Holiday seasons are excuses for gathering and parties and fun. As usual this Christmas night became a perfect pretext to gather with friends, play games, eat, drink and be asked, as in all parties: “got any new jokes?” or “ let me tell you a joke”. However, when the joke telling starts, before you know it, the red zone is trespassed and male’s mother and sisters become subjects to all types of verbal aggression with sexual tone.
In the following lines, I would like only to state what went though my mind, hearing men sharing their rhetorical (!) gifts of jokes and friendly insults to each other, over a game of backgammon and even in discussing a point.
I asked myself, how in the world, when insulting half of the guests with such disparaging language, can they possibly get their points across?
In the past, when I have advocated using non-offensive language, I was faced with objections such as:
1. Impinging upon freedom of speech.
I wonder, how the necessity to communicate more politely jeopardizes someone’s freedom of speech? Freedom of speech is also responsibility for the words that one uses to prevent the offensive language that hurts or demeans or perpetuates harmful attitudes and stereotypes. People need to take responsibility for their actions, and that includes their words. Words are powerful tools and people are sometimes entirely too careless with them. I wonder how raising the standard of respect for others can be considered as censorship!
2. There are no other words that will suffice except for those which are horribly offensive ones.
So, if we took out all the sexually offensive words (toward men and women) from the language, we wouldn’t have any useful adjectives, adverbs, or nouns? If that is the belief, then I must say either they simply don’t have a very good grasp of language or they aren’t particularly imaginative. If you think adequate words do not exist, then create them!
Most insults stigmatize a group of people. There are probably hundreds of different ways to express ideas in equally powerful language that don’t have the side-effect of insulting others or expressing misogynistic, racist, or … attitudes. Do we have to insult people in order to adequately express ourselves? Is effective communication achieved through direct and indirect attacks? The ideal of freedom of speech, is obviously not to give people the right to make insulting and pejorative remarks at any time with no repercussions. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean the right to be insulting.
Few points on using gender motivated sexual connotation:
1) Insults are judged by their power to inflict emotional pain;
this usage of words is indeed a weapon for verbal aggression and violence. The sexual insults create parallels between sex and violence and cannot be considered as rhetorical sophistication.
2) The sexual insults are lingering signs of that preadolescent obscene talk, when male aren’t certain about their sexual competency yet.
3) The sexual insults demonstrate the belief in male superiority: while women receive sexual insults as “Su… your husband’s sugarcane” men are to “ f… (rape) their adversaries’ mother or sisters”.
4) Uncover the underlying pornographic intent of the person using the sexual insult, and the possible voyeurism form the receiver, the reader or the audience.
5) Women usage of sexual insults cannot be considered as neutralizing gender but internalizing the violence against women and stigmatized marginal members of the society.
6) Usually insults referring to sexual looseness are directed almost exclusively toward women.
7) Sexual insults targeting mothers are present cross culturally; may be because over %99 of societies across globe are subjected to patriarchal systems.
8) As language often reinforces various social preferences and biases, the misogynist discourse, along with all other methods of minorities’ stigmatization, has an excluding effect and as such, will reinforce the right-wing politics and discourage critical thinking.
9) Sexual insults, when exchanged among friends, can be considered “intimate abuses” and it is very likely that such exchange goes beyond the circles of friends and becomes the way (a vulgar one) to approach any unpleasant experience.
10) Last but not least, such insult can be categorized as hate speech: hate for women.
We need to acknowledge the ways in which our words subtly and not-so-subtly reinforce inequities, whether it is sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia or any other phobias for that matter.
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