To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink. – George Orwell, 1984
When George Orwell wrote his brilliant dystopian novel in 1948, he popularized and named a number of concepts which were already well-established in a primitive form in the three-decade-old Soviet Union, and which he had the foresight to recognize would eventually become part of the established practice of every government. He was not attempting to predict that the world he described would actually exist in 36 years; in fact, the novel’s narrator isn’t even sure the year is 1984, only that the government says it is. Orwell chose the year 1984 by simply reversing the last two digits of the year in which the novel was written; he wanted a time not too far into the future so as to point out that the danger was imminent. This fact is widely known by everyone who paid attention in high-school English class, yet when the year 1984 actually arrived we had to endure countless television commentators saying that Orwell’s “prediction” hadn’t come true. Unfortunately, they were lying; aside from the fact that it was never intended to be a “prediction” in the first place (which they knew very well), surely any decent reporter realized that the nightmare of the fictional 1984 was alive and well, albeit in a more subtle form. The practices used in the novel, mixed in most Western countries with elements from Huxley’s Brave New World, were common all over the globe by the real year 1984, and have only become more so in the intervening quarter-century. Those reporters’ foolish statements could at that time have been inspired by childlike optimism or “whistling in the dark”, but the only way in which a well-informed reporter could honestly issue such a statement today is by the use of doublethink.
In 1984, one of the ways in which the Party controlled thought was by the use of Newspeak, a politicized version of English in which terms for things the government didn’t want people thinking about were replaced by approved terms, often neutered so they were unable to evoke strong emotions. For example, “bad” and similar words had been removed from the language so as to make criticism of anything difficult; the approved word was “ungood”. So the strongest criticism of the government (or anything else) it was possible to formulate even in the privacy of one’s thoughts was “doubleplusungood”, which lacks the impact of even such a simple word as “terrible”. Now obviously, Western governments have not yet seized control of all media, but commercial television and print outlets have for at least the past 27 years obediently used nearly every “Newspeak” term handed down by government, business or special-interest groups, and most of those terms find their way into general use within months of their media adoption no matter how cumbersome, ugly or inaccurate they may be.
As Orwell pointed out, such words tends to change the thinking of the ones who use them; I’ve already discussed “homophobia”, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has seen people using “African-American” to mean “Negro” even when talking about black people in countries outside of the Americas! Words have the power to change thoughts, which is exactly what the peddlers of euphemisms or politicized neologisms want. One such construction is “prostituted women”, the term neofeminists prefer for “whores”. It is impossible to use such a term regularly without its insidious poison entering one’s cognition; “prostituted women” automatically implies that prostitution is something that is done to women rather than something we choose to do ourselves. To use the term is to state that women are the passive, helpless victims of men, and as such it is a glaring example of the doublethink which permeates neofeminism. On the one hand, neofeminists state that women are just as competent as men, yet insist that women need special legal protections. They observe that women are rational adults who can control our own destinies, yet lobby for paternalistic “mandatory prosecution” laws because they claim women aren’t competent to decide for ourselves whether to press charges against abusive men. They say that women should have control over our own bodies, unless of course we choose to use those bodies for sex work. They recognize that women can think for ourselves, then demand we adhere to neofeminist groupthink or be labeled “traitors”. Many of them openly despise men and consider their characteristic behaviors a pathological deviation from female norms, yet they promote all-consuming male-style careers for women and many even adopt masculine modes of dress and grooming. The heterosexual wing of neofeminism bitches about male sexual behaviors, yet encourages women to act in exactly the same way. And so on, and so on, and so on, ad absurdum.
Neofeminists are the absolute champions of doublethink, but the strongest challenger would have to be the group Orwell first used the term about, namely bureaucrats. A perfect example would be US government officials who criticize China and other oppressive regimes for censoring the internet, yet vote for schemes which would allow them to do the same thing; one of the senators who voted to allow internet censorship later wrote this article on Huffington Post. And I don’t need to remind you what these same champions of free speech are saying about Julian Assange.
But doublethink isn’t restricted to federal bureaucrats; state and local ones are very good at it as well. Though most reasonable people who support the decriminalization of one consensual activity (such as marijuana use) tend to also support the decriminalization of others (such as prostitution), politicians are not reasonable and can easily rationalize the denunciation of one form of prohibition while aggressively enforcing prohibition of the other. The city of Oakland, California is one example; while it tolerates medical marijuana dispensaries and is considering a plan to license four huge indoor marijuana farms in flagrant violation of both federal and state law, it has also recently decided to attack streetwalkers by suing the hotels which they use for their dates:
Oakland City Attorney John Russo announced a new strategy in the city’s struggle to halt the sex trade Wednesday: his office is suing three hotels he called “hubs of prostitution”…The city lawsuits seek up to $25,000 in civil penalties from the owners of the three hotels, and may also seek to shut the businesses down for up to a year. The suits are based on a 1914 state law that allows authorities to seek damages from the owners of buildings where prostitution takes place. “The owners of these hotels cannot turn a blind eye to what’s going on in their rooms,” Russo told reporters during a press conference.
