Em Kwissa
The Silhouette
I distinctly remember the last time I ever used the word “faggot.”
I was sitting in my friend’s car outside my mother’s house. As he pulled up into the driveway to drop me off he saw out his window, on the ledge beside my mother’s driveway, the big globs of wax that lay baking in the sun. He asked me who had put all that wax there, and I told him that it had been someone I knew in grade school, and he had done it many years ago but the wax had baked and frozen and baked and frozen and never gone away. Matter-of-factly, I called that boy a faggot.
My friend turned to me with one eyebrow raised in a gesture of disbelief.
“Um, hello?” he said. He didn’t have to say anything more. A few months previously, I had found out that my friend was gay.
I hadn’t intended to use the word as a slur. I didn’t mean to say that the boy who’d waxed the ledge outside my mother’s house was gay or that gay people were bad. In the school where I grew up, the word “faggot” was tossed around as a gratuitous insult. I liked it for the guttural sound of it, like “maggot.” There was a strength in the way it rolled off my tongue.
But the hurt on my friend’s face, the way he looked at me like he couldn’t believe what I had just said, changed everything about my perception of that word. I explained to him what I had meant, and he told online pharmacy viagra me it didn’t matter. The intentions behind our words rarely matter more than their consequences.
I was in grade nine. I have never used the word since.
In subsequent years, there are a number of words that I have chosen to remove from my vocabulary, and while I wouldn’t impose my rules for my language on other people, I have yet to hear an argument convincing enough to bring such words back into my life.
For many years, my mother used the word “retard,” no matter how I insisted that it was hurtful. She told me that it was a word from her childhood, and that she didn’t mean it the way people heard it.
It wasn’t until her friend’s disabled son started being called by that name in school, until her own son was identified with a learning disability, that the word started to trickle out of her mouth less and less.
Many times I have heard the argument that culture has taken words like “faggot” and “retard” and changed them to mean something different, much in the way that “literally” no longer means literally. This is an interesting argument, but the intuition that rises in response is that the change in the meaning of the word “literally” is not used to hurt people.
Today, a friend of mine stated that while he still throws the word “faggot” around occasionally, he only does it with people he knows, and who he knows won’t be offended. He censors himself much in the same way that I censor myself when I’m around his mother. I don’t say “fuck” around my friends’ parents, though you can bet I’ll sprinkle it liberally throughout my sentences when in more relaxed company.
Another interesting argument.
My counter-argument is this: People who are offended by the word “fuck” are not a minority that has been systematically oppressed. These people have not had their rights taken away and they are not at a higher risk of violence than other people.
The word “fuck” offends them because it is crude, not because it is being used to marginalize and belittle them.
The word “faggot,” on the other hand, comes from a place that has made it so that there are still parts of the world in which two people who love each other aren’t allowed to get married, among the least harmful results.
It comes from a system that has designated a certain minority as lesser than. It was created by that system to keep those people in their place. One cannot be certain that no one in present company will be offended by that word.
You don’t know which of your friends are closeted or have friends who are. You don’t know which of your friends has a learning disability or knows someone who does. Which is more important – to be hip to the lingo or to do no harm? If anyone has an argument adequately formed to convince me that one can use such words without supporting the systems of oppression from which they are born, please, let me know.
It took a lot of training for me to remove certain words from my vocabulary (I still find myself having the urge to call someone a “pussy” when they can’t kick a soccer ball), and it would be a lot less work to be able to throw words around without really needing to mean them. Until then, I continue pruning my language, difficult though it is, because there are a fuck-ton of people out there who have to deal with way worse shit than I do, and the least I can do as their ally is the work it takes not to use the same language as the people who treat them like dirt.
Making the conscious effort to improve your language in order to reflect how you actually feel about the world isn’t something that’s actually very difficult. In fact, if it’s something you see as hard, you should probably consider yourself lucky that you haven’t had harder things to deal with.
Ana Qarri
Staff Reporter
Feminism is here to destroy the patriarchy, not men.
There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding feminism – one of them being the idea that feminists hate men. Sure, there may be some women feminists who happen to hate men, but being a “man-hater” isn’t a requirement or value of feminism.
Feminism doesn’t aim to bring men down; it aims to viagra for women online bring women up. In fact, while advocating for women’s rights and dispelling negative gender stereotypes, feminism has also benefited men.
The idea that women are less than or inferior has, for centuries, given the “feminine” qualities that some women (and men!) possess a negative reputation. Things like caring, being sensitive and emotional, liking to dress up, wear make-up, and so on have been seen as characteristics solely and exclusively reserved for women.
By changing the way feminine qualities are perceived, less pressure is put on men not to act likes “girls,” which apparently, in our society, is the worst thing a man can be. The pressure to act the way men are supposed to act - whatever that may be - can be overwhelming.
