Words Matter: tl ; dr

This morning, I found a brilliant quote in Robin Talmach Lakoff's groundbreaking work, Language and Womens Place which neatly summed up the concepts I was writing around yesterday. In dicussing the political and linguistic power of racist and sexist slurs, she made the following observation:

The presence of the words is a signal that something is wrong, rather than (as is too often interpreted by well-meaning reformers) the problem itself.

This is the idea I'm trying to get at, when I'm trying to get people to look at the language they use. It's not that the word is "offensive" to others, but that it signals that there is something wrong with *your* conception and expression of the world.

The reason that a white feminist should not use the N-word in the context of what is supposed to be a feminist safe space, like Slutwalk, is because *you* are holding up a sign declaring "I do not give a shit about Black women."

The reason that a working class male talking about gentrification (or anything else) should not use casual rape metaphors is because *you* are saying "I don't care about actual crimes committed against actual women."

The reason that it's not OK to turn "sexualisation" into "stripperfication" and say that the agency of women (especially Women of Colour) is "irrelevant" is because *you* are saying "I find women's agency irrelevant" and "sex workers are not people."

I'm not saying that these things aren't offensive. They are. But the problem is *not* in the ears of the people hearing them, but in the brains of people who can SAY. THESE. THINGS.