Meanwhile, just a few hundred miles east, the state of Nevada does it the other way around; while it was the first American state to legalize gambling and one form of prostitution, and has very liberal liquor laws, it has rejected five marijuana legalization referendums and aggressively persecutes marijuana dispensaries. Do you think if we put Oakland politicians and Nevada politicians into a room together and forced them to argue it out, their heads would explode? Only someone skilled at doublethink could possibly believe such laws have any basis in reality.
You know, I’m thinking maybe I didn’t ever actually read Brave New World and 1984 after all. It was a long time ago, and I’m thinking that I only read about them.
Maybe I need to read (reread?) them now.
That’s why I included the links; every thinking person needs to read these books, and anyone who hasn’t read them since high school needs to reread them.
Readers, I urge you to read (or reread) these important works; they’re both available in any used-book store for less than the price of a cup of coffee, or for free on the internet at the sites I’ve linked. I warn you, they are not “fun” reads (well, Brave New World is at first but it doesn’t stay that way), but they are IMPORTANT reads. Invest the time and effort; you’ll be glad you did.
Wow! There are available for free on line. That’s pretty cool. I’ve read them, but I can’t remember that much about Brave New World. I read so much it’s all starting to run together in my mind (probably the beginnings of dementia).
I use a quote from 1984 on my photography site. Oops. I suppose I should include the NSFW disclaimer…
Maggie, that is a very nicely written observation of the hypocrisy of those who support their favorite “vices” while mindlessly condemning others. The most ubiquitous example, of course, is the fact that the drug war is largely supported by those who drink and sell alcohol.
The biggest threat to your freedom is not the government, but your next door neighbor. The government can only do what citizens allow it to get away with.
It seems somehow fitting that both of those books are available online (though I must point out that 1984 is in the public domain in Canada but not the U.S., which caused this ironic incident at Amazon.
Exactly. And closer to home, I’ve run into more than one homosexual who disapproves of whores.
Absolutely, which is exactly why (as I pointed out in my column of November 5th) the equation of the word “democracy” with “freedom” is pure nonsense. As Frederick Douglass said, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Another example is the heavy black vote in California in favor of a gay marriage ban (prop 8 ). There was some surprise that blacks, having suffered centuries of discrimination based on race, would be so unsympathetic to those being discriminated against for their sexual orientation.
Just finished Brave New World. What a pointless novel. The only remotely likable character is Lenina, who is a bit of a shallow-minded twit. There are plot holes you could drive a Model T through. Mustapha Mond makes it clear that the World State society was inevitable (the Ireland Experiment failed, as did the Cyprus Experiment), so what’s the point in trying anything else? It’s either that or the life on the savage reservation, which is every bit as stifled and repressed as the life in London, and without the pleasantries.
I am glad that I read it, because it gets cited so much. Why I’m not sure, since it’s social commentary is as out-of-date as the slide-rules in Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. But HSWT wasn’t about slide rules.
Well, I’m off to read a couple of critiques of BNW, and then to 1984, though I don’t hold out much hope for it.
I guess I have to divide my scarce free time that I devote to the honest courtesan archives then…. sigh. I really enjoy them. But, I agree, it’s been a long time since I read 84 and I never read brave new world so I’ll give it a go. 84 was pretty short as I recall.
I’m honored to share my time with Orwell and Huxley. 🙂
I agree with Maggie: they are wonderful books and well worth the read, for many reasons. (Both Huxley and Orwell, by the way, were interesting characters with interesting lives and beliefs.)
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying here, Maggie — i.e. that some groups are (consciously or unconsciously) using words as smokescreens to reality to suggest what they don’t prove (‘prostituted women’). But in factual terms, I actually disagree with your description of the process: it’s not because words are ‘misused’ (‘vagina’ instead of vulva or pudenda, ‘homophobia’ instead of ‘anti-gay prejudice’) that this happens, but rather because words are used with their contextual/pragmatic implications to suggest ideas that aren’t there (see the so-called ‘weasel words’).
