Re: [Marxism] Re: on sexist language

["Neil D. Ash" <illpresidente@xxxxxxxxx>]

I find myself in awe of the crude and impoverished understanding of issues
around gender and language some members of this list have betrayed in the
course of this discussion. That some comrades have responded, and continue
to respond ( e.g., JD's parting shot), to Louise's objection to Louis'
invocation of the term "whoring" in his original post - or cognate terms,
such as "slut" and "prostitute" - by pointing out that such epithets are
routinely used to disparage women and men alike, and have concluded from
this that it is therefore acceptable to use it as a term of abuse, is
nothing short of astonishing. *Of course* it is delivered at both men and
women. Just as "nigger" once invoked in reference to some white men, e.g.,
Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans - but *precisely* in order to draw the
inferiorizing symbolic association between black men and women and these
other "others." Yet there is no doubt to whom the original stigma attaches,
or rather, from whence it draws its peculiar negative, emotive force. In
this case, colloquialisms like "whore" and "slut" oversexualize their female
referents as the perverse objects of male desire (a whore is, presumably, a
woman who has been fucked many times over, by multiple sexual partners),
even as they at the same time desexualize them, by constituting them as
sexually repulsive (what upstanding individual would want to fuck a whore?).
When a woman is branded a whore, she is subjected to this logic of
attraction-repulsion, which is what makes it such a devastating charge: on
the one hand, she is characterized as something that is only good for
fucking, but really, also something so disgusting as to not be even worthy
of being fucked; and in any case, her identity is defined exclusively by her
alleged sexual conduct. (This, incidentally, is why there are no real male
equivalents for "slut" and "whore" - though I have heard "man-whore," or
"mimbo" (in a classic Seinfeld episode) - precisely because, as we all well
know, historically, masculinity has not been inversely related to sexual
promiscuity; if anything, the opposite is true.)

To accuse a man of being a whore - as Louis likened the target of his
original e-mail - is to emasculate, or what is the same thing, to effeminize
him by this association. It is to draw upon the longstanding repertoire of
representations which have constituted women in terms of their sexuality
alone, and this as something pathological, as well as to identify moral and
political integrity with a sexual norm, viz., of virtue or fidelity. There
are surely other ways to denounce the servility of intellectuals to U.S.
imperialism?

I thus also take exception to the way in which some comrades are trying to
depoliticize Louise's objection (albeit, for ostensibly laudable reasons -
i.e., in order to cool the temperature of the discussion), and to recast it
as one advanced on the grounds of offended sensibilities or else one we
should defer to out of politeness or common courtesy; and not, rather, an
eminently *political* concern, about how to make radical spaces like this
list, and the socialist movement at large, more inclusive to historically
marginalized groups within the radical labour movement, such as women,
non-whites, etc. The fact is, as Fred has pointed out, that large swathes of
our language are saturated with gendered (and racialized) meanings, both
explicit and implicit; meanings which have been complicit with the material
and historical subordination of women (lest I be taxed with excessive
indulgence to postmodern reveries). It requires, then, a prodigious labour
and heightened vigilance to expose these sexist and misogynist
significations, and to root them out. Moreover, it requires at once people
like Louise, to challenge them, and people like Louis, to accept the
censure.

In any case, I'm deeply saddened that Louise, JD, and others have felt moved
to unsign from the list; that the moderator, notwithstanding his admirable
acknowledgement of fault, proceeded to set such a poor example for the very
dispassionate and sober discussion he previously urged upon everyone, with
his last hyperbolic outburst; that what could have been a productive and
illuminating exchange on the gendered nature of much colloquial language and
its relationship to socialist polemic should have rather been envenomed by
coarse diatribes against bourgeois feminism or sidestepped by tangential
discourses on the idealist illusions of postmodernism and/or identity
politics (as if one has to be a bourgeois feminist, a postmodernist, or
practitioner of identity politics to take offense at the use of sexist
language by self-styled socialists); that some comrades fail to see the
crying contradiction, between their anxious pleas for this particular
discussion to be brought to an end forthwith, and their willingness to
suffer any number of previous, no less acrimonious debates - a contradiction
indicative, perhaps, of some more fundamental ambivalence about the
questions at stake; and, finally, that other comrades have now undertaken
thoughtlessly to mock the entire controversy, by urging everyone to "loosen
up" and else parodying - in a manner beloved of many right-wing critics of
"political correctness" - the bad infinity into which they seem to believe
this struggle over language will inevitably conduct us, thus trivializing
the issues foregrounded by Louise (which have led several people, on
different sides of the dispute, to remove themselves from this list). Let us
avoid the bitter recriminations, yes, and be on guard against identarian
nonsense; but let us also take the matter seriously.

