Les implications de la langue, or how I learned to obsess about language

People used to ask if I'd read the dictionary. Go figure.

Note: this is a cross-posted article that Erica wrote for Go Girl Magazine.

A few years ago, a friend and I were talking about language and gender balances. I don't remember how we got on that subject, except we were both undergraduate English majors and this was normal for us. At any rate, he brought up the word brethren: what, he asked, would be its feminine counterpart? Even today, I'm still stumped. Sisters, or sisterhood, don't carry the same level of formality as brethren, and both already have their counterparts (brothers and brotherhood). What would we use as a counterpart to brethren?

Being multilingual myself, I'm used to the fact that languages are an expression of a worldview; my turns of phrase, the things that make me self-expressive, differ depending on the language I'm using at the time (I'm far more poetic in French, and less direct in Irish, than I am in English). For example, Irish doesn't really have a phrase for "I" the way we do in English. There's mé, which is joined with a verb to describe myself doing something, or mise, which is roughly translated as myself. But Irish doesn't have the same unitary concept of "I" that can be found in English, French, or Spanish. Similarly, those of us who grew up speaking English are all familiar with the confusion we felt when we learned that other languages give gender to basic nouns like tables, chairs, and plates. Even worse, different languages gender these nouns differently!

For a long time, I thought that the gendering of nouns was silly. Did French really need to distinguish between le and la for basic household items? Old English used to distinguish between things, though seemingly arbitrarily (the roots of the words wife and woman carried two different grammatical genders), and we managed to give these up to use the much-more-neutral the. If I'd become a true linguist, I would've delighted in sorting out the genders of various nouns to see if there was a broader pattern of discrimination. Were all feminized nouns, for example, the ones that could be associated with house, hearth, and home? Why not generate a new neutral way of saying le and la, the way German did?

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've realized that simply gendering the form of "the" that a language uses isn't the only way to distinguish patterns of gendered thought. Many native English speakers are probably familiar with the unofficial gender of ships, cars, and other machines ("she," in case you were wondering), but there are other colloquial examples as well. What about slut and its increasingly-popular counterpart, man-slut? Purse and man-purse? Or what about the other terms we so often feel the need to specify: doctor and female doctor, captain and female captain, and others? In English, we pretend at neutrality, but often we have to address the cultural assumptions behind the vocabulary we use. Slut is assumed to refer to a woman, while a captain is presumably male. I don't think that French gendering necessarily highlights a history of discrimination, but I think that English gendering might indeed.

To come back to the brethren point, consider what it implies. It's an archaic plural form for brother, and yes, sistren (a plural for sister) is its binary counterpart. However, brethren is still a term used today to refer to a formal body of comrades, while sistren just sounds silly. Brethren still fits in particularly formal contexts, especially religious and Masonic ones, where the term really found footing as a formalized way of recognizing group membership. To me this begs the question: where were the formal groups of women at that time? Oh right. The survival of one term but not the other, while clearly more complex than just this analysis, nevertheless points at the disparate conditions that men and women faced when forming and maintaining formal groups back in the day.

Another example: look at the colloquial terms for husband and wife in French, mari and femme. Both come from the Latin terms for man and woman, though the Latin for man (maritus) carried the connotation of being married. The French words for man and woman, however, are now homme and femme, homme being derived from the Latin for human or man (marital status going unmentioned). Again, the complexity of etymology means that I need to specify that these are simple inquiries that leave a lot of variables untouched; however, do other readers notice that a French man's identifier changes based upon his marital status, while a woman's does not? This could go in a couple of different ways: either the woman is constant and unchanging while her husband must adapt to his new status, or the woman, historically being the property of various men, is unchanged by marriage because she gains nothing while her husband gains control of her fortune. Did either of these interpretations of archaic French social structure play a role in the development of these modern French words? I have no idea, but it's fun to speculate.