It is certainly true that ‘vagina’ had (and in medical terms still often has) a meaning different than what it has acquired in common parlance, but this is simple metonymy, a phenomenon so frequent in the history of words as to be unremarkable. (‘Evidence’ also didn’t use to mean any material objects, but only the abstract quality of that which is evident, i.e. ‘obviousness’; it no longer does, and the English language hasn’t gone shipwrecked because of that.) The word ‘demographic’ is now often used in a new sense (‘specifically defined subgroup of the general population’ rather than ‘relating to demography’), and this is not going by itself to harm English or the capacity of English speakers for critical thought.
The idea that ‘words shape thought’ is the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is demonstrably not true. The weaker idea that ‘words influence thought’ is closer to truth (and even that is controversial, and it is not clear how exactly it works). This is the reason why Orwell is ultimally wrong about Newspeak, by the way: a word like ‘ungood’ would simply end up meaning the same as ‘bad’ by normal semantic change as long as we still had everyday experiences that correspond to the meaning of ‘bad’ (language responds to real-life needs, not to abstract decisions by grammarians) and therefore being just as subversive. (The only way in which Newspeak could possibly work — and this is a personal opinion here — is if it were constantly changed, so that ‘ungood’ was replaced by something else as soon as it struck roots in the language; but it’s quite possible that people can get used to even that.)
(I’ve had this discussion with neofeminists very often–they also believe in some strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which leads to the — usually quite exaggerated — desire to ‘de-sex language’. What they don’t realize is the symbolic, and thus ultimately arbitrary, value of the very new words they want to propose; and how they may actually be self-defeating. But that’s a different topic. Did you ever do a column on ‘gender and language’, by the way? It’s one of my favorite topics, as you might guess! :-))
In the end, I think the problem is not the introduction of new words, but new definitions, and the use of their association to suggest rather than argue for ideas. “Prostituted,” for instance, is not a new word, since “prostitute” as a verb (and presumably its simply past and past participle forms) have existed in English since the 16h century. The problem is not with the verb itself, but with the suggestion of passivity (going in this case as far as victimhood) that any past participle tends to convey. This is similar, for instance, to labeling (depending on the ‘contextual suggestions’ that one wishes to make) those who oppose legal abortion as being ‘pro-life’ or ‘anti-choice’, or those who support as ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-abortion’.
My suggestion would be that people learn to read the contexts (‘textual exegesis’) and become better at recognizing implied and/or contextual-pragmatic implications and ‘suggestions’ in the texts one reads — lest one sees oneself in agreement or disagreement with things one has not even thought about yet.
*sigh* Asehpe, you’re splitting hairs again. What is a definition but a set of words? To use the example of “homophobia”, an entire nation of people has now not only become convinced that a technical term (which, unlike mundane words, is not subject to redefinition by popular use) means something completely different from what it actually means, but also that a anyone to whom it is applied is psychologically maladjusted. This definition did not shift by natural usage; it was willfully and purposefully mis-defined by political organizations with an axe to grind. That, my friend, is thought-control whether you call it so or not, just as surely as the use of the word “sexist” to mean “recognizing that sexual differences exist in nature”. They are used much as the word “heresy” used to be used until it fell out of favor.
As for constant redefinition, good grief man, if you don’t remember that Newspeak DID constantly redefine words it’s time to reread 1984, and if you don’t recognize that redefinition happens in real life you need to consider the phenomenon of the euphemism treadmill.
* sigh *… I don’t disagree with you, Maggie. Using words to create certain impressions, trying to create and popularize new meanings, all of this can be done for bad purposes and with bad results (your example, ‘heresy,’ is a case in point). All I’m saying is that this has happened with lots of words in our vocabulary, for all kinds of purposes (one example being what you cited, the ‘euphemism treadmill’, a subcase of what linguists usually call ‘semantic bleaching’); in some cases nobody remembers that anymore.
Unfortunately, technical terms dance the same dance, especially when they become popular (who remembers that ‘idiot,’ ‘imbecile’ and ‘moron’ used to be technical terms with as precise a definition as ‘homophobia’ or ‘vagina’ still have in some medical contexts?); which is what is happening to ‘homophobia.’
‘Vagina’ has probably changed meaning beyond hope by now; I don’t think it’s going to go back to mean what it still sometimes does in medical texts. ‘Homophobia’ may be also gone too far, too, much to my (and I see also your) chagrin. ‘Feminism’ is also all but gone, like ‘socialism’ — again much to my chagrin. But such is life. Conservatives like Glenn Beck are trying to do the same to ‘progressive.’
As for Orwell and the changing nature of Newspeak… speed would be important. The redefinitions in every new Newspeak Dictionary are ridiculously insufficient for that; basic words like ‘bad’ strike roots so quickly that ‘ungood’ would simply mean ‘bad’ in a month or so; and anyway people don’t follow the dictionary. Even if new words were created sufficiently quickly, it probably wouldn’t work anyway, for a number of reasons. IngSoc would have to change people’s brains — what they were also trying to do, of course. But if they did, Newspeak would basically be unnecessary.
