The Words to Say It
Aug. 9, 2016
By Janet Freedman
What does it mean to "pinkwash," to be an "intellectual bully," to be a "feminist," or a "womanist," an "anti-Semite," or an "Islamaphobe?"
These are some of the words I recently spent two hours discussing with a wonderful group of eight HBI Gilda Slifka summer interns. I worked more closely with one of them, Ruth Fertig, a Brandeis senior, on my current research, "The Words to Say It; The Ways to Do It." Fertig specifically looked at language and images pertaining to Jews in popular television shows.
Like other intern supervisors, I was invited to have a conversation with the entire class of interns and discovered that they are all as bright and interesting as Ruth. I shared with them how my concern about the words we use in our work as activists grew from my research for my book, "Reclaiming the Feminist Vision: Consciousness Raising and Small Group Practice," published in 2014, in which I present a notion of feminism as an evolutionary movement that is continually redefined through conversation and dialogue. The goal of my current work is to find ways to use words with care so that our understandings of them can be communicated clearly, positively and non-judgmentally.
I value the critiques of feminism as a social movement and seek to understand the reasons why people have questioned the use of the word. Looking at the word's derivation has helped me to consider the social circumstances that gave rise to it. Like many movements that advance social equality and justice, the idea that women should have equal rights originated from concerns of members of the privileged, dominant culture whose intellectual, social and economic circumstances permitted them to put forth ideas on behalf of a subordinate group.
So, it is not surprising that the 19th century white, male activists in the U.S. shaped the debate that separated and pitted against one another the abolition of slavery; and the movement for women’s rights ignoring female slaves, or that the issues of educated, white, middle-class women dominated the second wave of feminism. Black, Latina, LBGTQ and others insisted, "You don't speak for me" and have redefined feminism as a word and a movement in important, positive ways. Postmodern theories that call for gender to replace women or men as a category also have expanded feminist frameworks. Yet, there is always a need to determine who is included, left out or misrepresented by a word. In the wisdom of Virginia Woolf, "New words to describe new values are much to be desired."
I applaud "new words," including "womanism," a word many black women choose to express their struggles against race and gender that draws on the example and experiences of their foremothers — and fathers — and embraces black spirituality.
I also want to reaffirm "old words" not as a way of going back but as a process of moving forward. Rather than discarding words, it is important to look at their origins, trace their histories, and accept, welcome and incorporate changing understandings in an ongoing search for meaning that can inform social justice practice.
The Gilda Slifka interns built on these ideas, expressing that we live in a time when words and terms move in and out of fashion before their meanings can be measured. Yet their use is adopted, often as a way to express affiliation or find acceptance within a group.
Examples of this included one intern's observation that her own changing use of language reflected her participation in a variety of communities — Jewish non-profits, her earlier Yeshiva educational setting and her current classrooms where certain words are used with frequency. To not employ the parlance would make her feel marginal; to ask questions about the meaning of terms might lead others to assume "stupidity."
Another intern reported that she returned to graduate work at her institution after several years away from the academy to find a number of terms with which she was unfamiliar, or which she had encountered previously in her reading but were now used in new ways that called for clarification that was not usually proffered.
Together, we thought of some of words we've encountered in our reading, political and social lives. Some of the words that spilled forth were "intersectionality," "problematic," "settler colonialism," "pinkwashing" and others that I don't have the space to include here.
Many of the words indicate affiliation with the "progressive" political community in which I've long claimed membership and with which some of the interns also identify. Our discussion revealed that meanings might shift given the context in which they are used. Intersectional theory, first described by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 revealed that the discrimination experienced by black women was not a sum of two injustices, but a complex interaction of both gender and race. Feminists now work from an understanding that social categories such as race, age, class, ability and others create interconnected, overlapping systems of disadvantage.
But what was a revelatory insight has since been used as a rallying cry connecting some individuals, groups and movements and leaving out, or actually targeting, other groups. For example, Jewish is seldom named as an identity or anti-Semitism as an injustice. Students for Justice in Palestine and similar groups aim for alliances with Black Lives Matter in fighting the oppression of people of color with Israel named as a "colonial settler" oppressor of Palestinians. There is no acknowledgement, or perhaps no awareness, that there are Jews of color in Israel and within and supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S.
Pinkwashing is another term that has been used to demean Israel. The term originated with a "think before you pink" campaign developed by Breast Cancer Action. It combines the words "pink" and "whitewashing" to cite the practice of corporations to use pink ribbons on their products to promote merchandise. The organization exposed some companies, which claimed to be fighting breast cancer while using known carcinogens in their products. It has now been adopted by anti-Israel activists who accuse Israel of using LBGTQ-friendly policies to mask their mistreatment of Palestinians.
One intern called behaviors like this "intellectual bullying." Intellectual bullies often use the word "problematic." One intern opined that the word gained ascendency through the work of philosopher Michel Foucault. It now signals a description for actions that undermine social justice activism, or to describe a white person who doesn’t understand how they are implicated in black oppression, or simply not "up to speed." The word can be hurled against a person who has no clue that their understanding is limited or their behavior is offensive, so there is no opportunity to become informed and involved in a positive way in social justice work.
I shared with the interns the comments of a transgender woman who was a featured speaker at a conference I attended recently. She spoke of how ineffective calling out tactics are, noting that among the people who would not use or understand the term "cisgender" to refer to people whose gender identity is consistent with their assigned sex at birth is her own mother and strongest ally in her journey to affirm her female identity.
I wish I had the opportunity to spend more hours with these bright women so that we could expand on some of the suggestions that came up to respond to bullying and language distortions. As a start, we can ask questions about words that need clarification, speak up on behalf of those who are attacked for their misuse of words, raise issues of who is included, excluded or misrepresented by a term and join in efforts to build a "calling in" culture that invites dialogue and discussion rather than quick judgment and divisiveness.
Dr. Janet Freedman is a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center, a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the author of "Reclaiming the Feminist Vision: Consciousness Raising and Small Group Practice" (McFarland, 2014).