User:Queenfeline/Projectproposal

proposed proposals
Graduate proposal guidelines

potential glossary

What do you want to make?

WORD
Personal reflection

How I found out that term/word is sexist. How I was using it without really thinking about it

How is it used today? (everyday speech, media, popular culture +examples)

Research

Does it demean, empower, exclude, or stereotype? Does it differ by region, age, or social context? What assumptions about gender, sexuality, or power does this word carry? Who benefits from its use? Who is harmed or silenced by it?

Etymology and Historical Context – Where does the word origins? How did it change over time?

(including visuals like screenshots/photos from old dictionaries or from social media / highlighting and scribbles)

Reclaiming

how have feminists or marginalized groups resisted or redefined the term? Is the term irredeemable and why? +examples on how to use the word in the future (scribbles/ handwriting over the dictionary entry with my new learned definition)

Comments/ Discussion

I would like if it not just a classical list of comments but a wall where they can put post-its or something like that

This project emerges from a personal realization: as a woman, I have unconsciously reproduced sexist patterns in the way I speak and think. I felt alienated from my own language because I was saying things I don't want to say and that I position myself against very strongly. So realizing that I actively uphold the oppression against women myself everyday was a shock. I want other people to recognize, and talk about the sexism in language and take an active part in changing that. So I am thinking about making a feminist glossary with words from our everyday vernacular that I realized hold sexism (e.g. bitch, bossy, to have the balls to do smth., feisty, cunt). There will be an introduction about the topic on the homepage (what it is and what it seeks to do) and why it is important to think about language as a feminist tool to reclaim power. I also would like to have a personal reflection about what the process of compiling and making this glossary has taught me, how it changed the way I see language and the way I speak. The navigation to the entries is still unclear, it could be a list, a map, pictures, drawings... Each entry will unpack how a word reinforces hierarchy and how we can change that. Starting with a personal story on how I used the word before and how I found out its sexist meaning (through etymology, usage, connotation), and then offer new, reclaimed or more inclusive ways of implementing that word (plus quotes from cool books?). I want to make room for a discussion or contributions to that word or topic in form of a comment section (or how else?). Because language only works if the people you speak to, have the same understanding of the word. So I want to give people a chance to exchange their thoughts and give them the opportunity to make or shift meaning. How and in what way others can contribute is what I want to experiment with during the public try-outs.

The goal of this project is to see language as a tool that can be worked with and changed. I want to start exchange and discussions around (sexist) language. And i hope to inspire people to question their own use of certain words or expressions. I wish for the glossary to become a critical and self-reflective tool to expose hidden bias in our vernacular and make people feel empowered to start a shift in meaning.

IMPORANT NOTE: I don't want to dictate meaning, I want to raise awareness! I want to invites others into the process of unlearning, questioning, and rewriting.

There is also going to be a tool for printing. You can select the words you find interesting / useful / important and make a .pdf that you can print and make a little zine out of.

I want to make it easy to share and so well explained, that everyone can understand it and no one feels excluded. I think it is very important that we keep the discourse accessible, so people know what it i about and what they can do about it.

prototype

BITCH

Personal reflection

For me 'bitch' was my number one way to express my frustration about people, but also about situations. If I felt wrongly treated by someone, they had an attitude or were just mean, they were a bitch. If assessment situations were unfair or hard, the assessment was a bitch.

NOT-SO-FUN-FACT: One of my friends said that he uses bitch as a gender neural term. I think what he was trying to say was "I'm not sexist.". But if bitch means a woman (who is belligerent, unreasonable, malicious, controlling, aggressive, or dominant) insulting a man with it, is saying "Don't be (like) a woman." Which shows very clearly that the worst insults for a man* is being anything like a woman*, and a woman* is all these degrading other things. This made me also realize that many more insults, that are used for men*, are references to femininity ("Don't be such a pussy.") or they're not insulting them but their mum ("son of a bitch","motherfucker"). Plus women* get called a bitch when they embody traits that are considered positive in men* such as assertiveness, ambition, sexual confidence and authority.

People in the urban dictionary describe bitch as: "A women with a terrible attitude that likes to complain about a lot of things. never has anything nice to say, but always has an awful comeback for everything." or "Infamously known for being used in the hip-hop world and thoroughly considered as an offensive way of referring to a woman, the word bitch appears in music, as a way of referring to a woman who has no relations or value to the one saying the word." or "Any female who is selfish, rude, and ungrateful. A female who thinks they're better than others and hates anyone who doesn't match up to them, such as people with disabilities. A bitch only cares about herself and her friends, and all she cares about is partying and getting drunk. Bitches are bullies. They get pleasure out of hurting others." The Wiktionary article defines bitch as (vulgar, offensive) a woman, or a man who is considered weak, effeminate, timid or pathetic in some way.

