Inadequate language
Dec. 1st, 2017 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gemcodeI was recently reading Constance Grady's article on Vox about the inadequacy of some of our language around sexual harassment and assault:
It's a good article, and worth reading in full.
I've been aware for some time, of course, that language around sexual violence can be a groundbreaking innovation, when it comes to helping people process what is happening or communicate it to others. But I didn't fully consider, until reading this article, that our language might still be inadequate. And then I remembered that when I was a teen, I had my own word for, well, for a something that I didn't have any other word for. I called it slime, in the privacy of my own head. There was a guy who started annoying me regularly, so I figured I should just ignore him the way you're told to ignore bullies, and as a result he used to sing nursery rhymes at me, with his face about six inches from mine, every week -- I only saw him once a week -- because I wouldn't pay attention to him. Slime was the feeling I had when one time he reached out to touch me on the cheek.
Slime was the guy in his 40s who used to put his hands on my waist to unnecessarily "position me" before I walked on stage. Slime was the man who leered at me when I adjusted my very annoying bra strap when I was only twelve. Slime was knowing that any other boy could become fixated on me any time he wanted, and treat me just as badly as nursery rhyme guy, and I wouldn't have any defenses against it because ignoring him wouldn't make it stop.
It wasn't until I became an adult that I learned that sexual harassment could describe some of these situations. It definitely described some of the later iterations of nursery rhyme guy -- he went with nursery rhymes at fourteen, but by the time we were both sixteen he had graduated to making repeated explicit comments in the hope that he'd get a reaction to that. I wonder, in retrospect, whether I could have demanded that a responsible adult make him stop sexually harassing me, or whether I would simply have been fobbed off in the way that teachers like to fob off complaints so that they won't have to deal with them.
Sexual harassment is a very useful phrase. But I think Constance Grady is right that it's insufficient. It's very clinical and serious. We need clinical and serious words to describe these things, but we also need words that are not clinical or serious.
Skeevy describes some of these things. Creepy describes a few more of them. Indeed, it's interesting to note that the definition of the word creepy has been hotly contested in many of the same ways that, as Grady notes, sexual harassment has been contested -- and with far less justification. After all, a person inquiring after the precise meaning of sexual harassment may simply be asking for clarification of a new rule. This can be done in bad faith -- as when, for example, the rule is interpreted in the most uncharitable way possible in order to discredit it -- but it can also be done in good faith.
The fuss around creepy has less justification. There's no law against creepiness. You can suffer social consequences for it, of the "if you make people feel bad feelings, they will try to exclude you" variety, but that is all. Yet there are plenty of people who are willing to say that "branding" a man as creepy is unfair, that it's just punishing the socially awkward, that there need to be criteria before you can use that word, criteria that won't sweep up "innocent people".
Internet feminism has responded to this demand with impressive perceptiveness, and creepiness now sort of has a new definition as a result. It now frequently refers specifically to the practice of manipulating social conventions in order to get away with doing things that make people uncomfortable. True creepiness is a form of coercion, drawing on other people's politeness and goodwill as armour to shield yourself from having to truly respect others, and something can "feel creepy" if it is starting to feel like it might be an instance of this.
It's great that we have a word for this particular sort of behaviour. But what creepy used to refer to was, well, a sort of nebulous crawling feeling. It was a feeling that could arise in a number of situations -- notably, of course, the one above, but also other situations where the person involved might not even mean to do anything wrong. It could even refer to outright prejudice, such as the classism that makes visibly impoverished people just feel sort of ... wrong. And, of course, because it had this breadth, it was an ineffective weapon at stopping these genuinely wrong behaviours that it also referred to, and that's why it had to change. Creepy isn't a feeling any more. It's a specific behaviour.
We still don't have a word for the feeling. You know the one. Slime. And I don't think we'll ever get a word for that feeling that can stand uncontested until we are willing to let women's feelings about sexual violence and sexual bullying stand uncontested without needing justification. "This boy touched me on the cheek" is never going to win anyone over as a description of sexual harassment. Nor was this boy really creepy in the sense of pretending not to be coercive. I mean, he was bullying me pretty openly. But the point I want to make is, I know what I felt. I felt slime. And someday we'll have a word for that, as a society. Not a word for a specific behaviour, just a word for the feeling it induces.
I don't think we should jump the gun on this one, and try to make up a word and promote it. Teenage girls are excellent language innovators. They are also the group most likely to feel slime. They make up words for slime on the regular. When we're ready, as a society, to hear them, one of those words is going to make it big without the need for any sort of campaign.
Work on hearing girls and women. The word will take care of itself.
