"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Bullshit.
Okay, my sister-in-law reads my blog; no doubt she'll call my Mom and tell me that I just wrote a bad word on it.
Which only illustrates the point I want to make: words do hurt. And in this information age, they are the chief source of weaponry. How about "the pen is mightier than the sword"?
My friend wrote in his own blog a lengthy post about how he, as a sensitive feminist, has been upset about calling Ms. Dupre (Spitzer's hookup) a whore. Apparently the late night hosts have been bandying about the terms "prostitute" and "whore" without any sense of concern. My friend doesn't like those words. He equates him to words like "n-----" that reek of pure hatred.
Do they?
When I was a teenager I didn't curse. I actually agreed with my conservative parents - cursing was fundamentally bad.
Then I became an English major. It isn't just that I became more liberal. I have learned to embrace the power of words - judiciously.
I had an image in my mind that I commissioned an artist friend of mine to draw for me. It is of a chest of drawers with words coming out of it - so many words that they cannot hope to fit in the drawers. There are top drawer words, like insouciance, erudite and prodigious, middle drawer words, like fantastic and intense, bottom drawer words, like flat and whatever. But there are also those colorful dust bunnies living underneath the chest of drawers itself, where we find words like f---, s---, G--d---, and c---. My artist friend wisely didn't write these words out in his drawing. (As I haven't.) He let those words lie face down on the floor beneath the chest of drawers. (I do have it hanging up in my office, after all. Wouldn't want to overtly offend.)
Whether or not you agree that any words are innately offensive, the point is that words do have power. The power is held not necessarily in the wielder, though, but in the hearer.
It's the tree falling in the woods phenomenon. If my friend, sensitive feminist that he is, hadn't listened to David Letterman describe Ashley Dupre as a whore, he wouldn't have taken offense to it. (And then, sadly, he wouldn't have had a thing to blog about.) But it was an extreme reaction. Though I can appreciate his chivalry, I don't have to agree with it. To me, prostitution is pretty deplorable. It doesn't hurt my feelings to call her a whore. It doesn't hurt my feelings to call anybody a whore who definitionally earns money for sex. I think it's sad that the word whore has more negative connotations than the word pimp. It's a horrible double-standard that pimps are glamorized, while whores are downtrodden. But, I would argue that Dupre isn't downtrodden in the least. She's a capitalist opportunist (bless her heart). She'll have more than 15 minutes of fame over this. She'll be a rich whore, in the end. Anyone can take whatever offense they like, but in the end, I don't have to support her. (Although I clearly just did, having given her more press by blogging about her. So I'll stop.)
And about male feminists who tiptoe around terminology: keep doing it. It's safer that way, but know that that is what you are doing. Being indignant about such terminology is no less chivalrous than opening a door for us.
There's nothing wrong with opening doors, but then, I'm only a moderate feminist. Some of the more strenuous female feminists would clobber you if you tried. Words can hurt me, and if you called me a whore, then I'd take offense.
I only teach for money.
2 comments:
First of all: I don't dislike these words. While there are a few I just don't care for, I don't dislike any words. Rather, it's how words are used that bugs me-- the contexts with which they are presented and the implications/inferences/nuances inflected by certain users. Remember, one of my heroes his George Carlin. Carlin beautifully stated long ago: "There are no bad words... Bad thoughts. Bad intentions... And words."
So my issue with "whore" is not with the word itself, but the way it is used (and has been used here of late).
And that gets us to the difference (initially) between our perspectives. For you, growing up, "cursing was fundamentally bad." For me cursing was an artform. My father was very much like Ralphie's father in A Christmas Story: "He worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium; a master."
In many ways, you discovered the judicious use of profanity through your studies. I came to study literature (and words) because of profanity.
I'll disagree with this: The power is held not necessarily in the wielder, though, but in the hearer. Yes, the tree in the woods bit is true, but a carefully aimed insult is like a bullet to the heart...
Finally, I would be hard pressed to see much of a difference between Angelina Jolie and the whatever-her-name-is whore. Both are trading on their bodies and not their minds. Sure, Jolie can act, but Tomb Raider is soft-core porn for adolescent gamer geeks. Is this not also capitalist opportunism? Why is this less offensive than selling actual sex?
My ultimate argument with/for whores is that we clearly come from a culture of neglect. That is, we've become so used to treating whores as whores that we don't see the bigger issue: Many women who become prostitutes do it NOT because they have solid capitalist intentions, but because they have very few real opportunities. I'd argue that turning our backs on them (taking the "moral high ground") is similar to driving past the Vietnam vet with one leg begging for change on the corner... Systematic neglect of the economically and educationally challenged... Or something like that.
I like that we have come to the same career through such different pathways.
Touche!
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