So I was sitting at a bar with a friend the other evening when a language/sexism epiphany dawned on me. I hadn’t had one since attending a lecture on HIStory (“practically every ‘historical’ document ever is HIS story, OMG!”) Anyway, I was saying something ‘sucked’, and in my leisurely state, I rather uninspiringly recalled that ‘suck’ and ‘blow’ amount to pretty much the same meaning – you know, widespread terms to describe something negative, pathetic, lacking in amiability, respectability, etc. What I hadn’t yet pondered was the derivation of both terms from their origin: the performance of fellatio. So, by speaking these terms, I was inadvertently degrading those who perform the act of fellatio (namely women and homosexuals, how surprising!) by unconsciously linking the two definitions together. What’s worse is that after I realised, I struggled to come up with an apt alternative – the word ‘suck’ for negativity is so ingrained in my vocabulary.

This is what scares me about language: as EJ Cook wrote in her Settle Petal article Word of the week: Spanking, language is behaviour. It is also the most powerful form of thought control. My little epiphanies have taught me that language infiltrates: we are capable of perpetuating gender stereotypes (amongst other ones) quite unconsciously. Feminine or homosexual behaviours in males are ostracised from a very early age through words like “poof”, “homo”,  and “sissy”, or sentences like “be a man”, and “you’re crying like a girl”. Such ostracising is a continual social warning for males to act masculine, lest they forfeit their privileged social position and endure a second-class status like the rest of us. Similarly, for girls, gender-specific words like: “slut”, “mole”, and “whore” attempt to scare us back into sexually passive social roles. Continue reading →