"We must not conceal our mistakes from the enemy. Anyone who is afraid of
this is no revolutionary." - Lenin, "Speech in Defense of the Tactics of the
Communist International"

Respectfully and comradely,

Neil


On 6/3/06, Louis Kontos <lkontos@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> I agree with this post. When someone takes offense, usually, unless
> there is special reason, politiness and civility are in order. People
> can always say what they mean differently, unless, of course, they're
> dealing with serious stuff -- including concepts like the
> exploitation of labor, labor power, etc. -- at which point the faint
> of heart should stay out of relevant debates, because tender
> sensibilities will certainly be violated.
> By the way, whoever used the phrase 'heary chested socialist men'
> should apologize. (In fact, everybody should apologize for something
> this week, just to get it out of the way, so that this list can back
> to serious stuff.) I, being all these things -- heary -chested, male,
> and socialist -- see only stereotype when the words are strung together.
> Louis
>
> On Jun 3, 2006, at 11:45 AM, Karen Saunders wrote:
>
> > I know the posts on this series of related threads (which started with
> > Louise's objection to the use of the word whore to describe
> > academics who
> > accommodate the needs of imperialism) are getting tiresome to some,
> > but
> > here are my thoughts, as a longtime reader of Marxmail.
> >
> > Several people who've posted on this subject seem to confuse simple
> > politeness and consideration for others with identity politics.  It
> > seems
> > to me that understanding that people do have various facets to their
> > identity, and that  people have feelings that can be hurt by hastily
> > chosen words, is simply an acknowledgement of our common humanity
> > and of
> > the functioning of the human brain.  We may be sending our words into
> > cyberspace, but we're not cyberMarxists, with nice, neat, unemotional
> > brains unconnected to any form of identity.  We're humans, with brains
> > that do have strong emotions connected to identity and strong
> > emotional
> > reactions to words.  Thus the old saying, "Sticks and stones may
> > break my
> > bones, but names will never hurt me, " and it's more realistic form,
> > "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can really hurt me."
> > Words can and do hurt, so why not choose them carefully and
> > apologize when
> > you make a mistake.
> >
> > Am I starting to sound like your fifth or sixth grade teacher
> > here?  Well,
> > that's who I am, when I'm not reading Marxmail, and that's who I've
> > felt
> > like in reading many of the messages posted in response to Louise
> > and then
> > to Steffie.
> >
> > Someone said in one message, if I'm paraphrasing accurately, that if a
> > word is used in common language, than we should just accept its
> > use.  This
> > post put me right back in my classroom, at a recent morning meeting,
> > reminding me of the student who insisted that he had the "right" to
> > use
> > gay and retarded to mean bad, because "I wasn't talking to someone gay
> > when I said it, anyways gay people don't own the word gay," and
> > "Everyone
> > knows I just mean bad when I say that word".
> >
> > As his classmates said, "It's mean to talk that way."  "You should
> > just
> > say you're sorry."  "Next time, don't blurt; it can hurt someone's
> > feelings."
> >
> > If 10, 11, and 12 year-old kids can expect their classmates to be
> > polite
> > and considerate of the feelings of others, and to simply apologize and
> > determine to change when they make a mistake, rather than getting
> > defensive, surely we can expect that of our comrades on this list.
> >
> > Karen
> >
> >
> >
> >
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--
Among the small number of things that I have liked and known how to do well,
what I have assuredly known how to do best is drink. Even though I have read
a lot, I have drunk even more. I have written much less than most people who
write; but I have drunk much more than most people who drink.

- Guy Debord, Panegyric, Vol. I
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