User:Queenfeline/Words We Inherit, Words We Invent

Reclaiming language as a feminist practice

Proposed Proposals & Project Proposal & Thesis Proposal

Idea

Why is language a feminist issue?

–> through and with language women are held oppressed and language is tied to the social and sexual hierarchy. The male as a default and the semantic derogation of women. Its not only what women speak but also how that is critizied (vocal fry)

How are feminist values encoded—or silenced—through language and publishing formats? The relation between language and women's oppression.

How do feminist movements use language to resist, redefine, or reclaim power?

knowledge as process, not possession.

To have words for experiences shapes how we see/interpret those experiences.

How about a glossary about women's empowerment (not oppression cause its important what words we use). Glossary of equality? I wanna make it about words that explain female experiences and give them the same room as male ones.

–> public moment idea: start the website with a few examples already and let people contribute to it!!!

Language is the next frontier of modern gender equality. We just have to help the world see it. (amamnda Montell s.17)

A Slip Of The Tongue

feminist glossary

How are definitions and glossaries sites of epistemic control — and how can they be reclaimed for feminist ends? Who defines meaning, and who gets to speak? How does gendered language reflect power dynamics and reinforces cultural and societal norms?

How can a glossary be used as a feminist publishing method?

How are certain voices marginalized or excluded from meaning-making? Can glossaries be performative, open-ended, or generative rather than fixed? What happens if definitions are open to multiple interpretations, narratives, or contradictions?

– Make my own feminist glossary – with the possibility for people to contribute to it in order to hear voices that mostly stay unheard.

Why make it online and with that global? Different people all around the world make different experiences and in order to practice intersectionality it is important to also hear voices which widen your understanding of what it means to behave feministic in this day and age.

A Glossary is an alphabetical list of technical terms in some specialized field of knowledge; usually published as an appendix to a text on that field. it includes terms within that book that are either newly introduced, uncommon, or specialized. (which makes so much sense for a feminist approach) A glossary is traditionally linear, authoritative, closed. But what if it was open-ended, networked, affective, or contradictory like lived experience? Can definitions reflect lived experience, not just academic consensus? What happens to a glossary if we abandon objectivity and embrace subjectivity?

I could ask (famous) feminists/ researchers to write for the glossary.

Who is it for and how should they feel using it?

Maybe for thesis: How can the glossary be a tool for feminist practices as it redefines understandings of complex constructs and opens new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. (and that is what feminists try to do: open a new worldview in which all humans are seen equal.)

Book that has my thesis as the introduction text and then there is something more

“cunt” got devalued because it directly names female sexuality, something that the patriarchy wants to control and shame.

—what is my own lense? Why and what can i contribute to the discourse? What drives me? Complict in my own oppression through language – what does that with the project – what am i adding to the discourse/discussion?

What do i want to find out? Why my fascination with that? – working on my own oppression.

for whoooo and why????

It is not only about language but how language shapes our self (image?)

Maybe a glossary that is critical and self reflective about terms we use in daily life and shows the sexism in that and how that shapes the selfperception of women* and maybe even offers an alternative (way of use)

We inherited a sexist language and must unlearn it! language is not just a list of words but a system of power that we uphold and reinforce everyday with speaking – A lot of sexism hides in the way we use the word not in the word itself

okay but i don't want the focus to be only on the negative. I also want to incorporate positive terms and alternatives

Each entry can unpack how a word reinforces hierarchy – through etymology, usage, connotation and offer new ways of usage, reclaimed and inclusive terms

how deeply language shapes internalized attitudes — not just what we say about others, but how we speak ourselves into being

The glossary could be an unfinished, evolving document(ation) of my attempt to unlearn internalized linguistic sexism. – make it personal

I want to create collective speech acts that invite reflection, exchange, and co-creation of meaning – It is not about change in language its more about noticing the sexism in language and using language as a tool to stop the sexist cycles and ways of speaking – I want to turn language into a site of feminist consciousness

Its about stopping the constant shaming and proudly reclaiming or rephrasing terms for selfempowerment

I could organize consciousness raising meetings at WdKA and prepare a text to read and discuss or just speak, and as time goes by other people could bring topics/readings they find interesting we we create a space to talk about feminist issues around school ?!

Word Workshop Two

Consciousness-raising (from 1970s feminism): the personal is political; sharing experiences creates political awareness – how does consciousness-raising translate in contemporary feminist practices?

How can collective reflection on everyday sexist language function as a form of feminist consciousness-raising today? So what happens when people come together to speak about language

What happens when we bring feminist theory into embodied, spoken exchange?

How does becoming conscious of the gendered nature of our language alter the way we experience ourselves and others?

How does speaking about language become a feminist method of resistance and self-definition?

How can participatory speech practices serve as a feminist methodology for uncovering and transforming internalized linguistic sexism?

Okay so i read that you cannot change the language and with that change a social attitude. It works the other way around: First the social attitude needs to change and then the language is following, displaying the changed beliefs. Hm thats a bit unhandy for my project... but I think my target group need to changed to people with already feminist interest to look even further into the internalized misogyny.

Taking the Idea from Consciousness-raising groups (from 1970s feminism): the personal is political – sharing experiences creates political awareness.

Deborah Cameron wrote in her book The Feminist Critique of Language "...our ways of talking about things reveal attitudes and assumptions we might well consciously disown, thus testifying to the deep-rootedness of sexism."

words

done

cunt, bitch, slut, diva

Pretty/Ugly (unlearn patriarchy) handsome?

feisty

witch

hey guys

being a pussy

bossy / loud

have the balls to do smth

'Its probably a stupid idea but...'

'excuse my appearance, I just woke up'

girl

mister/mistress

the difference of woman and female

period

gossip?

vulgar

subtle words article

looks

– have a site for each letter and then a sub-site for each word.

– there is a submit button so people can contribute – how do I prevent spamming and not welcoming contributions? – Make a code of conduct/manifesto/rules for this project. – add positionality statement. (what terms or frameworks do I reject, and why?)

– Do I moderate it? i should.

– Make it look like a mindmap. everything is interlinked, you can jump from one definition to another. – annotate where definitions come from: lived experience, literature, oral history, protest signs, etc.

– People can contribute quotes, memes, (book) recommendations, poetry, lyrics, literally anything that adds some kind of value or different pov

– sort / explore : have a button to order or let them float free kinda like here

prototype

BITCH

Personal reflection

For me 'bitch' was my number one way to express my frustration about people, but also about situations. If I felt wrongly treated by someone, they had an attitude or were just mean, they were a bitch. If assessment situations were unfair or hard, the assessment was a bitch.

NOT-SO-FUN-FACT: One of my friends said that he uses bitch as a gender neural term. I think what he was trying to say was "I'm not sexist.". But if bitch means a woman (who is belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, controlling, aggressive, or dominant) insulting a man with it, is saying "Don't be (like) a woman." Which shows very clearly that the worst insults for a man* is being anything like a woman*, and a woman* is all these degrading other things. This made me also realize that many more insults, that are used for men*, are references to femininity ("Don't be such a pussy.") or they're not insulting them but their mum ("son of a bitch","motherfucker"). Plus women* get called a bitch when they embody traits that are considered positive in men* such as assertiveness, ambition, sexual confidence and authority.