It’s not that we don’t have a vocabulary for talking about sexual violence, because we do. But that vocabulary is inadequate. It is confusing and flattening in ways that make it hard to talk about sexual violence without either trivializing it, obfuscating the systems that enable it, or getting so specific as to become salacious or triggering.
It's a good article, and worth reading in full.
I've been aware for some time, of course, that language around sexual violence can be a groundbreaking innovation, when it comes to helping people process what is happening or communicate it to others. But I didn't fully consider, until reading this article, that our language might still be inadequate. And then I remembered that when I was a teen, I had my own word for, well, for a something that I didn't have any other word for. I called it slime, in the privacy of my own head. There was a guy who started annoying me regularly, so I figured I should just ignore him the way you're told to ignore bullies, and as a result he used to sing nursery rhymes at me, with his face about six inches from mine, every week -- I only saw him once a week -- because I wouldn't pay attention to him. Slime was the feeling I had when one time he reached out to touch me on the cheek.
Slime was the guy in his 40s who used to put his hands on my waist to unnecessarily "position me" before I walked on stage. Slime was the man who leered at me when I adjusted my very annoying bra strap when I was only twelve. Slime was knowing that any other boy could become fixated on me any time he wanted, and treat me just as badly as nursery rhyme guy, and I wouldn't have any defenses against it because ignoring him wouldn't make it stop.
It wasn't until I became an adult that I learned that sexual harassment could describe some of these situations. It definitely described some of the later iterations of nursery rhyme guy -- he went with nursery rhymes at fourteen, but by the time we were both sixteen he had graduated to making repeated explicit comments in the hope that he'd get a reaction to that. I wonder, in retrospect, whether I could have demanded that a responsible adult make him stop sexually harassing me, or whether I would simply have been fobbed off in the way that teachers like to fob off complaints so that they won't have to deal with them.
Sexual harassment is a very useful phrase. But I think Constance Grady is right that it's insufficient. It's very clinical and serious. We need clinical and serious words to describe these things, but we also need words that are not clinical or serious.
Skeevy describes some of these things. Creepy describes a few more of them. Indeed, it's interesting to note that the definition of the word creepy has been hotly contested in many of the same ways that, as Grady notes, sexual harassment has been contested -- and with far less justification. After all, a person inquiring after the precise meaning of sexual harassment may simply be asking for clarification of a new rule. This can be done in bad faith -- as when, for example, the rule is interpreted in the most uncharitable way possible in order to discredit it -- but it can also be done in good faith.
The fuss around creepy has less justification. There's no law against creepiness. You can suffer social consequences for it, of the "if you make people feel bad feelings, they will try to exclude you" variety, but that is all. Yet there are plenty of people who are willing to say that "branding" a man as creepy is unfair, that it's just punishing the socially awkward, that there need to be criteria before you can use that word, criteria that won't sweep up "innocent people".
Internet feminism has responded to this demand with impressive perceptiveness, and creepiness now sort of has a new definition as a result. It now frequently refers specifically to the practice of manipulating social conventions in order to get away with doing things that make people uncomfortable. True creepiness is a form of coercion, drawing on other people's politeness and goodwill as armour to shield yourself from having to truly respect others, and something can "feel creepy" if it is starting to feel like it might be an instance of this.
It's great that we have a word for this particular sort of behaviour. But what creepy used to refer to was, well, a sort of nebulous crawling feeling. It was a feeling that could arise in a number of situations -- notably, of course, the one above, but also other situations where the person involved might not even mean to do anything wrong. It could even refer to outright prejudice, such as the classism that makes visibly impoverished people just feel sort of ... wrong. And, of course, because it had this breadth, it was an ineffective weapon at stopping these genuinely wrong behaviours that it also referred to, and that's why it had to change. Creepy isn't a feeling any more. It's a specific behaviour.
We still don't have a word for the feeling. You know the one. Slime. And I don't think we'll ever get a word for that feeling that can stand uncontested until we are willing to let women's feelings about sexual violence and sexual bullying stand uncontested without needing justification. "This boy touched me on the cheek" is never going to win anyone over as a description of sexual harassment. Nor was this boy really creepy in the sense of pretending not to be coercive. I mean, he was bullying me pretty openly. But the point I want to make is, I know what I felt. I felt slime. And someday we'll have a word for that, as a society. Not a word for a specific behaviour, just a word for the feeling it induces.
I don't think we should jump the gun on this one, and try to make up a word and promote it. Teenage girls are excellent language innovators. They are also the group most likely to feel slime. They make up words for slime on the regular. When we're ready, as a society, to hear them, one of those words is going to make it big without the need for any sort of campaign.
Work on hearing girls and women. The word will take care of itself.