September 25, 2007

Words are powerful. If I say to someone that they're stupid, that's meaningful. That is a message that they take with them. When I tell someone that they are kind they take that too. While the messages that are directly conveyed to someone are powerful, so are the words used by the women and men in our media. I have recently been aghast at the language used by two different talk show hosts on Air America Radio this past week. Today Ed Schultz was discussing the way he was treated by the UAW and he said that he was "passed around like a French prostitute." He was also discussing how the UAW was engaged in old-thinking and this got me to thinking about how old the thinking is of someone who thinks that he can simply pass off a reference to the degradation of women as a simple inconvenience. Although the gender was not indicated, it is clear that the implied gender of the prostitute is female, because who else would be discussed so casually as being “passed around” than a woman.

This comment by Ed Schultz reminded me of another comment by Lionel on the Lionel Show, also on Air America Radio that happened last week. I can't remember exactly what Lionel was talking about but he commented that “it was like being raped” and then he went on to reference that the reason it felt like that was because it was an hour he would not get back. I continued to listen to the show for a bit to see if he would recognize his error and recant his comment, but apparently references to rape do not need to be reexamined so quickly so on he went.

This casual use of language referring to degradation or violence that is most often perpetrated against women in order to discuss a casual inconvenience on any radio channel is inappropriate and lazy.

Lionel is not the first person to use the act of rape to describe something mundane. I find that the word rape is often bantered about as if it does not matter, as if it can be used to highlight a great inconvenience.

The problem with a thoughtless use of language is that it does matter. The use of words like rape or comments about passing around prostitutes send subtle messages that those things really don’t matter and the fact that these things most often happen to women by men means that the women who they happen to don’t matter as much, because rape is simply an inconvenience and prostitutes don’t deserve any protections anyway.

As a society it is important to be thoughtful with what we say. These messages are conveyed to everyone, including children. Parents need to counteract these messages and be careful with the language that they use around their children. I don’t want my children to think that what happens to other people doesn't matter. It matters deeply.

When we talk about actions against people with thoughtlessness that means that those actions don’t require any thought that they don’t matter, but they do.

Remember, your words are powerful.