People in the urban dictionary describe bitch as: "A women with a terrible attitude that likes to complain about a lot of things. never has anything nice to say, but always has an awful comeback for everything." or "Infamously known for being used in the hip-hop world and thoroughly considered as an offensive way of referring to a woman, the word bitch appears in music, as a way of referring to a woman who has no relations or value to the one saying the word." or "Any female who is selfish, rude, and ungrateful. A female who thinks they're better than others and hates anyone who doesn't match up to them, such as people with disabilities. A bitch only cares about herself and her friends, and all she cares about is partying and getting drunk. Bitches are bullies. They get pleasure out of hurting others." The Wiktionary article defines bitch as (vulgar, offensive) a woman, or a man who is considered weak, effeminate, timid or pathetic in some way.

Through my engagement with feminism and my growing interest in words, I wondered what the word actually meant and how it became such a famous insult.

Etymology

The word was first recorded as the old english bicce which meant nothing more than a female dog. But it didn't take long for the word to become a figurative insult for women. The Middle English bicced already meant cursed or bad. [] Published in 1785 Francis Grose describes bitch in his 'Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' as "the most offensive appellation that can be given to a woman." In 1925 it was recorded to mean "sexually provocative" and a few years later as "spiteful, catty and bad-tempered" females.

Reclaiming

During the second wave feminist movement feminists started reclaiming the word. As the word already inherited powerful, confident and driven women*, feminists claimed that word and called themselves bitch with pride, because they are all these things and that shouldn't be considered 'wrong', if it is totally accepted in men*. Jo Freeman wrote in 1968 "The BITCH Manifesto" in which she defines bitch in a new, feminist way. In it she also illustrates how impossible it is to be a woman* in this society. She writes: "Bitches are not only oppressed as women, they are oppressed for not being like women." She describes bitch as a way of surviving in this society. A bitch cannot be shamed for being (herself), she simply doesn't allow that to happen.

To this day, bitch is not fully reclaimed yet and still broadly used as an insult, as we've seen in the urban dictionary. So what can we now do to further reclaim this word? To say it in Jo Freemans words: "BITCH does not use this word in the negative sense. A woman should be proud to declare she is a Bitch, because Bitch is Beautiful." So speak to your friends about it, correct them and come up with funnier and more original insults. Agree to only use bitch in a positive, empowering way. That may not feel like the most obvious and loudest thing to do, but I think it has a strong impact in your social circle and from there on may spread in other. Additionally Jo Freeman ends her Manifesto with the reminder to call yourself a bitch proudly and set aside your trained independence and connect with, and trust, other bitches.

process

03/11

My target group is people I speak to. So it is inherently about speaking. How can I make other people speak about this topic? The website can be a nice tool on the side, but it is about the act of performing language in real life. I need to come up with my own sprichwort („you know how they say:…“) and dropping it any time I can to keep it in discussion. How can I document something spoken? Do I need to? Maybe probably for the sake of the master I do. Maybe make it a series of workshops or performances and document the outcome in a diary-like format along the way. So how can I make other people speak about this topic? Catch them in a point that triggers something in them/ show them how it affects them, so they are emotionally invested in it and transport the message into the world and actually act upon it. How can I hint people to something without being annoying and with that loose the interest of other people? How can I make people see?

The website is nice, but only works as a tool on the side and not as the main thing. It is about the speaking. Maybe (document mine and )make protocols for other people and how they can start that topic in their circles!! Specifically: first idea: How can I make my class stop saying „hey guys“ and make them come up with a more inclusive alternative? Make it collective so that I’m not the only one keeping everybody accountable but make that a group effort. If we all agree on something we hold each other accountable! Nice! Maybe we can say hey XPubbys Or XBuddys (is we use buddy it is again the default male, cause we would never say Sissys), XBubs or something stupid that we all like and stat sticks. So make it personal to that group! Or come up with better/ creative insult words (puzzling them together) and inform them why speaking about someone’s sexuality or genitalia is just not doing it anymore.
––> Is that changing something? Is the open discourse the solution? How is this going? (Maybe make it a workshop with a feedback pad so document) Making a protocol / guide for that discussion (What is the word/term you want to speak about today? Why do you want to change it? Is everybody feeling included in that? Finding alternatives together – maybe think about other areas/situations where we use the generic masculine and if we want to change that) For that workshop I need to prepare why the generic masculine is problematic to use.

Come up with creative questions that use words in a different way to show the change in meaning like ordnung und verrücktheit! Make little zines that tell a story about it in an interesting way…

How can that look like in the mock assessments? Wiki? Powerpoint game presentation? „Once upon a time there was a feline. She was in xpub2 and needed to do her masters, so she needed to come up with a project. This is the first ,one of the first an attempt...“

24/11

Okayyyyyy try-out nights
So what do I want to find out through this night?
– I want to come up with a structure for the glossary website. Maybe test different approaches
– I want to ask about documenting the meetings – with what feel people the most comfortable?
– I want to collect new words
In order for all that to happen, I need to show what my project is about and give an example on the ‚hey guys‘ workshop to give context and

Maybe the workshops are not only talking with a note taker on the side, but the workshop are working along a structure to fill in a glossary entry. With that I enable the group to do the documenting (everyone is involved) and in a way that maybe also free for interpretation. One group might write a text, other group makes bullet points and a third will maybe draw something – Are different forms of documentation okay or stupid and a mess?

14/12

It already works! Some of my friends already think about their words more. They even call me out when something slips out of my mouth. My classmates who joined the meeting also tell me about how the workshop worked on them and how they think more about their vernacular. Now one of my classmates came up to me and asked if we can chat about a word she uses and is unsure about. So people are already thinking about language even though the meetings haven't even started yet. That’s a pleasant surprise. I feared that people would find it incredibly annoying. Im excited for tomorrow’s first meeting!

28.01

Okay second meeting done! I love these! I think it’s sooooo interesting and time flies by so fast! Love to everyone who is part of them! Still struggle with properly documenting what was said. I don’t want to disrupt the vulnerable vibe in the moment. Did the first-thoughts-round in teams. I think that was nice and worked well. Also yet to experience a meeting with a total stranger.

01.02

It’s the day after the Zine fair. I printed flyers with the next few upcoming meetings! Hopefully a few people will pull up for the next meeting. I also spoke to one interested person that seemed excited about the whole topic and I hope to see at the next meeting.

9/2

Okay, I had a slip-meeting with the class today. It went very well but I was left with a lot of questions. I feel the whole project shifting from me wanting to make a glossary, towards me wanting to document the methodology of the meetings. I don’t want to trap concepts in word definitions and set them in stone. I want language to be used through speech acts! I want people to speak about what they exactly speak about. So maybe it’s in documenting that, people said that this is way more powerful than another glossary of words no one’s gonna look at… the methodology is the work. It is work in the first place. Valuable work even.
Maybe I try short exercises in the meetings, like small groups have to write something down… maybe I make a small zine with the workshop that easily can be copied and then everyone gets one at the end! And through making that Zine we need/want to write things down and phrase them specifically. We can draw, we can literally do whatever! But there needs to be a clearer protocol. Also I need to talk about the agenda at the start!
Okay so: during meetings we can make a zine, that in some way or another encompasses what we discussed. I could make a template for the zine (just an A3 folded) with „more information“ or „this is part of a masters project…bla blah“ so when people find that they then find the project or the website/ social media… whatever (omg the website then could be a collection of the zines that you can click through and the methodology of the whole thing and my thesis!) And there people find more info and tools how to host your own workshop.(these tools can be: The structure of questions that I used, exercises that I did during the meetings…) And then they can choose to look at what happened during „my“ workshops or just dive into their own. People could also make Zines and submit them hihi
Also I need to come up with a sort of introduction to these meetings. What they are, how they work, what we talk about and why. Even if it’s repetitive for people joining more often. Important for the new ones and helps das project einzugrenzen. (Can also then be part of the Zines, if they find people outside the meetings. But limited space so needs to be klar und deutlich) We also need vorstellungsruden!!! Also if its too many people then we can have exercises in smaller groups or even make 2 or more Zines from that one meeting!
The longer I think about this Idea the more I like it!! Hhhhiiiihhihih exciting!!!! Now I wanna make Zines hehe. This „new“ approach also connects my thesis with the project waaaay more. As is almost totally. As in, I research exactly what I am doing. I really really like this idea of not making a closed glossary but a flowing toolset/ anleitung for Talkshops. (Now me dreaming about getting funding for that in a residency or something after graduation. Let a girl dream. I could to so much nice shit within that topic. Fühlt sich unerschöpflich an. Ich sehe auch ein workshop der ne woche lang get, like and intense course. Würde auch sehr gut in Germany Mit German words funktionieren.)