Through my engagement with feminism and my growing interest in words, I wondered what the word actually meant and how it became such a famous insult.

Etymology

The word was first recorded as the old english bicce which meant nothing more than a female dog. But it didn't take long for the word to become a figurative insult for women. The Middle English bicced already meant cursed or bad. [] Published in 1785 Francis Grose describes bitch in his 'Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' as "the most offensive appellation that can be given to a woman." In 1925 it was recorded to mean "sexually provocative" and a few years later as "spiteful, catty and bad-tempered" females.

Reclaiming

During the second wave feminist movement feminists started reclaiming the word. As the word already inherited powerful, confident and driven women*, feminists claimed that word and called themselves bitch with pride, because they are all these things and that shouldn't be considered 'wrong', if it is totally accepted in men*. Jo Freeman wrote in 1968 "The BITCH Manifesto" in which she defines bitch in a new, feminist way. In it she also illustrates how impossible it is to be a woman* in this society. She writes: "Bitches are not only oppressed as women, they are oppressed for not being like women." She describes bitch as a way of surviving in this society. A bitch cannot be shamed for being (herself), she simply doesn't allow that to happen.

To this day, bitch is not fully reclaimed yet and still broadly used as an insult, as we've seen in the urban dictionary. So what can we now do to further reclaim this word? To say it in Jo Freemans words: "BITCH does not use this word in the negative sense. A woman should be proud to declare she is a Bitch, because Bitch is Beautiful." So speak to your friends about it, correct them and come up with funnier and more original insults. Agree to only use bitch in a positive, empowering way. That may not feel like the most obvious and loudest thing to do, but I think it has a strong impact in your social circle and from there on may spread in other. Additionally Jo Freeman ends her Manifesto with the reminder to call yourself a bitch proudly and set aside your trained independence and connect with, and trust, other bitches.

How do you plan to make it?

Collecting words and terms + ask other people to contribute (public moments)

document my process of un-/re-learning

come up with a structure for the entries

actually write the entries

Write the introduction

Think about the layout of the website

make prototypes

test how people experience them/ get feedback

edit the entries

always stay in exchange with other people along the way

target group: (most realistically) 20-somethings in my circle (and I hope it will spread out from there, but that is out if my hands) who are already somewhat feminist-minded and want to dive deeper (because they are most likely to speak the same zeitgeisty slang that I also speak)

What is your timetable?

Nov/dec

– write one entry (draft)
– For the first public moment: let people contribute to it, (doesn't have to be the website yet) and give me feedback on the entry and ask how they see it displayed at a website
– Finalize the first entry + introduction
– make prototype for website and get feedback

Jan/Feb

– Collect more words
– write their articles (better to have fewer in number, but more detailed research)
– make prototypes for website

Mar/Apr

– make the final prototype into actual website

June/July

– I would also love to make a book version of it at some point closer to graduation to have a physical version of it. (add dates when printed to it so people know its only a extract from a specific moment of time.)

Why do you want to make it?

Why make it includes two main questions. First, why should one concern oneself with words and language? and second, why make a glossary?.

To answer the first question: Words hold power. Words help us make sense of our experiences. Words make our experiences communicable. Language is a human tool for organization, so inherently language is always a reflection of the society we find ourselves in. Our society is made by men for men, and everyone who does not identify with that is excluded and oppressed in one or many ways. To understand in what ways this exclusion and oppression takes place means gaining knowledge in how to fight it. So in using certain words we can reclaim power over the man-made language. Speaking is about representation. Who is allowed to speak and who is listened to? Who defines meaning and how does language reflect and reinforces power dynamics? Feminists are deeply concerned with language and linguistic to be able to speak and be heard in that and many other discourses. I also learned in researching this topic, that there are so many hidden sexist structures in our vernacular, that we uphold our own oppression without even noticing it. So i want to make people notice in themselves and in others how and in what ways language is used to suppress women and how we can actively fight that.

To answer the second question: A dictionary claims to be neutral and encompasses every word ever. Even though there surely is a moment of deciding which words to put in and how to describe them, which cannot inherently be objective. Anyways, a glossary doesn't claim this neutrality and is in a classical sense a list of terms and words that are special to a certain context and that may be misunderstood (in that specific context) without explanation. I also see it as a moment to change the point of view on a word and recontextualise it. So what happens to a glossary if we abandon objectivity and embrace subjectivity? What if we let the lived experiences define our words and how we use them?

So all in all I really hope that on the way to a more equal society, i can contribute my little piece to the pie and help the progress of building a language that is more inclusive and representative of all kinds of experiences not just mens. I want to help people notice the ways they're keeping up the sexist system and how to change that.

Who can help you and how?

I know that will need help in coding from my classmates and tutors. My friends, and basically everyone I know, can help in contributing to the database, adding words and definitions / quotes / anything that comes to mind. I also set up a little list on the cord board for people to leave words that should be in a feminist glossary.

