Hello, friends! I'm currently recovering from sickness in Mexico. I have a few thoughts I would like to share with you.
1. I think we all need to stop using passive voice in discussing rape, abuse, or molestation.
I realize this is a semantic difference, but I think it is an important one:
"She was raped" becomes "Someone raped her"
"They were abused" becomes "Their mother abused them"
"He was molested" becomes "He molested him"
I think victims too often are assigned blame, and I think one small way of fighting this would be to consciously refuse to ever say "She was raped" again--place the culprit as the subject of the sentence, not the victim.
2. When we're afraid of our culture sending out negative messages, we need to make sure that we counter that with positive messages instead of a vacuum.
The instance in which I was thinking about this was the subject of gender identity. As enlightened, feminist egalitarians, my parents didn't emphasize "You do this because you're a girl" very much. Although this is much much much better than enforcing a sexist system of gender identification, this vacuum made me more vulnerable to other voices. I think a better way of dealing with that would be to say, "You're strong because you're a woman," and "You can show emotion and be compassionate because you're a man"--essentially giving children a rich and full definition of identity instead of a vacuum. (I'm pretty sure my parents tried to do that, it was just an example...)
I think this same principle is applicable to a lot of other subjects as well.
Okay, I'm all tired out. Please comment, people. It would make me feel so sad if no one commented!
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3 comments:
I remember this blog, Marcella. I hope everything is going well in Mexico.
You were sick?! Poor baby Cella. Hope you're okay now and that all is well in the beautiful country of Mexico (or at least the part you're in). :)
I do think that the way we say things is very important. I tend to not be very careful about how I say things because, until recently, I just didn't give it much thought. But I do think that how you say something is just as important in meaning as what you say. I mean, we discussed sarcasm earlier and that relies on tone of voice and expression rather than words to communicate your true message. And I think grammatical choices can also do that, especially as shown in your first example.
My question is, does anyone have any suggestion as to how we can retrain ourselves and others to do this? I suppose it's just a habitual thing that you have to be conscious of until it becomes the norm, so I guess that we could listen for it in each other and remind each other to watch how we say things. Any other suggestions?
Marcella, I love you! I miss you!
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