I’m not splitting hairs, Maggie. I’m agreeing with you. I simply added my take on how it actually happens, plus my own antivenom: to remain aware of contextual presuppositions and implications (the ‘spin’) that certain media people are trying to give to their words, e.g. by pragmatic implication (with ‘homophobia’) or by carefully chosen forms (the passive ‘prostituted’), or by a number of other methods.
Also, there is a problem with ‘real-world’ examples of doublethink: the actual contradiction tends to be hidden from view because of different perceptions of reality, which is why to the real-life ‘doublethinkers’ (unlike to Orwell’s willingly doublethinking characters) what they do doesn’t feel like a contradiction. Rather than real Orwellian doublethinkers, they tend to behave more as reality-deniers.
So, neofeminists who want both freedom for women yet argue against prostitution do not (again unlike Orwell’s characters) willingly entertain mutually contradictory beliefs; they get rid of the contradiction by denying that women willingly choose to be prostitutes or porn actresses. They deny reality by cherry-picking those cases which support such views and ignoring those that don’t. This is not really what Orwellian doublethinking bureaucrats did in the MiniTruth (remember Winston Smith describing his day at work, which consisted of changing and doctoring photos, rewriting old newspaper articles for the archives and destroying the originals, i.e. consciously lying).
Where I do see something akin to doublethinking (though it is so frequent in non-neofeminists that it can’t really be seen as defining them) is their curious capacity to detect the very same kind of cherry-picking, reality-denying behavior in others, but not in their work. When they accuse others of ‘changing reality’ to support their ‘false claims’ (as they often do pro-prostitution activist organizations), they show that they understand the concepts and the process; yet they are apparently incapable of seeing the very same concepts and process in their behavior. This does seem to necessatate either run-of-the-mill hypocrisy and cynicism, or then at least some psychological mechanism to protect their own practices from their own scrutiny (though it is quite possible that the process is unconscious and emotion-based, i.e. not exactly what Orwell was talking about. But then again, if we take exactly Orwell’s definition for conscious doublethinking — not cynical lying –, then it may well be that conscious doublethinking is psychologically impossible; one always needs to fool oneself to ‘doublethink’.)
You’re mistaking Winston Smith’s psychological processes for those of all Party members. I think Orwell’s point (as revealed in Part 3) is that conscious doublethink is impossible, and that people like Winston Smith either achieve cognitive dissonance like the modern feminists who justify lying “for the cause” or else end up in “re-education” as happens both in 1984 and in real-world “sensitivity training” and “john schools”.
Now, one idea about 1984 that has just occurred to me is that maybe Orwell was indeed aware that the perfection that his IngSoc demanded for Oceania was indeed impossible (barring a Matrix-like infrastructure).
Maybe he was subtly suggesting that what the IngSoc really wanted was to create the impression that a big breakthrough in the control of reality was about to happen. So Newspeak is about to make it impossible for dissent to even be thinkable, but is not quite there yet; the programming of Oceanic citizens is about to become perfect (“we’re working on the elimination of orgasm!”), but is not quite there yet.
Making it look like that to the average middle-level bureaucrat citizen like Winston would have the advantage of attacking the roots of any possible rebelliousness by claiming that it is ultimately hopeless: we’re about to make it impossible for people like you to even exist, it’s going to happen in the next few years, and you simply won’t have time to achieve anything. Just like the ‘eternal enemy’ Emmanuel Goldstein, just like the eternal ‘battles that are about to bring the war to a close’, there is no real truth behind them: they are just propaganda elements used to create a certain feeling in the minds of the citizens of Ocenia, so as to keep them under control.
Could it be that this is what Orwell was thinking about? That would give his story an interesting spin. (The only danger for the Party, of course, would be if someone — say Winston — should ever realize that this was the case, i.e. that even O’Brien’s boasting to Winston was ultimately a calculated lie.)
Well, that was not the point in Orwell’s famous definition, which you quoted; nor was it the exercise Winston Smith and O’Brien in their infamous exercises: (“how many fingers, Winston?”….”And suddenly I really saw five.”… “Now you see how it can be done.”). It wasn’t simply “re-education”; it had to do with altering sensory perception, with making the very physical world look as the Party said it did. Which of course is not doable with O’Brien’s methods; using Matrix-like virtual reality would be better, but Orwell didn’t know about this possibility (and he was much more interested in creating obvious parallels to things that were happening in the Soviet Union at the time than in really achieving a workable, feasible solution for the problem of putting physical reality fully under the control of the Party).
