Tart

This morning I had a conversation about feminism with some friends on Twitter.  This week's Secret Teacher article in the Guardian  discussed why 'feminism is still  a dirty word in the classroom.' http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/nov/23/feminism-classroom-dirty-word-secret-teacher and I am really encouraged that people are starting to discuss the linguistics around the word feminism.  I am glad that we are starting to have these conversations.  Until there is global equality between men and women and girls and boys then feminists still have work to do.  The secret teacher notes how women do not appear in the History curriculum but we know that there were women in history.  Women have always been there and doing things.  It's just that no one ever thought that what they were doing was important enough to write down.  That's why it's called his-story; half of it is missing.

We know (those of us discussing the subject on Twitter) that if we admit to being a feminist then many people, who we know to be intelligent, well educated, thoughtful individuals will look at us as though we are strange beings from outer-space.  They say, "You can't be one of those, you have such nice shoes."

The solution could be to change the word.   We could call people who want to fight or argue for gender equality personists but we shouldn't have to. The word isn't the problem.

I pointed out on Twitter that all female words are considered to be bad things.  In our society, male seems to equate to good and female bad.  My friend questioned, "All of them?" and so I've been trying to think of any female word that was good and so far I've failed.

Cow, sow, bitch, pussy, queen, vixen and mare are all female animals that are used as insults.  The only female animal names I can find that don't seem to be particularly insulting are Jill, hen, tigress and pen.  Male animal names are less often used as insults and often seen as compliments; buck, bull, ram, stag, macho (male llama) and stud.  Sexual part words from both genders are considered to be insulting but the very worst words are female.  Given a choice, you'd rather be called a dick than a cunt.  It was hard to type that second word, which just shows how bad it is.  There are more euphemisms for female parts too, so there are more choice of insults available. Even worse, words that just mean female person are insults.  "You throw like a girl," "Just a little Princess," "That woman,"

Some things that are bad have male attributes and therefore end up seeming good.  Any boy who dares to show his emotions is told to 'man-up' because bottling everything up and being emotionally retarded is a male characteristic and although we all know it is really bad, it therefore becomes good.  Being sexually promiscuous is bad for a woman and good for a man.  Women are tarts, whores, sluts, slags and men are studs.  The line in Grease where she says, "Tell me about it stud," would have been a whole lot different if he'd said to her, "Tell me about it tart!"

Tell me about it, stud

I recently read a very interesting paper about gender representations in children's literature by Janice McCabe http://www.vanneman.umd.edu/socy428/McCabeFGPT11.pdf, where they found the balance between male and female characters is skewed towards the male.  This was particularly noticeable when the character was an animal and that when animals were not assigned a gender then parents reading the book would automatically call the animal 'he'.  

We all do it and you may be reading this, thinking that I've gone totally crazy, focusing on the use of a words in this way.  After all what does it matter?  There are good men and excellent women who use phrases like, "throw like a girl," and it doesn't make them not want equality.  I know that but it doesn't hurt to understand how ingrained into our language the negative connotations of being female are.  We need to remember that it's good to be a girl, a woman, a princess and that tarts are wonderful.

Sticky Walnut Tart