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Women and words: why language matters. From ‘bossy’ to ‘battleaxe’ and ‘spinster’, many of the words used to describe women are laden with negativity, judgement and criticism. In Word ...
- 4 min
- Smoke-And-Mirror Fixes For Folksy Sneer Winces
- Baronet, King Kong and The Dame in The Creek: What Words Tell Us About Society
- Sissy Pricks and Twatty Prats: Insults and Gender
- Language Is A Mirror and A Lens
Folk wisdom provides a dizzying array of misleading accounts of how women communicate, many of them riddled with sexism. Proverbs tell us “women’s tongues are like lambs’ tails; they are never still”. But researchtells us men talk and interrupt more – especially when they’re speaking to women. It’s hard to stop the proverb and folk juggernaut once ...
“Shrill” hints at an English lexicon that does not reflect kindly on women. A lexicon is not an inanimate beast, but rather a social one. The social beast shines through in this Australian schoolyard chant: And the Oxford English Dictionary entry for “sex” highlights the corresponding linguistic imbalance. Here women are referred to as the “weaker”...
While we’re on the subject of asymmetries, we might also point out the vast difference in wounding capacity between insults invoking male and female sex organs. The most striking is “cunt”, meaning “nasty, malicious, despicable”, versus “prick” meaning “stupid, contemptible, annoying”. Moreover, while “cunt” (and its gentler counterparts “twat” and...
Our language behaviour — perhaps best illustrated by the lexicon — provides particularly clear windows into speech communities. If you’re not convinced already, consider the staggering 2,000 expressionsfor “wanton woman” that English has amassed over the years. This says it all really: a linguistic tell-tale of sexual double standards. Even the adj...
May 31, 2023 · The terms that concerned Armstrong—“homo,” “fag,” “gay,” and “queer”—rarely show up in our present-day insult exercise. But the takeaway is the same. Combined, the piece and the exercise help students understand that language changes, but femininity is consistently perceived as insulting and degrading. Insults matter.
Mar 16, 2017 · Rinaldi wrote the story for Maggie’s Plan, the 2015 film inspired by her novel, The End of Men, which will be published June 2017. Her non-fiction work has appeared in the New York Times, Oprah ...
- 2 min
- Karen Rinaldi
- Instead Of "Feisty," Say "Go-Getter" When you hear "feisty," it's usually to describe either a cat or a woman. And while it can have some positive connotations, it also tends to mean someone's overly aggressive or argumentative.
- Instead Of "Sissy," Say "Coward" "Sissy" is often used to call someone, particularly a man, a coward by implying that they are feminine — which, in turn, implies that women are weak.
- Instead Of "Frigid," Say "Cold" "Frigid" usually describes a woman who is uptight or sexually closed off. Traditionally (AKA in Sigmund Freud's vocabulary), it's been used to classify women as sexually dysfunctional, often for unfair reasons.
- Instead Of "Ditsy," Say "Spacey" The word "ditsy" goes along with the "dumb blonde" stereotype: It conjures a woman who is unintelligent and unable to be serious.
Nov 21, 2016 · The pecking-order logic of insults means that if the recipient is shamed, then the insulter rises in status relative to the victim: The insulter is the one doing the pecking rather than getting ...
Aug 26, 2020 · The word “ spinster ” has historically referred to an unmarried woman, typically beyond the usual age for marriage and often used within a negative context to make women feel undesirable. Now, empowered single women are labeling themselves as being “self-partnered” rather than single, alone or a spinster. Emma Watson famously used the ...