Of course, it is true that Winston is probably different from the usual Party member. After all, as he himself realized, he would ultimately have to be killed, no matter how sincerely he learned to love the Big Brother. It is quite possible that there were at some level people who did know what reality was like, and who were cynically playing the game of putting everybody else under their control for the sheer pleasure of power (“think of a boot forever on the face of your enemy”). But I suppose the usual middle-level Party bureaucrat would have to think pretty much like Winston after his rebelliousness was de-programmed, i.e. actually seeing the physical world as the Party wanted it to be.
If you really believe that, I suspect I’ve read a lot more than you have on the psychological effects of torture and sleep deprivation. I assure you that it is not only doable, but is regularly used by cults, governments and other such mind-control groups. As this very basic article points out via a quote from Vaknin’s Psychology of Torture, “Torture is about reprogramming the victim to succumb to an alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the abuser. It is an act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination.”
A victim who has been sufficiently tortured can be induced to see however many fingers the torturer wishes him to see or even to believe in events that never happened. I suggest you do a bit of research into the subject and also into related phenomena such as Stockholm Syndrome and False Memory Syndrome. Human perception is far more malleable than most people prefer to believe. 🙁
Indeed, Maggie, but such changed perceptions are not stable, given the need to interact with the outside world. Which is why “re-programmed people” always have to be followed — to make sure that the new ideas, thoughts and perceptions that they have been “taught” with O’Brien’s behavioristic methods are not “damaged” by the influence of reality (with its almost infinite range of variability). As Winston himself realizes, he ultimately has to be killed, no matter how much he loves the Big Brother: his re-programming, like all programming, no matter how perfect, cannot be trusted to always work as it should (just as a probe on Mars may face unexpected challenges and malfunction, no matter how well built it was).
Ultimately, the subject’s link with physical reality cannot be completely severed (except in Matrix-like situations), or else the subject will become useless for dealing with any non-stereotypical aspect of said reality. Winston wouldn’t be able to creatively perform his functions of doctoring photographs and rewriting archived articles if his link to physical reality were completely severed (again barring a Matrix-like situation).
Which is ultimately why cultures (also a kind of programming) are never perfectly stable and keep constantly changing. And also the reason why a Skinnerian behaviorist paradise like Walden Two would actually not work.
Reality is simply too complicated. Either you manipulate every aspect of it (= Matrix), or it will interact with and ultimately change any programming you care to make: on humans, on computers, on social patterns… Panta rhei, ouden menei: everything flows, nothing remains. That is ultimately why O’Brien’s method cannot achieve the perfection that Orwell’s IngSoc demands.
Of course, O’Brien’s methods are quite OK if you don’t demand perfection; hence the popularity of torture in the history of the world. My point is simply that 1984 as Orwell describes it is about perfection; and without a Matrix-like infrastructure this is not possible (and even a Matrix-like infrastructure would imply certain ‘eternal regress’ paradoxes that are probably ultimately unsolvable; one of these paradoxes is explored in the plot of the Matrix movie).
Which is, of course, why in the real world we see a combination of 1984 and Brave New World methods; the triumvirate of social learning, reward and punishment is much more stable than any of its elements taken singly.
Indeed, Maggie. But there was something about Brave New World that made it more frightening to me than 1984: because 1984 was so much about “perfect evil”, it wasn’t so hard to see that the situation described there should be fought against, i.e. it seduces nobody; but the situation in Brave New World… that one would have the support of many people, it could even establish itself without the appeal of force (whereas the IngSoc needed the Eternal War). There would be people out there sincerely defending it, telling us that this is better than all the alternatives. Mustapha Mond’s conversation with the Savage scared me a lot more than O’Brien’s with Winston; among other things, because you can feel how sincerely well-meaning and, well, good the Resident World Controller actually is. He cares about people and their happiness (“you’re claiming the right to be unhappy”) — unlike O’Brein, who only cares about power. Brr!… Brave New World is really perverse… Ultimately it would be as unstable as 1984 (ah, the exiled dissidents in those islands, won’t they be busy preparing an attack to overtake civilization? with their creativity, won’t they eventually see ways of making new weapons that would neutralize the World State? and the beautiful equilibrium in the World State, how stable is it? How often do Bokanovsky groups produce “deviant” Alphas like Bernard Marx or Helmholtz? Won’t even small personality differences ultimately lead to conflict, imperfection, and the demise of the World State?)
Brrr!…
Not would be; are.
I think I will not get involved too deeply in this because I’m not sure I have the intellectual horsepower to weigh in on the debate between Maggie and Asehpe. It sounds like a chicken and egg debate wherein I am totally convinced by one side until I read the other side, and then bounce back and forth.
