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historically, the english language, like everything else, has belonged to men. and so we find ourselves, english speakers that is (i can't speak of other languages because i am monolingual) in 2007, with a language of around a quarter of a million words (excluding inflections), and still totally inadequate for women who want to describe our own experience. and even if i didn't believe that, (but i do), i would still believe that everyone should have the right to invent and develop language, that it is important for us to be able to do so. does it matter if we have several terms that mean the same thing? i don't think so, i like the variety. and anyway, many words may very well describe the same thing, but approached from different angles.

so, we should all have the right to develop our language, including women. however, i have noticed (how could i not) that many people are very resistant to the idea of women even using too much language. i suppose an example could be how women aren't expected, even now, to have a vocabulary of swear words that matches mens, how that is frowned on. another example might be the way women have historically been denied access to education. another example might be slang - anyone else ever felt left out of slang, like it belongs primarily to men? i have found amongst my male friends that they take to using new slang amongst each other much more quickly than I do, and when I do it, it isn't cool anymore. plus, i cant help but notice that so much slang is deliberately marked as male-only, in that it is sexist. some women do use it anyway, but i think many of us feel uncomfortable using words like "pimp" or "rape" casually, and with no real connection to the meanings we understand by them. an example, which i found disturbing and a little bit triggering:

"you fucking raped me in that game!" - one of my partner's male friends after losing a game

anyway - my point is that i think women in many ways are 'not allowed' the same level of use of the english language that men are. and it is not just equal use of the language that we have been denied, but also we have been denied a hand in it's creation.

feminists have made attempts to create some language, language that maybe can be useful to women, to describe our lives. the political purpose of feminist words is to remind us to think of the women behind the words. so, for example, 'herstory' draws attention to women's place in history, as well as reminding us that women have historically been deliberately omitted from history records.

i see feminist words being mocked all the time, by left and right alike. they're "silly", they're "unnecessary", etc. it is important that we think about this, and decide whether we want women to have the right, the basic human right, in my opinion, to be able to shape the language that also belongs to us.

i have written this post in a very short, general way, and i have many more thoughts on the subject. actually, i find the more i read about language, the more fascinated by it i become. but i wanted to write something brief, now, because i have recently been seeing a particular word, invented by a woman, developed by feminists, being mocked, not being taken seriously, being denied any validity as a word. and that mocking i have seen coming from other feminists, and i would like to ask them to think about that, and to understand why it is important for us to support woman made language, and to support the basic right of women to create language that is useful for us, whether or not they personally will use that word at all.

the word i am talking about, at this moment, is pornstitution. pornstitution is a useful word, from a feminist point of view, for several reasons, and i am going to give two.

first, pornstitution draws attention to the fact that pornography is not always 'just' pictures, or 'just' film, or 'just' text, but that much pornography is real, live, people. pornstitution - the amalgamation of pornography and prostitution - draws attention to the fact that there are human beings in the pornography to which it refers.

second, pornography, as a term, can mean anything from an erotic written story to film of a rape made available on the internet. the term 'pornstitution' helps narrow the focus a little - and when people use it they are talking about pornography that is made from filming and photographing prostitution. the category is very wide, still, and i hope that we create additional terms to explain what we mean more fully.

and picking up on that last bit - i think we struggle a lot to understand each other, as feminists, because we do have a lack of feminist words to describe what we are talking about, because so many of the usual terms are defined from a misogynist perspective. some terms that i am struggling with include 'sex industry' and 'sex worker', not because i want to deny the agency of all workers within the sex industry, but because they are such wide categories that it is hard to understand exactly what they mean, who they refer to. for example, sex worker could refer to a person who works on phone sex lines, or a stripper in a cheap and relatively unsafe venue, as compared to a trained erotic dancer in a safer venue, or many other types of sex worker. i have also seen the term used, many times now, to refer to traffiked (abducted, enslaved, and raped) children - "child sex worker", which imo, legitimises the rape of children as 'work', which surely must be a warping of the original intentions? the point is, that the term 'sex worker', as far as i'm aware, was invented to make clear the agency and choice of the worker, and to validate the work, but it has now expanded in it's use, to include those people who have been coerced, have been forced, and cannot be said to be expressing agency or making choice. i think that this is something we need to be addressing, both those of us supporting those sex workers with 'agency', and those of us trying to provide support to people who do not.

and this is problematic as well, i think, when we start to talk about certain groups 'representing' sex workers - who do they mean? who makes up these agencies? i mean - couldnt a pimp describe themselves as a worker in the sex industry? theoretically, pimps could lobby for 'sex workers rights', but that group i think would not be representing the rights of the prostitutes who work for the pimps. but who would know? i am not suggesting, yet (and i dont know if i will be), that everyone in a 'sex workers rights' organisation should show their credentials, or what credentials i would even ask for, but it does worry me that 'sex workers rights' orgs can set up and claim to represent all 'sex workers' without telling us who they are, who is involved, who is making the decisions. i know i'm throwing out ideas here, but i think the issue of who is representing 'sex workers', is an important one.

anyway, more thoughts, slung out there. i hope some others find this useful or interesting.