Words can hurt

Recently on Twitter I denounced Andrew Bolt as a racist. That’s not a new claim, and one that many people I know agree with. The documentary evidence is there over a long period of time, and he has been taken to court more than once – and lost – for his racially divisive comments. However, one of his Twitter supporters decided to have me on and called for me to provide “evidence”. I should have realised this person was a troll – it didn’t matter what I provided, he asked for more and claimed I had not provided any. That was exactly the tactic Bolt used to deny Professor Robert Manne had ever answered his “name 10” question, despite constant and consistent evidence that Professor Manne had done exactly that more than once.

What Bolt did to Manne, and what Bolt’s follower did to me on Twitter, is a bullying tactic often used by media. Deny, continue to deny, and eventually people believe you rather than the factual evidence. Unfortunately for the whole country, the government is talking of overturning section 18C of the Race Relations Act, to make racial vilification no longer a crime. There is, in my opinion, far too much bullying in our society now. We need less of it, not more.

Every day there are stories in social media about bullying, more and more often relating to severe bullying of children and adolescents who are a lot less able to respond or defend themselves than adults. Yesterday I read the story of Josh Taylor on the FB “No Bull” page.  Josh committed suicide last year after been severely bullied at school.

Anti-bullying website NoBullying.com says: “Studies performed by Yale suggest that victims of bullies are between 2 to 9 times more likely to commit suicide at some point in their teenage years. In Great Britain, a study performed there went so far as to suggest that almost half of the suicides committed in that country were directly related to bullying.”

The following poem is by a blogger using the pseudonym Icing on the Cupcake on the teenink.com website:

Monday, they called her fat, stupid, ugly.
But words are just words, so they thought. Looking into a mirror, she wept.
Fat, stupid, ugly she thought.
But words are just words, so they thought. Tuesday, they called her freak, slut, retard.
But words are just words, so they thought. Looking into a mirror, she saw herself.
Fat, stupid, ugly freak, slut, retard constantly in her mind. 

She cried. The tears came streaming down. 

Wednesday, they called her psycho, useless, skank.
But words are just words, so they thought.   

She cried. Until tears came no more. 

Thursday, they told her to go die.
But words are just words, so they thought.

Friday, they said nothing. For she wasn't there.

But words are just words, so they thought. 

A picture of her was shown everywhere.
They soon found out, they had killed her.
But words are just words, they questioned.

On Twitter I follow a chap named John McPhilbin (@JohnMcPhilbin) of the Injured Workers Support Network, who is a tireless advocate for the rights of those bullied in the workplace. John’s profile notes that “Workplace bullying is a symptom of poor management and leadership which costs Australian economy between $6-$36 billion annually and destroys lives of workers”.  John has a video on workplace bullying and is featured in an About The House magazine article in December 2012.

The statistics on both personal and workplace bullying are horrific and we are right in questioning what is causing this. A TED blog popped into my FB feed today about how language can affect the way we think. The writer quoted some examples from Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky, including, in a section titled Blame and English, “…there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims…”

Social media sites offer prime examples of language misuse which can be threatening, racist and distressing, yet are considered by those who repost and share to be humorous. Our language is filled with terms that are abhorrent when one considers the real meaning of the words – words like “retard”, “fat”, “bitch”, “mole”, “slag”, “useless”, “thick”. Our society has normalized gender-provocative terms such as “like a girl” which are intended as insults to boys but we rarely, if ever, question why being “like a girl” is, in fact, something to be ashamed of. Distressingly, it is this acceptance of misuse of language that allows not just bullying but also a sexual violence culture to perpetuate.

Yet if we pull the perpetrators up on their misuse of language, we are told to “chill”.

Well understand this. I will NOT chill when I hear derogatory comments. I will NOT chill when I see memes passing across my FB feed that use derogatory, insinuating, sexist, racist or gender-biased language disguised as humour. I will call them out, and I expect others to call me out if I slip up.

Take a moment to reflect on what exactly is being said in the poem I quoted above. These are the terms used, and the dictionary meanings for each term.

Fat - having too much flabby tissue; corpulent; obese

Stupid - lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull

Ugly - very unattractive or unpleasant to look at; offensive to the sense of beauty; displeasing in appearance

Freak - a person or animal on exhibition as an example of a strange deviation from nature; monster

Slut - an immoral or dissolute woman; prostitute

Retard - a contemptuous term used to refer to a person who is cognitively impaired

Psycho - a crazy or mentally unstable person

Useless - not serving the purpose or any purpose

Skank - a promiscuous female

This is the abuse that the victims of these words are being subjected to. Would you want to be called those things every day? Seriously?

