Some time back, in my blog post on lessons that I have learnt from four years of blogging, I talked about how someone reacted negatively to an article I had written and told me that they had found a quote that I had used problematic.
This was the piece and this is the quote: “Wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.”
Obviously, the word “men” had been used by Alan Watts to stand in for “human beings.” For those of us who read fiction and nonfiction from a certain era, we have all come across this usage before.
The words we use in our creative work as sensitives mean something.
As I talked about in my blog post, I was taken aback at first that my including this quote might offend someone. After all, what I had liked was the essence of the quote, what it was saying about the importance of wonder and our imaginations.
What I didn’t mention was that after that day, after I got this feedback, even though I left that online piece as it was, I decided I wouldn’t use quotes like this ever again. After all, I believed in equality as well. This interaction taught me to be sensitive to how words can convey something that is the opposite of what you are trying to focus on. It also taught me that I might be supporting something inadvertently that doesn’t align with who I am and who I want to be.
I thought about this again recently when I came across certain words and how they were used in two different books that I was reading.
In one of the books, which I won’t name (I really liked it as a whole), the author kept on using the word “pretty” to describe women while she talked about other qualities (usually to do with talent) when talking about their husbands or significant others. This was a nonfiction book and the women’s prettiness had no bearing on the subject matter.
While this might seem like a small thing, it brought to my mind how as a small girl, I was often called pretty but hardly praised for things that are of immense value to me. Very few people called me talented or artistic or spoke of my better qualities in that same matter-of-fact way. Reading the book reminded me of this and of how, obviously, girls and women can fixate on being pretty or remaining pretty instead of focusing on all the other great things they may be. We are not encouraged to form our identities on more solid, unchangeable aspects of ourselves.
Maybe, in the end, this wasn’t a small thing. After all, we would find it weird if we only used words like handsome and nothing else for boys or grown men.
This seemed like a choice we can easily make, if we are conscious of it, of taking out the “pretty” completely when we are writing about women.
As sensitive creatives, we can use words in a way that they might normally not be used.
As chance would have it, soon after coming across this, I read a passage from the book The Art of Money by Bari Tessler. In the book, Tessler talks about our relationship with money and quite early on, she had this to say:
“We all carry money shame. Women, men, black, brown, white, young, old, short, tall, gay, straight, billionaires and paupers, spreadsheet enthusiasts and number-phobes, self-made entrepreneurs, welfare recipients, and trustfunders. Money shame is an equal opportunity affliction, and it does not discriminate based on who you are, where you’re from, how much money you earn, what percentage you save, whether you pay your taxes on time, or what your credit score is.”
This passage stood out to me because of the way Tessler put historically disenfranchised groups first, women before men and black and brown before white. Of course, like me, you might have come across writing or someone on T.V. who talks like this, maybe they say “girls and boys” instead of “boys and girls.”
Earlier, I would have thought this was a minor thing. What big difference does it make?
But as I read these lines recently, I thought, maybe it doesn’t make a huge difference. But it definitely makes some difference. Why do Tessler’s lines stand out so much to me? Why does reading the normal “men and women” feel so normal? Why shouldn’t her way be as normal to me?
Tessler’s words still felt like a statement even though I hardly ever think of how the opposite way might imply a certain prejudice. Why are some people always defined in relation to others? Why do some people always come after others?
I think maybe, this is voice, in its most basic form, this calling out what doesn’t feel normal or okay to us.
I think developing it brings up fear. For me, these specific examples don’t bring up that much fear (at least in writing them), but there are many things, things I haven’t still said out loud, that do.
Maybe, when I can say those things, then my voice will become more defined, less diffuse. I think this is one way to develop our voice, this honing in on how words actually do mean a lot.
What do you think? Does this resonate with you? What choices can you make as a writer or creative person? How can you develop your voice?
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