Having said that, I just wanted to cite another example that drives me nuts and that’s when anti-prostitution crusaders refer to themselves as abolitionists. I think they choose the term strictly to bolster their claim that all prostitutes are slaves. I would call that doublespeak in the sense that they are intentionally tailoring their vocabulary specifically to disguise the real nature of what they do. And, for the most part, I think people swallow it. Their perception of the anti-prostitution movement is altered because they apply the context that they associate with the word “abolitionist” to prostitution. After repetition by the media, people tend to associate prostitution with slavery, coercion, captivity, and abuse. Those who campaign to stamp out prostitution are then perceived as fighting slavery, abuse, etc (ie: they are the good guys).
We refer to them as prohibitionists not because we want to paint them as something they aren’t but to describe them more accurately as what they really are.
Finally, on a slightly different topic (once I get started it’s hard to shut me up), I’m bothered by the fact that the mere mention of a word, regardless of context, is now becoming taboo. In polite company, you can’t even discuss these words unless you substitute code words (“the F-word” or “the C-word”, or “the N-word”, etc) for teh real thing. We now attribute tremendous destructive power to a mere arrangement of letters independent of any context or intent (and we’re teaching our children this for Christ’s sake!). Put another way, we have granted people the power to shut us up simply by claiming to be offended by a simple arrangement of letters.
It’s no friggin’ wonder the government treats us like children. We act like children. The wimpiest guy in the room starts to cry and suddenly everyone else has to walk on eggshells and behave in a way that satisfies the least common denominator.
Ok, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I feel much better now.
That’s why I will never stop fighting the mis-definition and misuse of the word “homophobia”. Now they’re using it to mean “anti-queer”, as in the common phrase “a homophobic slur”. NO!!!! A slur is a word or phrase; it has no mind and cannot be afraid of anything. The term they’re looking for is “anti-homosexual”, but they won’t use it because it’s semantically neutral while anything with the suffix “-phobic” implies mental illness.
Precisely, and I refuse to co-operate. Admittedly, that’s a lot easier when one doesn’t have to work in a bureaucracy from which one can be fired for reasons which have nothing to do with one’s job performance. 🙁
That’s why I will never stop fighting the mis-definition and misuse of the word “homophobia”. Now they’re using it to mean “anti-queer”, as in the common phrase “a homophobic slur”. NO!!!! A slur is a word or phrase; it has no mind and cannot be afraid of anything. The term they’re looking for is “anti-homosexual”, but they won’t use it because it’s semantically neutral while anything with the suffix “-phobic” implies mental illness.
That is indeed correct, Maggie: they are using a -phobic term because of pragmatic/contextual implications (‘mental illness’), not unlike the reason why people started using technical terms like ‘idiot’ to simply mean ‘slow, stupid’ in the past: it is stronger, it has “oomph”, it punches you in the mind with all kinds of implicit evaluations. (Another word that was coined and is rapidly becoming popular in Eastern Europe for similar political reasons is “Russophobia” and “Russophobic”.)
What I don’t think will work is fighting against it, Maggie. Just like ‘idiot’ followed its evolution from indicating a certain IQ range to simply ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb’ (the latter also a word that changed its meaning), so that people can say things like “I was such an idiot at the party” without any contradictions or medical impossibilities. If “homophobic” ends up meaning “anti-homosexual” — it’s certainly on its way there — this will simply be yet another example of bleaching (‘euphemism treadmill’*) like many others in history.
Rather than fighting against the word itself (which is probably impossible), I think it’s better to concentrate on exposing people’s motivations for using it: the “oomph”, the hidden “mental illness” assumption.
———–
* one interesting consequence of bleaching is that, with usage, the word eventually does change its meaning and pragmatic implications, so that it becomes useless in its original propaganda purpose. If “homophobic” actually becomes simply synonymous with “anti-gay”, the hidden implication of ‘mental illness’ will eventually disappear (as it did for ‘idiot’)… and the people pushing “homophobic” will have to find another word to do this job. Curiously, its very success would lead to its ultimate failure.
I’ll give it up when I’m dead. It’s like the idiotic term “Native American” used to mean “American Indian”; if there’s another requirement for being a native of a place rather than being born there, I’ve never heard of it. 🙁
OK. A friend of mine, also a Brazilian, also declared he “would never stop fighting” against the use of “evidence” in Portuguese in its new, English meaning, rather than in the old, more ‘authentic’ meaning of “obviousness.” So he always cringed when someone said things like “but there is no evidence of that!” in Portuguese. He would say, “NOOO, this is an anglicism, and a bad one! Evidence is not a material object nor even a situation or inference, evidence is a QUALITY! Something can be evident or have evidence, but it can never be evidence for something else!”