I want to reach out to Michelle Teran, Ali Sahin from WdKA to get in touch and talk. They helped making the wor(l)dings book which is also a glossary and i think they might have some useful and interesting insights and opinions.

Relation to previous practice

It combines my interests in language and words and the feminist fight for equality. I find it so fascinating to research words and find out where they come from and what they really mean, how meaning changes over time and with the context we use it in.

• 

  This is my bachelor project where I experimented with words and their meaning.

• 

  I worked for Pinkstinks Germany before starting my master. The feminist NGO does educational work all about feminism.

• 

  Our Alphabet Soup

• 

  My own glossary

During my bachelors I visited Oswald Eggers course "language and design" where we would read many different, mostly philosophical texts and then investigate and understand them. This was my favorite course and I was fascinated by what we would unpack in these texts. Later I worked for the feminist NGO PINKSTINKS Germany. Here I helped develop a feminist glossary with technical terms around feminism. During our first year we made our Alphabet Soup and I really enjoyed the process of experimental glossary writing. It opened new ways in which a word can be explained and understood to me and helped me realize that we can have different understandings of the same words. I further explored that in my own glossary which i called Idioticon. Here i collected words that I didn't knew and collected concepts that are interesting to me.

Relation to a larger context

There are already some feminist glossaries out there:

– Kramarae, Cheris; Treichler, Paula A.(1985) A Feminist Dictionary , Pandora Press (Routledge & Kegan Paul plc)
"It places women at the center of language and uses definitions and quotation to take us on a fascinating journey through the development and use if the english language from diverse feminist perspectives. A Feminist Dictionary illustrated women's linguistic contributions: they ways in which women have sought to describe, reflect upon and theorize about women, language ,and the rest of the world."

– Feminist Magazines in Germany also work with glossaries, there are for example: Pinkstinks, Edition F, Missy

There is this project called wordmord (by Angeliki Diakrousi and others) which "believes that the violence of language is not eradicated by merely deleting/erasing words, but rather by transversing their violent imposition through specific practices that trouble and disrupt grammatical consistency, semantic norms, ‘correct’ pronunciation, ‘proper’ bodily posture. The rupture of linguistic limits suggests the possibility of experiencing language in its materiality."

I also found the open spell book (by Greta Lüdemann, Uma Grotrian-Steinweg 2024). They say: "Whilst reading into Feminist theory we dived deep into topics of all kinds. Along the way, we encounter key words that came up in different texts and give a sense of commons, controversies and struggles. By bringing together multiple voices that speak about these terms we want to capture the poetics of feminist theory, move beyond linear reading and open an experimental approach towards building knowledge. We invite you to dig trough, play with and contribute to our quote collection. This is not done. This is evolving."

The Manyfesto or how to dirtystruct the lexicon is also super interesting as it "proposes a rhizomatic paralexicon-in progress as a way to dirtystruct (dirty + con/distruct/disrupt) the notion of a universal, formal and normative lexicon, which usually establishes linguistic norms and the ideal of a standard language."

The BITCH Manifesto by Jo Freeman is a very empowering approach to change the meaning of a word and reclaim it.

References/bibliography

Montell, Amanda (2019) Wordslut HarperCollins Publishers New York

Teran, Michelle ; Sahin, Ali ; Robertson, Kari ; Lerma, Pablo (2024) Wor(l)ding: A Harvested Glossary for Social Justice in Arts Education and Beyond HumDurmPress & Meteoro Editions

Cameron, Daborah (1986) Feminism and Linguistic Theory Macmillian London

Fritsch, Kelly ; O'Connor, Clare ; Thompson, AK (2016) Keywords for Radicals: The contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle AK Press Oakland

Williams, Raymond (1976) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society Oxford University Press

potential thesis

notes

What do you WANT to write? (what will the text
be about? What do you want to explore?
Be clear about HOW you want to tell your story.

Outline 3 key issues you want to explore:
1. The power that language holds
2. how sexist language is and how it shapes the way we live
3. The power of reclaiming words as an activist act

I want to write an analytical essay. I want to dive into the sociolinguistics and uncover how sexist and man-made our vernacular is and how we can take a step into changing that. Language is about representation. Who you speak about and how, directly affects that groups position in society and their experience in this world. I want to write about the phenomenon that female words get devalued over time and why that is. Adding to that i want to write about the active work of reclaiming these words to reclaim power (for ourselves and ultimately how we're seen and treated in society). Words literally create the world around us and has an impact on or experiences in this world.

Chapter outline (what do i expect to find?)

1. The power language holds

Here i want to show how the words we use literally create the world around us. Language gives names to our experiences. It reflects and reinforces our believes, the existing power structures and structures of oppression. Language is strategically used to exclude certain groups from the societal discourse (e.g. in form of linguistic alienation).

