word work

My problem of the week is with the assumption that words, words, words are just lying flat, lifeless and exposed. The innocence of words, the truth/transparency of words, the convenience of words. It's hard for me to stomach the suggestion that feminism should be reshaped into "Gender Studies" or "Equality Studies." The task at hand is indeed gender equality, but we're not going to achieve this by throwing specificity out the window. There is intention, political thrust, and an imaginative potential behind and within the title of feminism. What does it mean to specify femininity? Even more thought-provoking is to consider what it means to receive resistance from doing so. Feminism is swimming against the current, nobody will argue that. But how come so few of us have paused to acknowledge the fact that the current exists to begin with? The antagonism towards feminists is perplexing at first: no one, at least in sane academia, signed up for Anti-Male or Anti-Masculinity Studies, so what is all the fuss about? Feminism doesn't deny males or masculinity, rather it seeks to deny inherent maleness through specification (ever notice how the "default" gender is always male? This is what is meant by inherent maleness). The mistake is in assuming that there can be some sort of accommodating "neutrality" within the field of feminism (hence, "equalist" rather than "feminist"). Is standing still an option when you're neck-deep in the river current? It is not even a possibility, let alone an option. Visualize it, I dare you.

Think about what it means to talk about "mankind," or "all men are created equal." Yes, yes, we know what you mean (you really mean everyone, not just men). But what is at stake when you rely on this mental footnote? What can be lost, and what sort of rationality is readily available to replace it? Word work does not happen overnight. It is through the tedious repetition of these words (and the ideas or the depth that is attached to it) that invisible seeds get planted.

The trick here is to realize (really, really realize) the productive work that words are doing. To neglect this is probably the equivalent of calculating the height of a building with a bird's-eye view. We spent the first years of our lives learning words, the next few utilizing them, so it should follow that the next step is to historicize/contextualize them. We reach this point with almost every other discipline, but somehow managed to leave out the depth of our words. Geometrically, we began from a single point, expanded it to a plane, then added depth and volume. What is it about our understandings of common sense that blocks Step 3 from occurring with words? My point is that words are spoken and published by living human beings, with active motive and drive (whether this is acknowledged consciously or not). Advertisers are fully aware of this, and nobody is personally exempt from it-- don't fret, I won't go into a discussion about media (cue freshman year syllabi), I'm simply trying to show you the danger in taking words at face value, whether it's at your ideological advantage or not. Feminism is not simply focusing on conceptions of femininity; we don't live in a vacuum of feminist knowledge. Feminism is feminism because it challenges you to consider what is left unsaid.