes to use of misogynist language, and that they would make SPECIFIC fun of feminists for making up our own words, or playing with words. specifically. this they cannot have. and saying that its only words, and that words dont matter is very clearly not the case, at all. and yet this is what everyone says, when it comes to the way we use “fuck” for example, or using “mankind” to include women. they say it doesnt matter. if it doesnt matter, why are they so insistant that we do it their way, and that we dont “fuck” with language, in any way? its so obvious. it really is. if anyone could even be honest about what “fuck” actually means, and the intention behind PIV i think there would be a collective awakening, and none of us could ever go back. and thats just one word! its a huge one, of course, and getting real about PIV is (IMO) the key to the kingdom, but there you go.
Yes, it is.
FCM wrote
The other thing that gets under my skin about this is that when a feminist objects to the use of THEIR misogynist language, both these groups act as though they are being so oppressed, their freedoms are being taken away, their rights are being trampled by “expectations that everyone needs to be PC all the time.” BooHoo, BooHoo, BooHoo.
Staking out the language territory, indeed. The idea is that those who want them to be “PC all the time” are just “language prudes” who need to lighten up. It is like the accusations of being a prude if you don’t want PIV, only here you get their words as weapons to get “mind-fucked.” This is a reversal. They want to use language their way (misogynist) but point an accusing finger at feminists who want to use language in our own way (misogynist-free language). Well, I call BS on this. They are raining on my parade, since I can’t get playful with MY language, making up MY words, MY phrases. If I do, they rain on my parade and the world is much less fun, playful, lighthearted.
Not to mention all the children who are being warped at the deepest levels by their misogynist bullshit language. They should not even be allowed to open their stupid misogynist mouths in front of the children.
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