Furthermore i want to write about the phenomenon that words who get connected to females, experience an devaluation over time. What seems like happens by accident is a reflection on the sexist society we find ourselves in. In comparison to that, 'male' words almost always experience an revaluation. Why is that?

2. How sexist language shapes our lives

I want to uncover fields of everyday life that hold more sexism then we expect or are aware of. From address terms to curse words. Understanding that language itself is not sexist but the way we use it.

3. The powerful act of reclaiming language

This chapter is gonna contain how the reclaiming of a 'female' word needs active work to experience an revaluation.

holy shit is is all still way to broad...

Uh maybe i do all this on the example of one word! (e.g diva/bitch/cunt...) Then the structure would more likely look like that:

1. The etymology of the word

So to say a glimpse in the history of the word. How is has been used throughout the years and how the dictionary defined then and now.

2. De- and revaluation

De- and revaluation of words in general. So how and why does that happen? Then more specifically on the example on the word. How and why did it happen in this case?

3. The act of reclaiming a word for oneself and the societal consequences

Transitioning into: How 'female' words need active reclaiming in order to experience a revaluation. What reclaiming is and how it works (on the example on language).

TO–DO – specify what i mean with 'female' word (wordslut) –

FEEDBACK

–More clarity on the submissions!

–What feminist context? What context? Wie einkreisen? More intentional and smaller

–Words that have personal meaning - that are being understood / affect you in your life – Glossary for a specific place (online/offline) ?

–Public moment: collect in low tech form and let people contribute in other forms than website

–What makes mine different? What do I want out of this????

–Fred idea: Make the glossary a plug in? Make it to adapt to other applications

–Whats up with Scotland – Glasgow ? Why so different?

–Claiming/ reclaiming also happens in right wing/extremist circles

How has the feminist reclamation of the word “cunt” transformed a misogynistic insult into a symbol of empowerment, and what does this transformation reveal about language and power?

Intro

Introducing the upcoming chapters briefly:

First, the relationship between language, power and representation. Why is language a feminist issue? How is it used to uphold and reinforce power structures? Who gets to speak and who is spoken about (in what way)?

Second, the cultural taboo around “cunt”, its history (etymology) and its significance. When did this word emerge? What was the 'original' meaning and how did it change over time? How did the word became a site of misogyny? What is the “problem” reclamation is responding to?

Third, the active fight for reclaiming a word. How does reclaiming work? Who gets to reclaim? How does the reclaiming of cunt teaches us who controls meaning?

State what i wish to transport with this essay: how reclaiming language reclaims power. Showing how reclaiming is a strategic act of resistance that exposes how meaning is socially constructed (embedding chapter one) and can be rewritten / changed.

Chapter 1

This chapter explores how language shapes and sustains power relations.

Who gets to speak, who is spoken about, and in what way? Through feminist linguistic theory, it will uncover how everyday speech patterns and word meanings reflect patriarchal values and how this creates linguistic inequality.

Deborah Cameron – how language doesn’t just reflect reality but creates it. How language is a weapon, used by the powerful to oppress their subordinates. How words define social visibility. Being “unnamed” or “misnamed” is a form of erasure / silencing / invisibility.

Chapter 2

This chapter explores the etymology of the word “cunt”.

What did the word mean throughout history and how did the once neutral anatomical term (referring to the female genitals) become one of the most reviled words in the English language?

– The connection between linguistic taboos and the societal control over women’s bodies and sexuality. How the changing attitudes toward sexuality, modesty, and female anatomy under patriarchy influenced the change in meaning, resulting in silencing of female sexuality, alienation from the female body, and internalized shame. (How there is a broader linguistic phenomenon where female-coded terms become devalued for example mistress, madam, hussy. But maybe thats too much)

Chapter 3

This chapter explores how feminist movements and thinkers have reclaimed “cunt” as a term of empowerment and political resistance, and what this process reveals about who controls meaning.

How does semantic reclamation work? –> How marginalized groups reappropriate derogatory terms.

– Example: Inga Muscio’s Cunt: A Declaration of Independence (1998) and in todays pop-culture / internet

(The intersectional issues: race, class, sexuality. Who feels empowered and who alienated by reclamation? The critiques of white feminism and inclusivity within linguistic activism)

Making clear / showing that words have constructed meaning, made through societal consensus and not inherent meanings set in stone. Connecting to chapter 1, how meaning and power are connected and how reclaiming language means reclaiming power. Show how reclamation is also a refusal to let patriarchal discourse dictate women’s self-definition.

Conclusion

Bringing back the research question and stating a short and concise summary of the main arguments from the text. How feminist linguistic activism does not just change words, but changes the worlds we inhabit through them.

Glossary

My thesis needs (of course) a glossary duh! In here will we words like: woman / semantic reclamation / reappropriation / semantic derogation / tbc...