Words can and do have enormous power. Our language can be subjective – based on opinion – when it should be objective – based on fact. Bullying is nearly always subjective. We must turn that around if we are to succeed in combatting bullying.

THINK before you speak. It may not just be someone’s feelings you are playing with – it may be their life.

The unwitting feminist

When I was growing up it never occurred to me that my dad's insistence that my sisters and I learn such basics as changing a wheel on our cars, helping him with basic engine maintenance, teaching us about the power and other tools that he used every day in his business, might actually mean this man's man was, in fact, in unknowing feminist.

It would have been hard for dad not to be, in retrospect. With four daughters (and one son) he had two choices - the very time consuming option to do it all for us, or make sure that we knew how to do it for ourselves. That he chose the latter option is now a reason for me to realise that, at 57, I actually have some very valuable skills that many women - let alone feminists - today simply don't have. I am very grateful to him that I have, throughout my life, not needed to rely entirely on anyone, male or female, to help me with these tasks, something that stood me in good stead the many years I was a solo parent. If I do allow others to do it now, it's because I have that choice.

I have fond early memories of dad knocking about in two old Vanguards to build one new family car for us as our family expanded. The first car dad bought for my older sister and I was a 1957 Morris Oxford, side valve. Most people today, I suspect, would have no idea what that means. But it had a motor problem, so our first lesson in car maintenance was performing a valve grind on this ancient piece of equipment - even new to us back then, it was 15 years old.

As a full time builder and part time home handyman and mechanic, dad had tools of every description. We learned early the difference between a hand saw, power saw, bench saw, skill saw, band saw and jig saw. Dad built our first homes for me and two of my sisters, and we were required to help, under his expert instruction. We learned to use hammers and screwdrivers, we dug ditches and footings, we poured concrete - some of which we even made ourselves in dad's little builder's concrete mixer. We learned to back a trailer and how to operate his home-made tilt bin.

Dad probably would have found it highly amusing if I'd suggested that he was a feminist. To him it was just natural and obvious. You changed your own wheel or you didn't drive anywhere. We didn't have RACQ then, at least not as it is today, and why get a boyfriend just to change a flat? As for the building, he was good enough to build our homes labour-free so of course we should help!

Over the years I have found that what dad taught me/us has stood me in very good stead for the times I have been on my own with no man to call on, should I have felt so inclined. It amuses me somewhat now that if I do ask a man for assistance - such as recently when I asked a young man to open my radiator cap only because my arthritis wouldn't let me - they then feel the need to take over. I appreciate an offer of assistance, but only if I have the option to decline. Too many men seem to think that because I am (a) woman and (b) mature-aged I have no comprehension of how to do something. Well, sorry to disavow that misapprehension. I can change a wheel (and yes, I know the difference between changing a wheel and changing a tyre), I just no longer have the strength in my hands to undo the wheel nuts that are usually done up ultra tight by an air-assisted gun. I can put a picture on the wall with the correct size and weight of picture hook. I can glue and screw the faulty leg on my chess table - which, BTW, I made from scratch including routing, lathe turning the pedestal and finishing each square individually. (I just haven't got around to fixing it yet, doesn't mean I don't know how!)

Dad wasn't just a handyman, he also sewed - curtains, upholstery, halter necks tops for his daughters - and he cooked, he knew how to operate a washing machine, and when mum was in hospital he looked after the five of us without needing to get in any help. If more men today were like my dad - accepting of a girl child's right to know the same stuff that boys are taught, and accepting of the need for a man to also know some "women's" tasks, I believe we would be a heck of a lot closer to equality than we really are, because 'equality' is about treating boys and girls the same from the time they are small children. We fail in that because we are conditioned to treat boys as stronger, less emotional, more technically minded. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy only if we persist with that particular fairy tale.

Where are all the old role models - male and female - who just knew, naturally, that inclusion was the best educator? If I can pass on some of my knowledge to a younger generation who didn't have the same advantages, I will be happy to do so, and celebrate the fact that my dad, as an unwitting feminist, was way ahead of today's men. Good on ya dad!