I wished him good luck, and I wish you good luck too. Meanwhile, at least in cases like “homophobic,” I will only suggest that the best way to fight against it (who knows? it might even ultimately work) is clearly pointing out the motivations that make its proponents use it in this way (= ‘anti-homosexual’).
That wouldn’t work with “Native American,” because the motivations behind it are actually ‘nicer’ (to provide some token respect for a group that has been historically wronged in many ways and suffers from prejudice and stereotyping). Here, my gut feelings is that the best strategy would be to claim that such renamings are ultimately self-defeating: if the prejudice doesn’t disappear the “euphemism treadmill” will make the new term ultimately as pejorative as the original one. (I’ve already seen people use “African-American” in a pejorative sense; give it a few generations and, if anti-Black prejudice doesn’t disappear, it will end up just meaning “nigger.”)
Yes, of course; that’s the “treadmill” in action. The old vulgarism “nigger-rig” (meaning to repair something in an inferior manner) turned into “Afro-American engineering” in the ’70s; the new euphemism did not change the old stereotype that black people do things shoddily and lazily. The ONLY way to eliminate a stereotype is to show that it has no basis in reality; the reason few stereotypes about the Dutch, Germans, Italians or Irish still exist in American culture is that those groups largely assimilated into the general culture. Those who yet remain unassimilated or incompletely assimilated (e.g., blacks and Jews) are still stereotyped because their partial isolation from other groups allows the stereotypes about them to remain unchallenged.
Exactly, Maggie. Which is why I always sigh at attempts to engineer reality via cosmetic changes on words. (There is an example among linguists: the speakers of a given language who work with a linguist, i.e. who answer questions about the language, used to be called ‘informants’; now, they must be called ‘consultants’, presumably because ‘informants’, with its Cold War spy flavor, apparently suggests someone who betrays their people by giving sensitive information to outside powers; it was also felt as less empowering than ‘consultant’.)
I see the good intentions behind ‘Native American’ and ‘African American’ and similar attempts, but ultimately you are right: the word stigma will disappear only when the social stereotype disappears. The word itself is too weak to cause this. Hence, despite all linguistic relativity claims, the ultimate pointlessness of exercises in ‘de-sexing language’ that some feminists like to engage in. “Police officer” instead of “policeman” is not going to cause any big changes; it is mostly only cosmetic.
I see the good intentions behind ‘Native American’ and ‘African American’ and similar attempts…
Honestly, I don’t. To me the hyphenated nationality implies that black people are somehow “less American” than un-hyphenated Americans, which is pure nonsense. 🙁
I’ve also always wondered why Americans tend to identify themselves so strongly with their non-American origins; to me it also seemed that people who call themselves “Polish-American” or “Italian-American” or “German-American” were somehow calling themselves ‘less Americans’. No Brazilian I know would ever do that (despite the many ‘Italian-Brazilian’ and ‘Japanese-Brazilian’ people in my country, such words would sound more than ridiculous in Portuguese).
But I see that they do, and that, when using the hyphenated terms, they actually take pride in their heritage. (Another question that Brazilians never ask, and that I heard quite a few times in America: ‘what’s your heritage?’…)
In this context, I can understand that Native American or African American are meant in the same manner: as showcases of one’s pride on one’s heritage. Which is why I can see the good intentions. But, as a Brazilian, I don’t like it either. I have the same reaction as you.
I agree with the spirit of what you said, Dave: they are clearly using the word ‘abolitionist’ to suggest certain contextual features (‘abolitionists’ were historically ‘anti-slavery’, i.e. ‘good guys’). If you call it ‘doublespeak’, you are changing the meaning that Orwell gave to it (i.e. you are doing to ‘doublespeak’ what Americans are doing to ‘homophobic’, ‘vagina’, etc.); but in this case you may very well be justified, because Orwell’s doublespeak (actually doublethink) is probably actually impossible; the best thing to do with this word may very well be to give it the meaning of ‘cognitive dissonance’ or ‘implicit lying’ or ‘weasel-wording’ or the whole set of tools used in this kind of “fifth-column semantic fight” (what Umberto Eco called “semiological guerrilla”).
Actually, it’s probably that this started with some people (anti-prostitution activists) thinking that way already and then coming up with words that correspond better to their perception of what prostitution is. They thought that way even before they thought of using this word. Which means that, just like you, they actually think that abolitionist is a better description and corresponds better to what prostitution really is. The basic point is that they a priori disagree on the actual nature and reality of prostitution, and choose their words according to this disagreement. Where things go wrong is the extent to which they practice cherry-picking, selective perception and selective memory when confronted with actual reality.