As I continue these lines of thought, I find myself wondering what other languages might indicate about their previous and current social interpretations of sex and gender. As noted, not all grammatical genders bear any relationship to social genders, but I firmly believe that language and culture do inform each other in some capacity (again, just think about the word slut and you'll see what I mean). When you think about the languages you've encountered, and the cultures using these languages, have you ever noticed historical or behavioural parallels? Even when you take it down a notch and just look at a word's history- for example, bonfire, which comes from the Irish Oíche Samhain tradition of setting tine cnamh, or bone fires- you learn so much about the culture that generated it (Oíche Samhain, by the way, is the origin of Halloween). What are some of the funny, interesting, sexist, cool, horrifying, or just plain bizarre linguistic things you've noticed in your travels?

Porn, porn, porn

Between the themes for January (bodies) and February (sexualities), there lies an ages-old feminist conundrum that was briefly mentioned in Emily's recent post: porn. Emily's post cast all porn in a negative light, but I'd like to suggest a more nuanced view of porn. Whether it's a Playboy subscription, some time spent at Live8, or meeting sex workers in Vegas, there are thousands of options for people curious about, excited by, or interested in working in the sex trade in some capacity. It's a ridiculously diverse facet of human culture- and I do mean human, since some form of stimulation-for-hire exists in every human culture on the planet. For this article, I'm planning on talking exclusively about porn- video and print stimulation- and I'm planning on starting with some rather sharp retorts to the ridiculous assumptions in Twisty's article.

First and foremost, before I start getting into feminist and cultural theories, I want to clarify a glaring error that Twisty made when she stated that "The masturbators you describe [men fantasizing about attractive women] are porn addicts." This statement is so many kinds of wrong that I was actually up late fuming about it. Sex addictions come in many forms, including addictions to pornography. The key term is addict. By definition, someone who is an addict experiences an overwhelming compulsion to perform their addicted behaviour whenever triggered by circumstance- in this case, by sexual arousal. In the last six years, I've seen some pretty impressive types of sexual addiction, including someone who spent $700 on internet pornography instead of buying his children new eyeglasses and winter coats. THAT is a porn addict. Simply fantasizing about the attractive people you meet, which is a behaviour that's common to men, women, and folks all along the gender spectrum all over the world, doesn't constitute a porn addiction. Calling it one does a disservice to the folks out there who really do become consumed, as it were, by porn. It minimizes the seriousness of actual addictions.

Moving on.

Is porn an inherently anti-feminist and oppressive commodity? I don't think anyone has The Correct Answer for this- we all just think we do, myself included- but personally, I don't think it is. For starters, porn is incredibly diverse, as commodities go. How many of you are big enough internet nerds to have heard of Rule 34? Simply put, the Rule states that "if you can think of it, there's porn for it." It doesn't just refer to behaviour (i.e. "I'm thinking of two people having sex in a wagon in a tower!"). It refers to every aspect of your fantasy or thought, to the extent where you have to specify what the people look like, what the sex is that they're having, what the wagon looks like, what the tower looks like, if it's day or night, etc. It gets more creative from there. Add a third person. Or add a sex toy. Add a food. Add some onlookers. All too often when we talk about "porn," what we mean are the things I referred to in the beginning of this piece: Playboy, Hustler, Girls Gone Wild, and anything involving Tila Tequila or Jenna Jameson. It's way too easy for feminists in the mainstream (and, for that matter, a lot of non-feminists) to forget that judging porn by these mainstays is akin to judging the entire comedic film industry by the works of Will Ferrell. They might be wildly popular, but it's such a limited sample that any conclusions drawn from it are really invalid.