17/03

Introduction text for try-out 2
Wait… what did you just say? No I’m curious, because what if the words we use every day carry meanings we’re not even aware of? What if sexism doesn’t just exist in obvious places, but quietly hides in our vernacular? Lets talk about it! Even though I identity as an intersectional feminist, I started noticing that I was reproducing the very patterns I critique. Yep… so I looked into feminist linguistic theory and found out that language is not a neutral medium but a political site in which gendered hierarchies are reflected and sustained. The ways in which women are spoken about, addressed, silenced or rendered invisible through linguistic practices contribute to broader systems of gendered oppression. At the same time, Feminists argue that language also holds the potential to be reshaped, reclaimed, and used as a tool of resistance.
Therefore I’m hosting consciousness-raising group meetings where we talk about terms from our vernacular and unpack the ways in which it might be sexist. What you can see, here, today is a glance into my research. The books that opened up that topic to me and the ones I used to write my thesis. You can see the zines that were created during the meetings and a flyer with upcoming meetings that you are more than welcome to join.

24.03

uffffff big bummer. I feel slapped in the face. People made me aware of my limitations and that fuckin sucks. I mean I know Im not perfect dont get me wrong. I feel stupid and short-sighted and like the most ignorant person on earth rn. That doesnt feel great. I have to constantly question my own standpunkt and thats hard sometimes. Especially when you need to look at the parts of yourself that might do harm and are not what you wish them to be. At the same time I know that this is exactly why I am doing this project, because I, myself, have soooo much to learn. Sometimes it’s hard to not get discouraged by all the nuances that I miss and all the topics that I’m unaware of. It gets more and more scary to make mistakes and it feels like all my efforts that I put in vanish as soon as I make a mistake. That is harsh and exhausting and difficult. And then on top of that everyone screams at me to open the space to more people, which I know I have to do, but that feels like ich lass mich freiwillig den löwen zum Fraß vorwerfen. And that feels so frustrating, cause I’m really trying out here and I think it’s sad that the feeling of scarcity and fear of doing or saying something wrong become overwhelming and paralyzing. I don’t want to put myself in a victim position here! Cause on the other side I completely get the frustration of having to explain your lived reality to other ignorant people! That’s tiring as well. I get that.

Very necessary and interesting post: i-dont-use-the-word-womxn-heres-why

I decided that I don’t want this feeling of paralyzation take over me and my project. I am learning! That is okay. I will keep on making mistakes. That’s part of the project. I will face whatever will come and I’m equipped to take it. I will learn how to set boundaries with people and how to manage blameful and accusatory behavior. I will become a better communicator. The fact that I feel discomfort is evidence of the fact that I’m leaving my comfort zone. I’m growing and expanding. I am unlearning and that comes with growing pains!

15/04

Damn. I had my supervision with cristina. and ufff i really need to think about some things. I dont want to continue like that. Okay so for now, no more meetings. Not until I restructured and get clear on a few things. Who is this for? What is my responsibility? I need to think about my whiteness and my cis-ness. I need to acknowledge my limitations. There is strength in that. I know that this is a life long work. Im just starting. There is sooo much to unpack. But I have to submit a grad project. What can that be? I like the Idea of making more zines. By myself, with my friends… Unlearning your own internalized harmful behavior and ways of thinking. That is what it is from now on. Part of the grad project is also the process of learning. And hell yes I learned so fucking much.

17/4

The original assumption was: If we speak about language we must go where language happens – conversation. We have to speak about it. And if we speak about sexism in language with one another we can all learn and unlearn problematic ways of speaking. The breaking point was: the moment where I got critiqued on how open and accessible the space of the meetings actually is. Then also to see that language is used so widely different. But mostly the inclusion. The problem with consciousness-raising meetings is that white feminists declare it a „space where we all learn from one another“ yet who is actually learning from who? It is is marginalized people having to educate white people on their realities. As much as I don’t want to do that with men, marginalized people don’t want to do that for white people. And now that I see that, I can’t unsee that. Cause its sooooo fucking valid!!! Like how could I not see that earlier?! well the glasses of priviledge...
okay but now I feel so stuck. What do I do noooow??? Feminist work is life long work. thats nothing that i can magically solve in the next 2 months. Obviously. but i still have to hand in something. some type of project that is worthy of a masters degree. haha okay but no pressure. Do I now take on the problem of the space? how impossible it is to have a safe space and use my meetings as a case study and analyze them? How can we avoid doing exactly what we’re trying to prevent?
So I need to redirect. Either im making the space (safe/ safer/ braver spaces) topic of my further research, or im sticking to language and sexism but will try a new method. Im thinking Newsletter. Like actual letters per post. About words. For interested people to subscribe and read. I can design them nicely, I can make stickers. I will put infos with their sources and recommend books and other materials to that topic. I want to put questions or little tasks that may spark conversation. So people who get this letter will talk to their friends about it. Theoretically people could answer me. Maybe per mail. Maybe that’s most easy and is not leaking my home address. – Why not email newsletter? Cause analogue gives me the opportunity to also send sticker and I can make the letter a poster that’s folded with two sides. That is lost when email. Though email is free of costs. No paper, no envelope, no shipping costs. Hmmmm… I’ll think about that one.

24/04

Okay new idea: Lets talk about our own limits and become clear on our position and our blind spots!!! We all have our own unique view on the world. We construct our reality based on our past experiences and values. In conclusion, we can never perceive the world objectively. We always view it through a subjective lens. Consequently, it makes no sense to judge perceptions as „right“ or „wrong“, „true“ or „false“, rather, it makes sense to understand phenomena as „appropriate“ or „inappropriate“ within the context of the system.
Another new idea. Let’s focus on the methods. what micro-methods can actively reconfigure how speech happens in a room? Let’s try to make power relations visible and interrupt them. – Destabilize the default!
Simple tools/protocols that are easy to execute, tho have a noticeable impact and don’t rely on marginalized groups.