Once they’ve selected their words, they of course try to impose them on others, maybe even sincerely thinking that this is simply ‘the truth.’ To keep this illusion, however, they have to silence dissenting voices (like e.g. Maggie’s) from presenting other formulations and definitions of their own (e.g. Maggie’s “neofeminism”); because their ultimate objective is to achieve power, not simply to prove points. Which is where, I think, the danger lies.
Asehpe,
You are much more kind to anti-prostitution crusaders than I am. 🙂
As for words changing meaning, I think pedophile is another one. I notice it being used to describe adults who have a sex interest in minors (ie: someone under 18) or someone under the age of consent, whereas it is really describes someone with an interest in prepubescent children.
By using it in the broader sense, it demonizes someone who is interested in sex with an older teen in the same boat as someone who has a sexual interest in children as young as five.
Not being as willing as you to give fear-mongers the benefit of the doubt, I see this as an deliberate tactic to paint all sex offenders as being the same as the worst among them so as to alienate them and justify the treatment they dole out.
Maybe. I’ve been told I tend to see the best in everyone (which many people actually get angry at me for). 🙂
I agree that there are cynical people out there, Dave. I’m sure that among anti-prostitution activists (just like among any activist group) there also are power-hungry people who deliberately say things they don’t believe in for political expediency. (If pro-prostitution actvism goes mainstream, you’ll certainly have to deal with such people in your midst too… Brr! what a thought!) But my guess — you may agree or disagree, and perhaps even have some data on this — is that most of them, especially the rank-and-file, do share some sort of quasi-religious belief in the righteousness of their endeavor. (I even tend to think that understanding how it works ‘in their heads’ is necessary to know how to successfully combat them. ‘Know thy enemy’…)
The misuse of “pedophile” that you mention I see as part of a broader pattern in society that has to do with the mistaken belief that children are harmed by sex and knowledge about sex — the child-as-innocent-angel myth. Add to this the need to legally define ‘child’ and ‘minor’, and confusions between these fluid categories… and you have the fear that someone wants to rape 7-year-olds morphing into / being associated with the fear that two 16-year-olds might be engaging in sex. Categorial confusion, unchallenged assumptions, fear of sex, child-as-angel… And then also one has a clear, emotion-laden term of abuse, “pedophile”, to throw around. (I remember a YouTube debate in which anti-pornography activists called anyone interested in pornography of any kind “pedophiles”.)
The hysteria around pedophilia made me remember this interesting little video, which parodies this tactic. Did you know it? I think this is a British cartoon, isn’t it? Maybe you can use it when arguing with the close-minded about “pedophiles”… 🙂
Thanks, Asehpe.
I will definitely work that video into a post at some point. It’s interesting that it has the BBC logo on it. I doubt that anything like that would ever make it on to American public broadcasting.
Yeah, I thought of that too. At least the Brits are willing to consider the possibility that they’ve gone just a WEE LITTLE BIT OVERBOARD with the whole thing.
The creepiest part of the video is all the applause.
Found your blog by accident today when I googled “Famous Courtesan Quotes”….
My, my, you are MASTERFUL with words and research–I’m jealous!
Interesting that you’re in-sync with an article I just read by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Chris Hedges! He too just wrote about Brave New World and 1984 on truthdig.com
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/2011_a_brave_new_dystopia_20101227/
Thank you for your open, honest, intelligent posts. I will be mining your blog for GEMS!
MUAH!
xoxox
Shoshana
Thank you for the compliments, Shoshana, and welcome to the site! I hope to see you here often! 🙂
[…] posted a link to this video over on The Honest Courtesan. It’s a pretty fair representation of the level of absurdity that the pedophile paranoia […]
Maggie, I want to thank you for providing the link to this post about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I have to vent about something which I hope you will understand because you are a former librarian.
2044? Are you kidding me? That’s when this book enters the public domain in the United States when it’s free almost everywhere else???
The United States Constitution specifically says in Article I, Section 8 that Congress has powers to secure “for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” But both Republicans and Democrats act as if the republic would fall if they should ever allow “Steamboat Willie” the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to fall out of copyright. Or for that matter, Batman or Superman. So now as a result, almost anything published after 1923 is out of the public domain, even if nobody knows who the author is and they never filed for copyright protection.
The greater good of the public is not being served when the public domain is shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. I’m reminded more and more of the old poem The Goose and the Commons which protested the English enclosure system, where lands formerly used by everybody were restricted to the king or the local feudal lord:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
This is exactly what is happening to the commons of ideas that should belong to all Americans. Unfortunately, too many Americans have no idea what they are losing and how valuable it truly is.
Unfortunately, many Americans consider the very idea of “the commons” to be some sort of collectivist plot, and too many Americans who know better are afraid to risk the label.