Cases of verbal and physical violence directed at boys who weren’t perceived to fit the societal ideal of masculine have been endless, and raising little boys to become men who can’t recognize the harmful impact of this isn’t fair to anyone.
This emphasis on masculinity has created a culture of silence amongst men.
Men aren’t supposed to talk about feelings or show that they have feelings – that’s weak. Men aren’t supposed to cry in public – that’s only for girls.
With documented cases of male mental health problems rising, this has become much more obvious. The most convincing evidence of what’s being called the “silent crisis” by health professionals can be found in male suicide rates. In 2007, four of five people who had committed suicide in Canada were male. The code of silence that surrounds men’s behaviour has become a barrier that stops men from seeking the help they need, and acknowledging any mental health issues they’re experiencing.
Normalizing the discourse of well-being and self-care for men and alleviating the pressure of acting anything but feminine is just one of the many ways that feminism is creating a better society for men, too.
In addition to redefining gender and the societal expectations of what it should be, feminism also indirectly advocates for men’s rights where the patriarchy has backfired on them and created unfair situations.
One of the most well known examples is child custody. The majority of child custody cases prior to 1970 were won by women. This was mostly a result of the idealization of the mother and child bond and the shift in family structure that took place during the Industrial Revolution. In fact, before the Industrial Revolution, children were seen as property of their fathers, since women couldn’t legally own anything.
The empowerment of women through feminism has had a significant role in the continuous redefinition of parental roles (ex. making it socially acceptable to be a stay-at-home dad), which has made custody cases a determination of what’s in the child’s best interest rather than a gender-biased debate.
Problems with child custody that arise due to gender still continue today, but the push of feminism towards gender equity has definitely helped make procedures fairer than they were.
So if feminism really means “gender equity” and if it’s also important for men, then why does it have to be called feminism?
Because feminism is about empowering women, and in doing so, creates a better society for everyone.
Ana Qarri
The Silhouette
Queer and trans* topics rarely come up in my class discussions (which is an issue for another day), but often when they do, I find that I voluntarily take on the role of makeshift educator.
Just recently in one of my tutorials, someone brought up the Belgian man who was granted permission for euthanasia after an unsatisfactory sex change surgery. What followed could be described as a very awkward, uncomfortable silence and a few unpleasant reactions.
A lot of people aren’t necessarily as exposed to discussions surrounding topics of gender and sexual diversity as I am, which is why I will often reluctantly excuse and overlook these signs of prejudice and ignorance.
While rude and offensive, these moments serve as reminders that there’s still work to do, awareness to raise and people to educate.
I know that a lot of people in the Queer community and other marginalized groups don’t hold the same view about the process of educating privileged folks. I completely understand this perspective; having to constantly repeat your story, the same information; the same facts that are easily accessible online can become frustrating. Sometimes you wish people would take the time to learn about issues that don’t directly affect them.
Unfortunately, as we all probably know, this isn’t the case for most individuals who are privileged in one way or another (myself included with respect to certain privileges I hold).
Becoming an ally to a group is an extensive process – one that never really ends. As someone who isn’t experiencing what the people you’re supporting are experiencing, your activism looks different from theirs.
The process will definitely consist of a lot of mistakes, especially at the start. However, everyone has to start somewhere, and for some people it may be that time they spent five seconds listening to the uncomfortable silence of their tutorial room.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt during the first few moments of this “process.” Even if I was offended by the reactions, the eye-rolls and the sounds of confusion, I don’t like to point fingers or start yelling (at least not right away).
Privileged people have spent their whole life in a society that has taught them that things are a certain way, and I think expecting a two-second paradigm shift to take place isn’t realistic.
That’s why I like to begin the process by educating. Some people are very receptive, and others not so much.
And I think it’s at this point, after I’ve attempted to educate someone on issues they aren’t familiar with, that I can begin to make the distinction between those who have good intentions and are trying to be allies, and those who don’t. The latter, of course, can be incredibly unnerving, and it can be another reason why members of marginalized communities don’t like having the burden of educating privileged people placed on them.
However, I think it’s important to recognize the difference between well-intentioned folks who might be asking ignorant questions in the process of learning, and those are intentionally offending and refusing to learn/unlearn.
That’s not to say that members of marginalized groups owe anyone any sort of education. In the end, it’s up to the person and not the entire community. Everyone has different experiences with oppression, activism and advocacy, and educating should never be an individual responsibility.
So when someone is talking about a group of people you’re not very familiar with, listen. When you hear terms you’ve never heard before, try to remember them. If someone is getting up the courage to educate a room full of strangers on a topic they’re intimately familiar with, respect them.
These aren’t hard rules to follow, and can make the discussion have a positive tone, while also making the burden of the educating that a lot of marginalized people feel obligated to provide much more bearable.