30/04

WHAT IF…
…I host more meetings this time not about words but our position, our limit and our blindspots. To become aware that we are standing somewhere and looking at the world from that point with specific glasses of privilege on.
…I send out newsletters with infos about words. With prompts to spark conversation. Position question stays open tho/needs to be addressed in every letter.
…I let others host meetings about words so Im not the only direction/voice that is heard (where tf do I find these people?)
…I collect methods that disrupt power dynamics in feminist spaces
…I come up with them
…I ask other feminist spaces/groups about their tools/protocols to deal with that – collect and edit them, add to them … Varia, constant, Laura Pinkstinks,…
…I somehow acknowledge the position thingy and still make it about words?
…I make a glossary and one word is position??? So I acknowledge that and it still is about words
…it a collection of previous projects that are about language and feminism (byeByeBinary, …)
… I orgenize an event about language and invite robin (keyboards), ByeByeBinary to talk, … So Im the curator of other people speaking
… interpret sentences into what they actually mean „You’re so sensitive!“ –> „I don’t want to deal with your reaction to my problematic behavior.“
… I make a set of cards with questions and methods and „dares“ for feminist meetings? With a little booklet on the side explaining the theory behind it. – this way people can use it and the cards can function as ‚the facilitator‘. I will let some things open for the group to come up with their own rules. – it’s about the conditions of speaking not what does it mean but what does this phrase do in the room?

methods for re-reading speech – Here are ways to notice what speech is doing.
– Not what is said but also who gets to speak? Who gets interrupted? Who gets read as neural? whose language is treated as excessive / emotional / imprecise?
–whiteness and privilege matter, but they do not need to become the emotional center of the project – would be the wrong focus – My limits are not the content of the project. They are the reason the project must be designed differently. – tools are not there to identify “bad words.” They are there to reveal how speech organizes social relations
– tool / instruments to use
– This project does not attempt to define sexist language conclusively; it designs situated tools for noticing how speech distributes power.

04/05

Manetta:
– Bring anecdotes and examples
– anti violence communication
– communication strategies
– short introduction!
– organize sessions development group, – test them at -class meeting, pub 1,
– make website with documentation – log
– Licensing

cristina:
– take photo of reading list
– tarot for liberation Pm press
– adrienne maree brown
– Sophie Lewis
– Elodie – splint card game
– Language is a technology in itself
– breaking down whiteness – book
– include exercises
– individual and structural – include multiple levels of awareness – how structures help with inequality
– the data diva – archetypes / personas /feminist killjoy – antje varia

What can I take from the meetings? What situations happened? What did I need in/from them?
– Moderation? When to interrupt? Who has the power to?

06/05

NAME IDEAS:
– Protocols for unlearning – testing speech exercises
– Experiments in feminist speaking practices
– Unlearning speech
– Speaking About Speaking
speech protocols that expose and redistribute conversational power dynamics around sexist language.

15/5

Call with laura:
– was beschäftigt mich? Runde
– erklärBär – erklärt begrifflichkeiten
– er hat die zeit und kappas sich damit auseinandersetzen?
– input runde: jeden Monat ein Vortrag über ein Thema
– in Gruppe mit Theorie auseinander setzen
– auch praxis sharing – skill sharing – hierarchies through skills! Some people are the only ones with a skill–dependence
– awareness team – auch innerhalb von Gruppe – Ansprechpersonen haben, wenn nicht im Plenum ansprechbar – auf Stimmung achten
– sicherheitslevel – aufgaben übernehmen damit nicht Berührungsangst – Leuten was zutrauen
– neue Leute einführen in die Gruppe
– Mit betroffenen sprechen – da kann man gluck und pech haben – lieber mit denen sprechen als über die

18/05

Manetta:
– more specific, not so generic
– missing the parallels to the thesis
– more unique intervening
– more specific towards language and gendered oppression?
– Not make it about general group dynamics but very specific moments. That help in a feminist way about specific things that are hard to grasp and intervene (which it in itself super hard to grasp lol)
– rather less but very specific than broad and a lot
– combining cards? The moderator has to be a feminist killjoy

19/05

Lidia:
What power dynamics do you recognize that leave discomfort in the room? Do you have strategies to interrupt them? Or How could this dynamic be made physically or socially visible? What invisible labour could be made more visible as a specific task?
– ursula le guinn – generic masculine
– active listening–> Listen Sumerize Dig deeper LSD method
– theater of the oppressed bertold Brecht
– invite bachelors to test text Lidia about it.
– small groups give them a topic of discussion and let them have roles
– refelction !
– notice cards – pay attention to specific things (maybe in 2. Round) different rounds with layers of awareness –replay the same thing and notice different
– role play important – for a limited time
– warm up exercise
– improv theater like – how it feel
– link roles to specific scenarios that have to do with gendered oppression.
– Make it a game like Werwolf – which is more fun to test

20/05

cristina:
– Let the cards be the facilitator
– start by why did I do the meetings in the first place?
– for who are these cards? Only women? Men? Who???? For friends? – trusted environment
– what kind of feminism is that? Becomes clear by who is it for and why ‚play‘ this game
– Be SPECIFIC the cards need to be very specific
– what would have helped during my meetings? What cards would have acknowledged blindspots or ….
– Cards to encourage others to have conversations about difficult topics and the language behind that – cards, so that it has nothing to do with me but with the thing and with these it can spread to other people
– language as the tool
– Roles, Prompts (let them answer open questions), actions… what categories ??? Can the cards/prompts be changed?
– How does the research help? What can be learned from that?
– what can be learned from feminists?
– also makes sense in the project timeline. Workshops about language, then encountered limits and now trying to challenge them with the cards
– The cards are for a very special situation, for when you want to speak to your friends or peers to vulnerable, feminist topics. Because there are so many feelings in the room you feel like it could use some guidance or mediation. These cards are an attempt to help with that. They are what I experienced, what I learned what helped me in my meetings about sexist language.

Research

potential thesis questions

How does questioning our vernacular and the active reclaiming of words change the way we act in this society?

How are definitions and glossaries sites of epistemic control — and how can they be reclaimed for feminist ends?

Exploring the ways in which words/language is used to oppress women and how they can actively reclaim them, on the example of cunt

LIDIAS very helpful INPUT on HOW TO

Thesis Guidelines

Criteria for evaluation (Thesis)

A Guide to Essay Writing

Links to resources

The thinking 🤝 the making

Thesis can be 1. a report on your research and practice 2. an analytical essay exploring related artistic, theoretical, historical and critical issues and practices that inform your practice, without necessarily direct referring to your work 3. the representation of a text as a body of creative written work 4. a combination of those

What mode of address do you want to assume?

How do you want your text to speak to the reader? (essayistic, academic, narrative, non-linear, script, diary, field record)

All thesises ever

We will use the Harvard Style of referencing (Name, Year, p.XX) no referencing in footnotes!!! Reference list at the end is alphabetical

Sarah Ahmed on citation politics

Links

The Power of words shaping gender equality through language

How language reflects gender differneces

Why Women’s Language Matters: Identity, Representation, and Power

Internet Archive List

Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power – Lola Olufemi

Language and Woman's Place – Robin Tolmach Lakoff

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach (1975, rev. ed. 2004) Language and Woman's Place Oxford University Press, Inc. New York
Robin Lakoff is Professor Emerita of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an expert on language and gender, the politics of language, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. []

s. 37. "In this book I have tried to see what we can learn about the way women view themselves and everyone's assumptions about the nature and role of women from the use of language in our culture, that is to say, the language used by and about women."

"we say things without knowing their significance, but the fact that we have said them shows that there is more going on in our minds than we consciously take credit for."

