Wordslut: A Feminist Guide To Taking Back The English Language Quotes
"What if I told you that swimming under the surface of almost every word we say, there is a rich, glamorous, sometimes violent history infinitely more dramatic than any Disney movie or CNN debate?"
"But every part of our speech—our words, our intonation, our sentence structures—is sending invisible signals telling other people who we are. How to treat us."
"In the wrong hands, speech can be used as a weapon. But in the right ones, it can change the world."
"It’s high time the subject of gender and words makes its way beyond academia and into the rest of our everyday conversations."
"We’re also living in a time when we find respected media outlets and public figures circulating criticisms of women’s voices."
"More troubling still, there are also plenty of folks—usually ones of some social privilege—who want to stop language from evolving at all costs."
"We’re living in an era when many of us often feel overwhelmed and silenced by the English language. But it doesn’t have to be that way."
"To get us started on this linguistic journey together, allow me to present a brief timeline of how the English language was born."
"The link between language and culture is inextricable: language has always been, and continues to be, used to reflect and reinforce power structures and social norms."
"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."
"Each of us gets to define who we are to the world on our own terms, and we can tweak those definitions over the course of our lives."
"Almost nothing about our identities can be defined on such rigid terms—gender included."
"In every case, the context and intent of the conversation will factor in."
"It’s a lovely idea to address people in a way that doesn’t assume this deeply complex thing that is their gender."
"The language we hear from other people can change our thinking."
"What does language sound like when men aren’t around to influence it?"
"Women more often than men break off without finishing their sentences, because they start talking without having thought out what they are going to say."
"Women’s speech is so much about consensus and community building."
"Women’s avoidance of information-seeking questions seems to be related to their role in constructing a speaker as ‘someone who knows the answer,’ an expert."
"Like the sharing of secrets, the sharing of transgressive (or offensive) words like this is a token of intimacy."
"It is with humility, determination, and boundless confidence in America's promise that I accept your nomination for president of the United States."
"Folks often defend their resistance to using they to describe one person by arguing that the word as they learned it is plural."
"Swearing is a word nerd’s dream, and yet so controversial."
"In the early twentieth century, a survey of talk radio listeners reported that 100 out of 101 respondents preferred male hosts’ voices over women’s."
"Criticism of female politicians’ voices is essentially a way of tapping into the still widely held belief that women do not have the authority to lead."
"The fact that the role causes damage is of relatively little importance."
"We are not all Elizabeth Warren either in temperament or situation."
"To correct it, what we need is to convince the people who currently have a monopoly on the microphone—and thus a monopoly on social and political control itself—to do as our preschool teachers told us and let someone else have a turn."
"Language is fun, after all, and—other than shouting 'fire' in a movie theater—there are very few laws controlling what words we’re allowed to say."
"The juxtaposition of these two women was so extreme it was as if a gender studies professor had dreamed it up specifically for argument’s sake."
"There may be objective reasons for thinking Clinton to be unlikable and competent and Palin to be likable but incompetent, but it is surely more than a coincidence."
"Because we have certain expectations of how women are supposed to communicate, that might earn her a reputation as a cold bitch."
"Our conflicted attitudes toward powerful women sprout from many sources."
"The negative language we use to describe 'domineering' women sounds not unlike the words we might have used when our moms took away our car privileges."
"Calling Clinton 'shrill' is motivated by the same thing as criticizing her 'cankles'."
"Studies also show that by and large, companies led by women over-perform."
"You don’t get to dehumanize black and Latinx queer/trans people and then appropriate our shit."
"The domination of male culture over female, through such things as media representations of heterosexual relations, ensures that women see themselves to some extent through men's eyes."