Let's consider some examples of how pornography is used to further ostensibly feminist goals. One of my favourite podcasts of all time, Dykes on Mykes out of Montreal, dedicated a fabulous episode to interviews with porn director Shine Louise Houton and DIY web porn director Bren Ryder, both of whom focus on making pornography that appeals to audiences that aren't always acknowledged by the mainstream porn industry. Ryder's company, Good Dyke Porn, in part addresses the fact that lesbianism is often co-opted by mainstream porn; rather than exhibiting lesbians for consumption by a heterosexual male gaze, Ryder's lesbian porn is made to titlillate lesbians. I think this is important for two reasons. First, it really draws attention to the fact that sexuality can be used in porn in multiple ways and to attract the attention of multiple audiences, but second, and possibly more importantly, it does a lot to change the terms of the Great Porn Debate.

Think about it. When Twisty was discussing porn as a commodity whereby individuals were consumed by a viewer's gaze, she presumed that the individuals being consumed were women, and the consumers were men. Why does the consumer/audience/gazer have to be male? Furthermore, why does it have to be heterosexual male? When Jacques Lacan first brought the concept of the Gaze into discussions of cultural texts and subsequent meanings, and Laura Mulvey posited the concept of the Male Gaze, the presumption was established that film, in particular, is only marketed to a male audience, and females or women who happen to be part of the audience aren't permitted to Gaze upon the film as active, independent agents. Mulvey essentially states that all contemporary films are inherently exploitative because they set the male viewer up to "take" a film's female star as his own personal sex object, and female viewers are required to adopt the male viewer's perspective in order to enjoy the film. In some ways this has been a very useful theory for film analysis, including analysis of porn films, because it highlights the ways in which male privilege invisibly makes the rules for expected storylines and behaviour of both characters and audiences. After all- the Bechdel analysis exists for a reason! At the same time, however, it really doesn't allow for new spaces to be created in the film industry in which other arrangements are explored and set up for an alternative audience. This is where sites like Good Dyke Porn challenge Mulvey's Male Gaze and offer us opportunities to try new viewing structures- complete with reenvisioned (and potentially infinitely flexible) power dynamics. It's rather difficult to have a Male Gaze when a film and its audience are Female.

This is another point in feminist porn debates that has bothered me repeatedly. When discussing pornography in a negative light, it's very easy to talk about exploitative working conditions, distributions that are beyond the actors' control, unrealistic body standards, and the setting of dangerous expectations about human sexual behaviour. These aren't unrealistic arguments, by any means- exploitation in the sex industry is definitely a problem, and it's something that a restructuring of the industry (such as what's happening in the fringes of porn) could do a lot to redress. Above all, however, the anti-porn narrative tends to focus on the power that (male) controllers of the industry exert over (female) employees, and how that dynamic plays out beyond the studio or DVD. What about the power of being a performer? What about the power to "normalize" bodies that are often ostracized or desexualized? What about the simple power that comes from being sexual and enjoying it? What about the power of changing definitions of good vs. bad female behaviour? What about the power of being a female director in a male-dominated portion of film industry? And so on and so forth. There are too many types of power involved, with too many complicated dynamics, to assume a simple one-sided power dynamic that inherently victimizes women. ESPECIALLY when that assumption denies voluntary porn participants the ability to decide for themselves how they feel about and perceive their industry.

Finally, I'd like to address the challenge that moral codes pose to pornography- what I think Twisty was probably intending to address with her comment about so-called "porn addicts." One of the best qualities of porn as a totality, in my opinion, is that it does a lot to dispell the myth that there's only one human sexuality, or that sexuality is only defined by who you like to sleep with (meaning gay, straight, or bi). Lacan's discussion of fantasy, as explained by Zizek, is a useful tool for unravelling this:

For Lacan, fantasy provides an answer to the enigma of Other's desire. The first thing to note about fantasy is that it literally teaches us how to desire: fantasy does not mean that, when I desire a strawberry cake and cannot get it in reality, I fantasize about eating it; the problem is rather, how do I know that I desire a strawberry cake in the first place? This is what fantasy tells me. This role of fantasy hinges on the deadlock of our sexuality designated by Lacan in his paradoxical statement "there is no sexual relationship": there is no universal guarantee of a harmonious sexual relationship with one's partner. Every subject has to invent a fantasy of his or her own, a "private" formula for the sexual relationship - the relationship with a woman is possible only inasmuch as the partner fits this formula.

