Re: [Marxism] Re: on sexist language

[Louis Kontos <lkontos@xxxxxxx>]

not only a lengthy debate over nothing, but now we get sermons to
boot. The whole of language is gendered (every language). Gender,
unlike race and class, is basic to language. Your approach this fact
(problem?) leads only to self-policing, nothing more with regard to
language or debate or anything else. Moreover, debate over the
'offensive' post has already been shut down -- haven't you noticed?
-- with so many apologies one would think something really terrible
happened. You're beating a dead horse.
Louis

On Jun 3, 2006, at 5:44 PM, Neil D. Ash wrote:

> 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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