Ok... I cheated, today I dont really have a quote, just something I want to talk about after watching videos like these - http://www.upworthy.com/calling-girls-this-word-may-seem-harmless-but-why-are-boys-never-called-it
and this one
http://www.upworthy.com/theres-something-absolutely-wrong-with-what-we-do-to-boys-before-they-grow-into-men
WATCH THESE BEFORE READING ON
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Such campaigns aren't saying anything I haven't heard before, there are all sorts of phrases we use in everyday language without thinking of the consequences they might have. Now, as I have mentioned before, I am lucky. I grew up in a household where I never even considered that my being female would ever be anything more than a simple fact of nature, and certainly that it might stop me from doing whatever it is I want to do. After all, even if the woman thing counts against me, I'm white, British, and (by the standards of most of the global population) very wealthy. I come from a developed nation which won't stop me from going to university because of my gender, and if I do experience some level of discrimination in the job market (which I have yet to enter) I am fairly confident that the university I happened to go to might just about make up for that in most instances.
But, nevertheless, language matters. I can never quite shake the feeling that I am slightly too loud, that I speak up too much in class. And sometimes this is true (I concede that it might just be possible that someone else might have a better idea on a subject than me), but equally, there is the fear of being seen as brash, as domineering (and not in the fun way). Being fairly outspoken I often take charge in situations, and often with the agreement of those I am working with, but beneath this there is always the deep-seated fear of being thought of as 'bossy' (as I often was as a child), the fear that this will put people off me, the deep seated knowledge that being seen as 'bossy' is a bad thing.
The problem is, though, that being bossy is something that is overwhelmingly associated with women and girls. If we look at the Google ngrams on 'bossy women' vs 'bossy men' and 'bossy boy' vs 'bossy girl' we see that it is a word that overwhelmingly collocates with the feminine:
Bossy Woman vs Bossy Man
Bossy Boy vs Bossy Girl
Two out of the three examples of the use of 'bossy' provided in the OED entry refer to women. And if we google bossy we are offered this:
Notice the 'tyrannical', 'oppresive' and 'undemocratic'. Bossy is something then that not only is pretty much only something a woman can be, but also something that contradicts some of the fundamental principles on which I base my political identity.
Yet is giving orders and instructions necessarily a bad thing? The ability to give orders, isn't that one of the fundamental characteristics of a good leader? We don't call our boys bossy, why do we call girls it?
The collocation of 'bossy' with 'girl' is fundamentally damaging, it makes us afraid ever to take control, to tell people what to do, even when that might be the best thing for us to do. We train women out of leadership and men into it, while at the same time fostering the other essential skills of leadership in our women and stifling it in men.
Moving on from bossy lets go to the phrase 'man up' often used when boys are being 'overly emotional'. We teach them that emotions make them weak, and expressing them is 'unmanly'. We train them in the skills of leadership (at least the speaking out part) but not to understand and harness their emotions, an essential component of empathy.
Yet, empathy is an essential skill of leadership, without empathy leadership becomes dictatorial, privileging those we can relate to, not to those of whom we have no emotional understanding (Insert jab against the conservatives here).
Words matter because they display attitudes that children internalise and that inhibit them as adults. If we teach girls not to lead but to feel, and boys not to feel but to lead, where are the next great leaders of the world going to come from?
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