Essentially, Lacan argues, everyone fantasizes because it's scary for us to admit that our "perfect match" doesn't exist. The reality of relationships, particularly sexual ones, is so "traumatic in its breath-taking intensity" that "a sexual relation, in order to function, has to be screened through some fantasy." Moreover, upon an apparent attainment of that fantasy, we tend to lose interest- in part because the thrill of the fantasy is that we secretly believe that it's unknowable and unattainable.

I use this as a tool for understanding human sexuality because porn plays a very particular role: namely, that of fantasy. Actors are hired to portay parts and perform acts in settings that viewers find arousing simply because they aren't what we have. In this way, porn offers an opportunity for viewers to identify with actors in multiple ways. One way, of course, is the classic interpretation of "males are the sexual aggressors, females are the sexual passives." Another way to interpret it, however, is that it's an opportunity for any viewer to identify with the director, or the person guiding and controlling the fantasy as played by the actors. Viewed in this light, porn is what's already happening in our heads. Let's face it: everyone fantasizes about something, sexual or otherwise, and part of the point of fantasizing (say, about a promotion) is that the fantasy is entirely what you, the fantasizer, desire- whether or not it's about reality. In that sense, fantasies of any sort are always inherently exploitative because the people doing the fantasizing are dreaming of a world where no one besides themselves has any volition whatsoever. Another way of looking at this, of course, is to say that fantasy isn't reality for a reason: it's an escape from reality, an opportunity to relax from the constant rule-making and -breaking that we live with.

The rebuttal, of course, is the argument that there's a link between amount or type of porn watched and subsequent behaviour. I'd like to see the studies (please, nothing done prior to 1995). When people point to porn as their reasons for exploiting or assaulting or raping someone, or when a real-life assault mirrors a magazine spread (as has happened), we're doing our communities a disservice by blaming the porn. The magazine spread may have inspired the setting, but the fact remains that the people who committed the rape were sexual predators looking for an(y) opportunity. Currently, the data that exists from studies, as compiled by the National Online Resource Centre for Violence Against Women, makes conflicting observations. One author, Dr. Robert Jensen, notes that "men predisposed toward violence are most likely to show effects from viewing pornography and that men not predisposed are unlikely to show effects," suggesting that porn is exacerbating and not causing the problem, but then goes on to cite narratives from individuals he's interviewed who pointed to porn as a component of their abuse or assault. Additionally, his article focuses on specific types of porn- heterosexual, violent, male-aggressive- and doesn't examine how different types of porn interact with personalities and predilections. Finally, of course, he doesn't emphasize the key of his quotes: that the people who were citing porn in their accounts of abuse were talking about situations where porn was used as a weapon. On that point, I think all feminists can agree: sex, sexuality, and fantasy should never be used as a means of hurting or controlling someone. To me, this research suggests a need for a new discourse on fantasy, instead of suggesting that particular expressions of fantasy (read: porn) should be outlawed.

On a final note, I'd like to reemphasize that we need to stop demonizing people who watch porn as "addicts" or as though they're all sexual predators, and we need to stop patronizing porn actors and models as though they're all victims. I watch porn. My partner watches porn. My friends watch porn. Many of them even make porn. None of us are addicted, sick, perpetrators, or victims. We're adults who enjoy particular forms of fantasy engagement. Our dialogue about porn needs to stop this cycle that makes porn bad and villifies individuals for their predilections. It needs to take a more honest look at porn: one that includes condemnation of exploitative working conditions and unjust laws, but one that also includes a celebration of the empowering aspects of porn. It also needs to take an honest look at how we relate to porn- blaming it, hiding it, using it as a weapon- and start a discussion of how we can change that.

This show is getting Gleeking offensive

I'll start this post by admitting that I watch Glee. I enjoy it. I find it fun. Mostly, I love the music. But lately, something about it has been bothering me: namely, the way the show has been handling (heterosexual) teen dating.