Breaking the Patriarchal Code – Louise Gouëffic

s.3 – "We trust in the words we receive as infants. Words are the shaper of ideas. They name concepts and ideas; we cannot have a clear thought without being able to express ourselves in words. Reasoning involves thoughts put into premises and conclusions, and these are expressed through words. Critical reasoning implies that we move correctly from our premises to our conclusions. So if a word in a premise is false or imprecise, our conclusion will be false or imprecise. Therefore, the words used in the premise of a theory are crucial to the theory."

Feminism and Linguistic Theory – Deborah Cameron

Deborah Cameron is a British linguist and feminist. She is currently working as a Professor in language and communication at Worcester College, Oxford University. Cameron is mostly interested in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, more specifically in the relationship of language and gender/sexuality.

This Book examines recent ideas relating the oppression of women to the structure and social functions of language. She argues that language is a feminist issue. She confronts the sexism of linguistic "science", showing how lay ideas and experts theories about language are inextricably bound up with the social and sexual hierarchy.

s.1– language is a weapon, used by the powerful to oppress their subordinates.

s.2– linguistic communication is crucial to the organisation of human societies. So people with an interest in the workings of any society must also concern themseves with its language – how it is structured and used, what its users believe about it and so on. Feminists are deeply interested in the workings of their societies, since in order to fight their oppression they must first understand it.

s.3– Much feminist effort is directed, therefore, to reanalysing society as a patriarchy, a system in which men have power over women. Language is part of patriarchy. If it plays a crucial part in social organisation it is instrumental in maintaining male power, and feminists must study its workings carefully.

language is about representation

and on the simple assumption that people's attitudes will be affected by something they see repeatedly, feminists exposed, and tried to eliminate, negative and stereotypical portrayals of women.

s.4– Non-sexist language is an illusion. Language is pervaded by sexism, and that women are alienated from it because it is controlled by men.

s.5– Language is a feminist issue and it is nowhere clearer that in the practice of consciousness-raising, where women uncover the roots and precise nature of their oppression by talking to each other about their experiences. (the private is political!)

This practice is also called naming where in fact a name or label is not always necessary, sometimes its enough to define an experience by describing it and getting others to acknowledge it. So its not about naming but about communicating

Language itself does not guarantee communication!

s.6– and women can feel inhabited by the inadequacy of words. Having an idea or feeling but not having the right words to describe it has been called women's alienation from language.

Reclaiming women's language is indeed crucial for women's liberation

Gyn/Ecology – Mary Daly she wants us to look behind the taken-for-granted senses of words

Sociolinguistics (the study of language and society, how social differences interact with linguistic ones and what the role of language in culture is) can be helpful and semiology (which amongst other things tries to explain how children develop gendered subjectivity)

There is three areas of investigation:

1. Sex-differences; do men and women use language differently and if so, what does that mean?

2. Sexism in language, it's effects and how to eliminate it.

3. Alienation; is this the 'oppressor's language' within which we cannot articulate our experiences as women?

s.7 – One of the most important outstanding problems is to clarify our underlaying theory of the relation between language and world view.

misogyny is constructed and transmitted through language – so can we even think outside of a woman-hating language?

keep the discussion accessible!!

s. 10 – CHAPTER 2

What is linguistics? – 'scientific study of language'

language has been studied in guise of grammar, rhetoric, poetics and philology but scientific studies are rather new

so language can be scientific? – first we must understand what it means to call any kind of enquiry scientific:

science is factual – it deals with facts, not wild guesses

science has to be objective and methodical, rather than biased, casual

scientists are obligated to provide not only facts but explanations, by discovering the laws of how things work (which implies that anything a scientist studies must have laws for her to find, rather than operating at random

science is highly valued and has prestige – we believe that science, distinguished from the arts by its objectivity and from scholarship (history) by its power to explain things, will lead us to the truth. (even though intuition and guesswork actually play a significant role in all investigations)

The scientificness of linguistics is enshrined in three principles

1. Descriptive v. prescriptive: eliminating subjectivity

grammar is prescriptive rules telling people what they should say when they would naturally tend to say something else

Linguists are interested in descriptive rules, formulae which capture the regularities of what people really do say – or more accurately, because of a sophisticated theoretical sleight of hand which we will shortly come, what they unconsciously know about their language

The scientific requirement of objective investigation is the root of the believe in description rather than prescription.

To be objective, the linguist must include in her grammar not what ought to be said but what is said, excluding only what cannot be said in the language under consideration.

2. Synchronic v. diachronic: eliminating history

'diachronic' linguistics is the study of relations between languages and their descent through time (history)

'synchronic' linguistics is the study of everything about the language as it existed in that frozen moment – which is obviously idealised, since languages are in a constant state of change, also speakers vary in age

However the idea that language could be studied ahistorically was an important one

3. Knowledge v. use: ordering chaos

The dichomoty between what the language user knows, the system, and the use she makes of that system as demonstrated by her actual linguistic behavior

Saussure – langue/parole : langue is the abstract system of social relations which make individual behavior possible. It is a social contract rather than the property of any one speaker, and its the linguists primary object of interest. The individual behavior regulated by langue, particular instances of speech, is called parole.

langue is what is researched in linguistics

3 approaches to study language:

1. structural approach (semiology: the tendency of human societies to construct symbolic systems such as languages – the science of signs)

But if language is not just a tool of the mind, society, education or philosophy, what is left for it to be?

Signs – combination of a signifier and the signified, signs separate language from things, from reality (a signified is not a thing but a concept.)

s.15 It is the difference between signs that defines them.

to define something we mostly set in context of other things /comparing

s.18 – a sign is not only a word, but can also be a picture. A picture used in many of the same situations makes us connect it with a particular meaning (image of a naked woman will invoke ideas of sexual availability and degradation. A naked women will not signal these things inherently, it could mean any other thing, yet it has become a sign, with the image as the signifier and availability/degradation as signified, one particular meaning, a misogynist one, has more power than the alternatives, and its unpleasant connotations cannot simply be discarded.)

This kind of meaning is not arbitrary tho! It is mediated by the political structures of a misogynist society.

2. psychological approach ( Language above all is property of the mind)

s.20 – you cannot observe the unconscious, it is always mediated by language

Lacan believes that without language, everything must remain not only unobservable but undifferentiated, without structure: and since the unconscious is highly structured, it cannot exist before language does.

lacan reasons that the unconscious must in fact be constructed through language, as language develops in the child. Learning language is what makes us what we are, and since sexuality and gender identity are a big part of what we are, this theory is important for feminist trying to understand how femininity is constructed in patriarchal societies.

Semiology is part of social psychology

We do not learn an infinite number of potential sentences but rules for producing sentences. And as kids can speak, the rule are innate and if they are innate they must be kind of the same in all languages

3. sociocultural approach (language as a product and shaper of human culture)

speaking as a mediator of social relations. a way of expressing social role, a reflection of, and an influence on, culture

relativity (asserts that reality is perceived differently by different cultures) v. deterministic (asserts that language is responsible for the variation)

find correlation in linguistic features in people's speech and social indices like race, sex, age and class

variations are structured and systematic rather than occurring at random, that these social aspects of language are as much part of our competence as the ability to construct grammatical sentences.