Take, for example, the conversation that occurs between two of the show's male characters, Puck and Arty, during a recent episode entitled "Never Been Kissed." When Arty expresses disbelief in Puck's plan to help him get a girlfriend by ignoring her, Puck explains, “The thing about chicks is that you only have to be a fraction as nice to them as you were mean to them to get them to like you again.” To prove his point, he then invites Brittany and Santana out to dinner via the following conversation:

Puck: You two show up at Breadsticks tomorrow night around 7 and if we don't find hotter chicks to date, we might show up.
Santana: You are so cool.

When they're not using sleight-of-hand insults to ask out the female cast members, the males do a lot of one-liners and voiceover monologues about chicks, boobies, and how hot someone is or isn't (their vocabulary). In fact, one of the driving storylines in "Never Been Kissed" is the guys' use of the female football coach to "cool their jets," so to speak, while making out with their girlfriends. Of course, the guys frame this as the girlfriends' faults because "they won't put out." Never mind, of course, that one of them did in the first season and had to deal with pregnancy in a very isolating way.

I'm getting sick of this ridiculous downplaying of the female characters. Aside from one half-hearted attempt to address the issue by having the male characters whine about singing "I Am Woman" in the first season, the show doesn't seem to care that its portrayal of male-female interactions has gone from amusingly parodic to simply sexist. When Finn is told to find his groove in the episode "Hell-O," his music video of him singing "Hello I Love You" while the school's female students fall all over themselves to touch him is applauded. When Rachel tries something similar in "Bad Reputation" with "Run Joey Run," the entire Glee club comes down on her for being manipulative and self-centred.

So often in the early parts of the first season, the parody humour that was used to highlight problematic thinking became fodder for challenging that thinking later in the episodes. But those moments of lessons learned or thinking challenged are increasingly being passed by in favour of shinier costumes, more objectifying dancing, or expanding the unchallenged humour to hurt even more characters and images(did anyone else notice that the entire "Grilled Chesus" episode involved Finn being unbelievably self-centred and never realizing he should be thinking of Kurt's dad?).

I know that this show takes place during high school, when for many people hormones rule the day and reputations are more important than doing the right thing. I've been there- high school can be a really hellish environment for adolescents, because one of the side effects of puberty is being obsessed with the way peers perceive you- but really, why is the show's primary voice of authority- Will Schuster- willing to let so much slide? His character sees and hears a lot of the things I'm talking about during the course of Glee rehearsals. As Kurt points out him during "Never Been Kissed," Will isn't particularly good at reining in the club's homophobia. I'd argue that Will isn't particularly good at reining in any of the discrimination that happens right in front of him.

So what are we supposed to do? The show is receiving a lot of acclaim for (imperfectly) addressing things that really need to be addressed in the public sphere, such as bullying in schools, but at the same time it's doing very little to de-normalize the kinds of sexism that have held everyone back for a very long time. The people who watch Puck and Artie's conversation and don't entirely disagree with its message, for example, wind up teaching their friends, children, and others that this is an acceptable way to interact. And what kinds of relationships do they have with each other? How is this going to affect the dynamics of demanding sexual equality, particularly when the onus for everything- from the success of relationships to the success of the football team- is put on the willingness of girls and women to have sex unquestioningly and accept abusive behaviour from the men in their lives?

The show hasn't been the pinnacle of socially responsible TV, but it used to try a lot harder. And its lack of effort is making me madder and madder.

Dodge follow-up (from Erica)

Apparently, Dodge has been taking heat for their misogynistic "man's last stand" commercial lately, and instead of rolling over and getting rid of the ad as they ought to, they've opted to produce another ad that doesn't exactly make up for everything.

The original ad- images of men voiced-over by a male voice making promises of "civilized behaviour" a la putting the toilet seat down and eating fruit for breakfast, all the while implying that these are from the checklist of emasculation- is bad enough, but the new one is even worse. It features a woman standing out on the lawn of a house while her male partner yells at her and throws her stuff out of a second-story window. She then gets into the advertised Dodge sedan and drives away while a text banner declares that Dodge makes getaway cars. I'm not making this up! Apparently, escaping from your angry partner who's throwing stuff at you is a marketing tool.

If you want to watch the ads, the original is available here and the new one is available here. I'd post them in here, but I don't really want their links to dirty the site.

From Lux: Heckle-raising

This is a post from Lux, who keeps a political blog with her partner and tends to write insightful articles about gender theory.

"I recently bought a copy of Glamour magazine (yeah shut up they were giving away my favourite brand of mascara) and, among all the body snarking, unflattering clothes and general feminist-baiting nonsense, I noticed this golden nugget-

Hey, it's OK...
...to secretly enjoy a construction worker's wolf-whistle, but give him the death stare anyway.

Heh, yeah. You know what else I secretly love, ladies? When an old guy is chasing me around the park when I'm in my underwear and we disappear behind a bush and when we come out the other side, I'm chasing him! So funny.

But something interesting happened yesterday. I was out in my short shorts and boots and my route took me past a building site. I braced myself for the usual nonsense when I got looked over, but then this builder did something different- he smiled at me. And, partly out of surprise, I smiled back. Obviously the guy only thought I was attractive; having never layed eyes on me before he clearly wasn't interested in my sparkling personality. But instead of reducing me to parts, he chose to treat me like a human being. I'm always going to respond better to a smile than a hurled comment like "Show us your beaver" (tragically genuine).

I've had a lot of nasty, abusive supposed come-ones hurled at me and I'm not sure how anyone expects me to respond positively to "Nice legs love, you want to wrap em around me." It took me a disturbingly long time to realise that these weren't supposed to work like that. These men didn't want to get me into bed, they wanted me to know my place. They wanted me to know that I didn't have the freedom to just walk down the street in an outfit I look good in and expect not to get hassled.

That said, I do believe that it is possible to come on to a stranger without completely objectifying them. The "humourless feminist" trope is often used to label women who resist objectification as anti-fun and anti-sex, but I know the difference between being hit on and dehumanised. The builder who smiled at me, or the man in Boston who yelled "Girl, you're looking good! Are you feeling good", were making an effort to engage with me as a person rather than just tits and ass for their viewing pleasure. And I check people out, I think many of us do. We all know where to draw the line, it's just that some of us choose not to. Like I keep saying, men are not animals. Men have control and the ability to make decisions. We just need to kick away this frame-work that allows many to make bad ones.*

There is still a problem with even the most well-intentioned heckles, though. We are so used to being accused of leading men on and this being used to defend crimes against our minds and bodies that it shouldn't be a surprise when we don't smile back. I have had pleasant conversations turn unexpectedly to forceful demands for my number, or coffee, or insistent offers of a ride, so I stopped conversing with strangers. I guy on a bus leered at me hitching my tights and after I expressed my disinterest, he loudly conversed at a girl who clearly didn't speak English well, shouting about how "nice" it was to meet a "nice girl" on a bus for once. Why should we be game and giggly when the fact of "being nice" may be taken down and used as evidence against us?

Obviously, a lot needs to change and so much of it is out of our power. The pick-up culture needs to go, the culture of disrespect, the culture of expectation and objectification. It's so ingrained and needs to be whittled down over generations as we teach our children to respect their minds and bodies and the minds and bodies of others. In the short term, we have to try to be less afraid of being called boring or frigid or no fun. Smile back or don't smile back, but don't be scared.

*There is a thought provoking comment about this article- http://www.badscience.net/2009/07/asking-for-it/- which suggests that, if men are such uncontrollable primal creatures, then why the hell do they have all the global positions of power? You can't have it both ways, Berlusconi. I recommend this article, and indeed the site, if you like science and hate misuse of it to further unpleasant personal aims. Thanks to Paul for the link."