->

theory of 'gendered subjectivity' claims that women are alienated in society because they have to learn a male language

relation between language and disadvantages

sexist language as verbal violence; restrictions on women speaking in public as a form of social control, judgements on speech style as reinforcements of sexist personality theories

s. 28 – CHAPTER 3 The politics of variation: Sex differences in language and linguistics

two main concerns:

1. the sexism of linguistic science (mass of assumptions and practices reflecting the status quo)

2. the political significance of sex difference itself

Sex difference research inevitably comes out of sexist ideology, and its findings unsurprisingly, are interpreted in ways that reinforce that ideology.

the hidden presumption, men are the norm from which women deviate, the difference is ultimately reducible by biology, it's 'natural'

s.29– the feministic aim is to expose, and then to destroy, academic legitimations of women's oppression, which are a powerful force simply because so many people accept the factuality and objectivity of science.

feminists have to main interests:

1. the quest for an 'authentic' female speech or writing

2. identifying the sexual power dynamic in language use. Sex differences are related to the power of men and the powerlessness of women, and the political point being made is that even our speech behavior reflects and perpetuates patriarchal norms.

It is not about the generic he, terms of insult or other things that are in the language – its about variations in people's linguistic behavior

why are some linguistic features used more by one sex than the other? Why are the standards different for women and men (less acceptable for women to swear)?

norm (men) and deviation (women) research

'folklinguistics' is the name given to that collection of beliefs about language which are accepted as common sense within a society

s.33 – Stereotypes, however false, tend to persist for as long as they reinforce important social inequalities. So long as women are subordinate to men, their language has got to be characterized as indicating natural subservience, unintelligence and immaturity. While men dominate women in mixed groups by limiting their opportunity to talk, our folklinguistic beliefs must include the untruth that women talk incessantly.

It it important to question the origin and importance of linguistic beliefs generally, cause even feminists tend to belief them

s. 35 – feminists believe women speak like that: disfluency, unfinished sentences, nor ordered in the forms of logic, statements couched as questions (approval-seeking), speaking less than man in mixed groups, using co-operative strategies in conversation, whereas man use competitive strategies

revaluing that would be super, but it is only a women's speech folklinguistic imagination and not based on how women actually speak

s.41– subordinate groups are very often accused of speaking in an 'illogical' way – but it just follows a different logic, that the white male scientists don't understand...

s. 57 – CHAPTER 4 False Dichotomies: Grammar and Sexual Polarity

– Women in patriarchy are constructed as the Other – as whatever men are not. If a man is active, woman is passive; if he has a phallus, she simply lacks it. Femininity is masculinity inverted.

– women are different from men, but they are not the opposite

– women are excluded from making what counts as knowledge

– very binary structure– one end men the other women

s.58 – Do oppositions exist in the language to be discovered by linguistic science, or are they invented as a handy way of analysing language? In other words, is the binary opposition principle a claim about linguistic structure or a claim about what analytic strategies most naturally come to the linguist?

The second is a nature/nurture question. If there really is a tendency to think in opposites, wether or not it reflects the existence of those oppositions in the world, is this tendency innate in the human mind, or is it inculcated by upbringing and education?

s.59 – Do the creatures either side of the gender division have opposite qualities that are relevant to people's conceptualisation of them, and to their use of words?

The feminist critique of language – Deborah Cameron []

Cameron, Deborah (1990) The Feminist Critique of Language Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. New York

s.1 – Why is language a feminist issue?

1.Silence and exclusion from language, which also raises the question of finding an authentic female voice

s.3 – Language is on one sense the inalienable birthright of every human being, regardless of gender; some forms of linguistic activity, moreover, are popularly associated with women as much as or possibly even more than with men (for example gossip, storytelling, letters and diaries)

They are private forms of language, confined to the space of the home or village community: in the public domain of culture these genres have no currency, let alone value.

The silence of women is above all a an absence of female voices and concern from high culture.

it is not just that women don't speak, often they are explicitly prevented from speaking, either by social taboos and restrictions or by the more genteel tyrannies of custom and practice. Even where it seems that women could speak if they chose, the condition imposed on their lives by society may make this a difficult or dangerous choice. Silence can also mean censoring yourself for fear of being ridiculed, attacked, or ignored.

Explicit language is still thought more inappropriate for women (and in their presence) than for men

In writing women are excluded from the knowlage and skill needed to write at all.

Writing is not an organic growth out of general linguistic capabilities, but a technology; like most technologies it has been monopolized by the powerful. Gender differences are striking enough

Taking away the skills to read and write also takes away power. The oppressed shall stay dump so they don't clock the injustices that are going on

6. In modern societies, the language of permanence and authority is always written language: if women are illiterate, they will not be able to share fully on the culture and specifically, they will not play a full part in shaping it. Illiteracy is not the only obstacle to it tho: most women, even those of the privileged classes, lack the economic independence and leisure time which are needed for sustained literary effort.

There is a general assumption that women's time and energy are endlessly available for ministering to the needs of others, and women themselves feel this constraint on their endeavours.

7. Yet if women writers must take pains to avoid being unfeminine, they also must avoid being too explicitly, uncomfortably feminine: many women have felt constrained to keep silent about specifically female experiences and concerns, since these habe been defined as outside the 'human values' literature deals with.

The pressure to avoid discussing female experience is not confined to the literary domain, it is felt throughout public discourse and to some extend in private discourse too. In the early years of the modern Women's Liberation Movement women organized consciousness raising groups and 'speakouts' where the aim was to discuss and bear witness to experiences like incest and backstreet abortion, as well as less obvious taboo subjects from our lives. This was perceived as a political act if breaking silence, painful but liberating. It challenged prevailing views of the world, and lessened the isolation of individual women.

so is there even an authentic women's language or feminine writing?

Is it enough to for women to speak and write as men do?

If we're 'allowed in' to literature and culture only on condition that we accept conventional (masculine) ways of expressing ourselves, we are simply exchanging one silence for another

10. The appropriate task for feminist criticism is to concentrate on women's access to language...on the ideological and cultural determinants of expression (i.e., the social rather than the psychic). The problem is not that language is insufficient to express women's consciousness but that women have been denied the full resources of language and have been forced into silence, euphemism and circumlocution.

11. The body, sexuality irrationality: a phenomenon in which women are identifies with sex, body, passion while men are identified with reason and the mind. De Beauvior explicitly rejected the idea that rationality and everything else our culture values were inherently masculine: she said they were human, universal, but dishonestly claimed by the patriarchs for themselves.

Language is irreducibly a social practice, grounded in history. Whatever changes in perception and expression we manage collectively to bring about, we will always carry with us the baggage of history in the domain of language as everywhere else.

2.naming and representation, in which the meaning of gender is constructed and contested

12. Next issue: Not women speaking but women spoken about.

Language encodes the culture's values and preoccupations, and transmits these furthermore, to each new generation.

It is thus the utmost importance for feminists to examine how issues of gender are represented in languages. Like other representations linguistic representations both give a clue to the place of women in the culture and constitute one means whereby we are kept in our place.

On the whole, our language is sexist: that is, they represent or 'name' the world from a masculine viewpoint and in accordance with stereotyped beliefs about the sexes.

In religion: a man in the person of Adam gave names to God's creation and this male monopoly of naming has serious consequences – many feminists have claimed, that the names we give our world are not mere reflections of reality, nor arbitrary labels with no relation to it.

Names are a culture's way of fixing what will actually count as reality in a universe of overwhelming, chaotic sensations, all pregnant with a multitude of possible meanings.

we use language to organize our experiences and that differs from culture to culture

Many languages have an underlaying semantic or grammatical rule whereby male is positive and female negative, so that the tenets of male chauvinism are encoded into language; and the reason why languages are structured in this sexist way is that their rules and meanings have been literally 'man made': women have been excluded from naming and definition.

14. Language itself cannot be sexist it is the way we use language that is sexist – Language could be seen as a reflection of sexist culture; or it could be seen as a carrier of ideas and assumptions which become, through their constant re-enactment in discourse, so familiar and conventional we miss their significance.

'sexist language' cannot be regarded as simply the naming of the world from one, masculine perspective; it is better conceptualized as a multifaceted phenomenon occurring in a number of quite complex systems of representation, all with their places in historical traditions

15. 'man' as the synonym to humanity – the generic masculine, the norm, with women as exceptions. (which is also female silencing in a way)

men = active, women = passive; in literature men wipe out women's creativity and reduce them to passive objects in relation not just to art but also sex and reproduction – their language reflects and reinforces sexist definitions of gender. (men 'penetrate' and 'screw' while women 'get laid')

The most obvious place where the idea of a women as a passive sexual object is found is the lexicon (vocabulary) OMGGG THATS EXACTLY WHY I NEED TO MAKE A FEMINIST GLOSSARY!!! (also the cambridge dictionary still mentions 'feisty lady' first in the list of examples and i bet there are many more [] here another good one...a slut is obviously also a women...)

16. There are also no masculine equivalent to any female curse words

Linguistic conventions mark women not just as sex objects but as male property. 'I had her' meaning 'we had intercourse', marriage is symbolic of the passage from father's property to husband's, the title of Miss or Mrs further indicate whether a women is still 'on the market' or not.

One reason why feminists have paid detailed attention to language and discourse: our ways of talking about things reveal attitudes and assumptions we might well consciously disown (no longer embedded in law), thus testifying to the deep-rootedness of sexism

17. When rape gets reported it is being represented as a crime against a man rather than a women. 'rape' was synonymous to 'theft', in some cultures still, to rape a women was to rob her father or husband of her value by rendering her unchaste...

19. To detach language from its historical, cultural, and social roots, to think of it as outside individual and societal control, is a certain route to political quietism – a sense that nothing can be changed.

A Feminist Dictionary by Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler draws attention to the authoritarian and sexist nature of mainstream lexicography

3. behavioural differences in language, their relation to male dominance and female culture

20. The different styles of language, particularly speech, used by women and men – yet another perspective on women's exculsion from some areas of language, and on cultural representations of the feminine.

21. As the views on language alter, so do the sins of which women stand accused

23. Language and Women's Place by Robin Lakoff echoes features of 'typical women's speech': overpoliteness, heavily qualifies statements, 'empty' vocabulary and trivial subject matter

we are more influenced than we realize by a tradition of comment on sex differences which we did not create and which is blatantly antifeminist

reinterpretation of what stereotype behaviors mean: Lakoff maintains that women are forced to learn a weak, trivial, and deferential style as part of their socialization, which is essentially a training in how to be subordinate. A different approach: Women use language in a different way from men, and perhaps thats okay and can be seen as an authentic manifestation of a female culture

24. Investigation of actual behavior is also necessary in so dar as it confirms that 'women' and 'men' are not homogeneous groups: class, ethnic, and cultural divisions are important too, and the speech of middle-class western Europeans cannot simply be generalized to all groups of women.

Does the fact that women use hedges more than men reflect the verbal inadequacy attendant on their socially subordinate position? Or is it a manifestation of female values evolved outside mainstream culture, more supportive and less self-aggrandizing than the unqualified statements valued in male discourse?

25. They found men interrupt women overwhelmingly more (surpriiiiiise) and this relates to social dominance and not some invariable masculine style was suggested by the very low incidence of interruption in all-male conversations.

women's speech style is seen as the outcome of power struggles and negotiations which are played out under the surface of conversation. Rather then belonging inalienably to the woman, 'female' stylistic features belong to the context in which she is trying to interact with a male superordinate.

Thus women ask more questions than men, not because insecurity is part of our psychology and therefore of our speech style, but because men in a dominant positions often refuse to take responsibility for the smooth conduct if unterpersonal relations.

Feminist researchers have suggested that women do organize their talk differently from men – they are more cooperative and less hierarchial, more supportive of their interlocutors and less concerned with competing for the floor

Dominance and difference are both valuable: they allow us to perceive women as complex social beings who are more than just victims of our conditioning, or of men.

SPEECH AND SILENCE

"Women and fiction" – Virginia Woolf

Text is about women who write fiction and the fiction that is written about women

The history we know is a male history. Made from men inherited to men, about men. The women only get the side character, about whom we don't know much other than their names and the number of the children they bore

Women were held up with labor work so they didn't have time to produce art (writings) if women wrote, they were single and with no child, giving them the headspace to do art. Then fiction is the easiest thing for a woman to write, cause it can be put down or picked up more easily

In women's writing we re not only conscious of the character but also about the woman's presence writing the character and her pleading for rights

37. in Both life and art the values of a woman are not the values of a man. Thus, when a woman comes to write a novel, she will find that she is perpetually wishing to alter the established values–to make serious what appears insignificant to a man, and trivial what is important to him. And for that she will be criticized!

There was a big shift in the amount of literature written by women

With denying women access to learning/studying most things (and keeping them busy with labour work), they denied them on finding their own voice

when women have leisure, and money, and a room for themselves (which they've been denied for so long) they will write not only novels but poetry and criticism and history!

"The silence is broken" – Josephine Donovan

42. When latin so longer functioned as a spoken language it was used (and learned) only by male, white academics – with that women were denied access to the world of formal, public communication (including literature) cause they were not allowed to learn

Latin is the entrance to the male educated elite – latin has become a sex-linked language, a kind of badge of masculine identity.

43. If women did have the chance to learn the language and reading and writing their works are seemingly more authentic and less artificial

44. The association of women with sentimental love novel is a stereotype. An early eighteen century novelist explained: As she is a women and with that denied access to the education, she cannot imagine subjects higher than what nature teaches her. So love is something she was able to experience and with that write about.

Novel writing was also a new thing which means there were no rules on how to write such thing, so no higher knowledge was needed, and no access was denied for women.

Wordslut – Amanda Montell

Amanda Montell is an American author, writer and linguist. She studied linguistics at New York University. Wordslut is her debut book. She uncovers linguistic ways in which women (and other marginalized groups) have been kept from power. She writes about many linguistic phenomena like catcalling, grammar, but also vocal fry or filler words. The book sheds light on the biases that shadow women in pur culture and our consciousness.

s.4 – Over the Decades linguists have learned that pretty much every corner of language is touched by gender, from the most miscroscopic units of sound to the broadest categories of conversation.

s.9 – Language has always been, and continues to be, used to reflect and reinforce power structures and social norms. Because old white dudes have ruled our culture for so long, and language is the medium through which that culture was created and communicated, the time has come to challenge how and why we use language the way we do, and how we think about it in the first place. That means questioning the words we speak every day, as well as the contexts in which we use them – because without realizing it, something as simple as an address term or curse word might be reinforcing a power structure that we ultimately don't agree with.

s.10 – Its the way English is habitually used that "expresses (and so reproduces) some culturally ingrained sexist assumptions." This means –good news– the English language is not innately biased against women and nonbinary genders; but the bad news is that its speakers have collectively consented to wield it in a way that reinforces existing gender biases, often in ways they're not even aware of.

s.26 – Linguists have actually determined that the majority of insults for men sprout from refereneces to femininity, either from allusions to women themselves or stereotypically feminine men.

s.31 – When English speakers want to insult a women, they compare her to one of a few things; a food (tart), an animal (bitch), or a sex worker (slut). That we have used language to systematically reduce women to edible, nonhuman, and sexual entities for so many years is no coincidence. Instead, it makes a clear statement about the expectations, hopes and fears of our society as a whole.

s.39 – reclamation. people actively redefining what these words mean from the ground up.

s.40 – There are also words like bitch, ho, dyke and cunt which are definitely still used abusively, but have also evolved as terms of endearment among women who use them inside their own groups (which is usually how a word’s reclamation begins — it’s when the rule of “I can cal myself this word, but you can’t” becomes more relaxed over time).

s.41 – Perhaps when we call each other ho, we acknowledge that we are women who have sex and earn our own money too, and when we call each other bitch, we acknowledge the realities of this man-made world and affirm our abuts survive in it. Through resistance comes redefinition.

s.42 – Semantic change down not happen overnight; instead, it’s a more gradual process wherein one meaning slowly overlaps another, then eclipses it.

s.44 – the first step we can take to reduce the harm caused by gendered insults is simply to avoid using them abusively.

s.68 – But there is still an intense drive to come up with language to describe these different identities. We still crave labels. Linguists say that this has everything to do with the power of words to legitimize experiences, as if an idea only becomes valid once it's christened with a title. "It's clearly empowering for people to discover that thery're not the only ones having an experience and that the experience can be named," explains UCSB gender and language scholar Lal Zimmman.

s.69 – ... gender differs not only from person to person but also between entire cultures, depending on how certain bodies and behaviors are interpreted (through languageeee!!!)

Feminism in Philosophy of Language – Jennifer Hornsby

s.2 – One question raised was whether concerted attempts to avoid sexism in speech might themselves constitute a feminist advance, or whether language’s working to women’s detriment is merely a symptom of existing power relations. On the assumption that language can be a site of oppression in its own right, some argued that women’s enfranchisement—whether as political subjects or as knowledgeable beings—required women to find a distinctive voice.

s.3 – the use of language is treated always in a social context, in which the presence of gendered beings is taken for granted.

s.3 – What is it for words and sentences to be meaningful?

s.3 – speech is action.

s.3 – three broad categories of things people do with words: 1. locutionary (speaking), 2. illocutionary (things done in speaking) and 3. perlocutionary (things done by speaking) acts

s.4 – Semantic theories are supposed to reveal words and sentences as the meaningful things they are; but we gain a conception of words and sentences as meaningful through an idea of speakers’ using them.

s.4 – saying something to someone will count as fundamental among the various things that speakers do in making meaningful noises.

s.5 – In accepting that saying to another is a communicative speech act, one allows that the idea of people saying things coexists with the idea of people understanding others as saying things to them.

On design, feminism, and friendship – Briar Levit

s.16 – Nowadays, girls have the vocabulary to express how they feel and how they want to be treated in explicitly feminist terms, with those discussions starting much earlier.

Wor(l)ding: A Harvested Glossary for Social Justice in Arts Education and Beyond – Michelle Teran, Ali Sahin, Kari Robertson, Pablo Lerma

s.15– Words wield power and with it, are able to shape the world around us as we live through it; they do not just describe and inform, but they can guide and mislead, clarify and confound, convince and discourage, permit and forbid, call into existence and nullify.

A glossary is an attempt to contextualise and connect words, which constitute a particular discourse.

While a dictionary asserts to offer a comprehensive and objective collection of words and their meaning, glossaries are always partial and have a specific orientation. Where dictionaries may claim (political) neutrality, deciding which words we in- or exclude from use is an inherently political action. Words are the way we filter the world around us into something comprehensible and communicable. They are political and relational matter.

s.18 – [...]to share what tools, allies and words we have; these enable us to name, navigate, and, hopefully, resist the many intersecting systems of oppression that we are subject to in varying ways and degrees.

Cunt: A Declaration of Independence – Inga Muscio

Inga Muscio is an American feminist, writer and public speaker adressing issues of sexism, racism and feminism.

The book calls for women to break down boundaries between themselves, their bodies and each other. It is a try to reverse the negative connotations behind the word cunt, so to say reclaim it.

s.9 – “cunt,” that claims the innate power of the sex organ it names.

"Confronting learned, internalized misogyny and re-educating ourselves on our terms."

A feminist dictionary – Cheris Kramarae []

cunt: "In ancient writings, the word for "cunt' was synonymous with 'woman', though not in the insulting modern sense." "From the same root came county, kin, and kind... Other cognates are 'cunabula', a cradle, or earliest abode; 'Cunina', a Roman Goddess who protected children in the cradle; 'cunctipotent'" all powerful (i.e., having cunt-magic); 'cu-nicle,' a hole or passage; 'cuniculate,' penetrated by a passage; 'cundy,' a covered culvert; also cunning, kenning, and ken: knowledge, learning, insight, remembrance, wisdom." (Barbara G. Walker 1983, 197) Given in Eric Partridge as c*nt, the word dates back at least to Middle English and is from the same root as cuneiform, from cuneus "wedge." Partridge writes that "owing to its powerful sexuality, the term has, since the 15th century, been avoided in written and in polite spoken English," and has been held to be obscene since about 1700, making it a legal offence to print it in full. Even playwrights and dictionary-makers courageous where other language was concerned, found ways of avoiding the word. J. S. Farmer and W. E. Henley (1890-1904) provide a brief entry under cunt but place their major entry for the word under the heading monosyllable, where hundreds of synonyms are listed. Partridge notes that even James Murray of the Oxford English Dictionary did not include it, though he included prick: "Why this further injustice to women?" (Eric Partridge 1961, 198)

cunt art: A term used by some women artists to describe their new female imagery, "in celebration of the discovery that not all sexual symbols are phallic." (Gloria Steinem 1983, 154)

Culture, Ideology, and Hegemony – D.M. Kellner and M.G. Durham

s.14 Every cultural texts are full of meaning, values, biases, and messages that advance relations of power and subordination. Often extremely prejudicial, of class, gender, race, sexuality, and myriad social categories and groupings.

Cultural texts are saturated with social meanings, they generate political effects, reproducing or opposing governing social institutions and relations of domination and subordination.

The concept of ideology, for example, forces readers to perceive that all cultural texts have distinct biases, interests, and embedded values, reproducing the point of view of their producers and often the values of the dominant social groups.

feminists, multiculturalists, and members of a wide range of subordinate groups, detected that ideologies also reproduced relations of domination in the arenas of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and further domains of everyday life. Feminists, for example, criticized sexist ideologies that advanced the domination of women by men and social institutions and practices that propagated male supremacy. Racist ideologies were criticized that furthered the subordination of specific races and ethnicities. In a broad sense, therefore, ideologies reproduce social domination, they legitimate rule by the prevailing groups over subordinate ones, and help replicate the existing inequalities and hierarchies of power and control.

Marx and Engels began a critique of ideology, attempting to show how ruling ideas reproduce dominant societal interests serving to naturalize, idealize, and legitimate the existing society and its institutions and values.

s.16– In fact, human beings and societies are extremely complex and contradictory, but ideology smoothes over conflicts and negative features, idealizing human or social traits like individuality and competition which are elevated into governing conceptions and values

18– to properly understand any specific form of media or culture, one must understand how it is produced and distributed in a given society and how it is situated in relation to the dominant social structure.

In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin argued that film, sports, and other forms of mass entertainment were creating a new kind of spectator, able to critically dissect cultural forms and to render intelligent judgment on them