The Female Body: Language, Consent, and Degradation

 

"The female body thirsts for words. The words of a man."
 

I recently came across the above quote (thank you Jess) in relation to a rather debasing television show called "Blachman," named after its "star," in which young women are objectified by two older men as if they were statues, erotic mannequins that only exist to be judged. These women are naked; the two men are clothed, seated, like ageing connoisseurs clucking over a vulnerable muse, no longer able to produce their own aesthetic response to the natural beauty of the world, instead judging it from a privileged position: clothed, seated, and on television. This show resonates with a “casting couch” mentality.

This image is, effectively, the show:

 

 

This show has already come in for some deserved criticism by Elizabeth Plank. (the above image was taken from Plank's post.) What I want to focus on is the above quote, which was deployed as a part of the defence of the show by its “star.” This quote encapsulates the show: two comfortable men commenting on the body of a vulnerable woman. But it also encapsulates the broader issue of the complicated relationship between sexual politics and language. The quote represents a corruption of the meaning-making process that flows from the human body.

 

The female body does not “thirst for […] [t]he words of a man” any more than it thirsts for the words of a woman. The human body “thirsts” for meaning in general. There is more to meaning than just words, but words are perhaps the most obvious representation of meaning. The human body doesn’t simply thirst for meaning, it produces meaning. It produces meaning through its shape, its processes, its location, and, perhaps most importantly in the context, its proximity to other bodies that produce meaning in the same way.

 

Language is a carriage-service by which we share meaning, from body to body; it is not shared, importantly, from body to mind, or vice-versa. The body and the mind are the same organism. We are our own "body-mind," as John Dewey would say (I am fond of the term, however perfunctory it is). What I mean is that the production of meaning is not spectatorial; it does not travel from its origin to its target in one direction. The production of meaning is reciprocal. We need each other’s bodies for the production of meaning, but we use language to lever that production of meaning for our own gain. To argue that women thirst for the words of men is an expression of the leverage of language used to subjugate what should be a reciprocal process of meaning-making.

 

Perhaps the most important reciprocal process or act is the act of consent. Sex is a meaning-making process;  it may seem odd to speak of it like that but it’s entirely true. We “make love,” for instance, wherein sex is an expression of a deep emotional rapport between sexual partners. Or, we might have a “one-night stand”; however “meaningless” a one-night stand might be, it remains an expression of physical desire. It may also be a conquest or the fulfilment of a night out. Consent is, nevertheless, the most important component of any sexual encounter. Without consent the meaning of sex is violence: not meaning, but the destruction of meaning.

 

Consent, however, is not reserved only for the sexual act. A kiss or a caress requires consent, nudity too. The young woman who is the object of the ageing connoisseurs' gaze during their sleazy conversation consents to being seen naked, ostensibly. I say "ostensibly" because the nature of the experience indicates that consent is not reciprocal. The men are seated, clothed, comfortable; the young woman, standing naked in an unwelcoming studio stands before them, responding to directions from the older men. What the young woman gains from being subjugated in this way is not clear, but what the men gain is obvious. Perhaps she earns an appearance fee - after all, who would do it for free?

 

Consent, like any other act of meaning-making, is also leveraged through language. If you believe that your body “thirsts for […] [t]he words of a man” then you are more likely to accept the words of a man; you are more likely to go in search of the words of a man. At the very least, you are less likely to be sceptical of a man’s words; when a man says something inappropriate, the un-sceptical response might be: "that's just men," a variant of the "boys will be boys" tautology. More on this shortly. The place of compliments, pick-up lines, even bad romantic poetry within sexual discourse is predicated on the apparent superiority of “the words of a man.” Women are supposed to swoon at the lovely words of men because this swooning is reinforced in art, particularly popular culture. What is more, it is reinforced through language: you, as a woman, are told the words of men matter, and you know it must be true because I, with my man-words, am telling you so.

 

Of course, there are deep, historical structures of inequality that are the root-cause of the power imbalance between men and women, but it is through language that such an imbalance persists. We live in a liberal, secular, pluralist democracy (in Australia at least, and one or two of these may be debatable), where language matters, even its gross rhetorical form we’ve become used to from our politicians. Those deep, historical inequalities persist through language, even in a democracy. Words matter in a democracy; words are empowered in a democracy. Failure or refusal to be critical of words and to employ them judiciously is unconscionable under the circumstances.

 

Consent, or perhaps “consent,” is garnered through the self-enforcing mechanism of masculine language. What makes this vicious cycle worse is that many women are co-opted into reinforcing this masculine paradigm. It could certainly be argued that the women who appear on the show, for whatever reason, are co-opted in this way. By appearing on the show they are proving that “the words of a man” are important; so important and powerful, in fact, that they can conjure up a naked woman. Conversely, to be naked is to conjure up the words of a man.

 

There is a promise in this transaction, but a promise that is predicated on a false valuation of both the nude female form (under-valued) and the male word (over-valued). “I promise to reveal myself,” the woman says, “if you promise your words.” The words of a man are a revelation, but not of the same sort of revelation as is female nudity. Words should conjure words in response; we usually call this “conversation” or more broadly “discourse.” We might extend this point and argue that nudity, then, should conjure nudity in response. Perhaps if the two older men were also standing naked in front of the younger woman for her to judge their commentary might be different.

 

This can’t be assumed of course. Men are also inculcated with the belief that “a woman’s body thirsts for words. The words of a man.” This is not an apology; men are no more innocent in this than are the women who apologise for their behaviour. Another apologetic cliche springs to mind: "he's just a man." No man is just a man, he is a human being. This kind of language simply reinforces the kind spectatorial engagement, the one-sided transaction, that this show represents. The language we use in the discourse of sexual politics has to change; even the most innocuous use of the "boys will be boys" cliche reinforces the inequality.

 

A less galling example  of such apologetic behaviour (but offensive enough to illustrative of my point), compared to Blachman's quote, occurred in the wake of the Australian Olympic swimming team debacle, and the misbehaviour of some of Australia's high-profile male competitors. Most Australians know the story already, but here is a link. In defence of her colleagues, Cate Campbell exclaimed: "This is what normal boys do for fun, it's how they bond." I am sure the woman at the centre of the Cronulla Sharks sex scandal would beg to differ about the validity of the defence of "boys will be boys" in relation to male bonding routines and behaviour that involve humiliation, violence, or other forms of degradation.

 

But I digress. The point is that language matters; it matters how we use it and how we let others use it. Yes, I said "let," because language is a site of conflict, and in a liberal, secular, pluralistic democracy (or any society that aspires to be one) what we let others get away with, in both word and deed, determines the direction of society. Language is a form of imposition, but it is also a form of resistance, counter-imposition. Sexual autonomy and equality (that is, the equality of autonomous sexual agents) must be expressed through language, because language frames perception and promotes certain behaviours at the expense of others.

Mimesis and Critical Literacy

It's time for a bit of convergence. There are three major ares of interest I have been blogging about recently: Australian politics, critical literacy, and a couple of blogs on neuropolitics, or neurophilosophy. These are not disparate areas of interest; there are common threads that unite them, although it may not seem obvious at present. In this post, I will begin the process of weaving the second and third strands together. Previously, I have blogged about the discourse of imposition, whereby, due to our mimetic nature, we are driven to impose ourselves upon one another. As a supplementary to this blog, I more recently blogged about the misguided metaphysics that assumes that we are hyper-rational agents, quite distinct from our neurophysiology. I asserted in the latter post that such a position is just another kind of imposition in the aforementioned discourse. I have also blogged about the importance of critical literacy to democracy, and provided a demonstration of critical literacy in action. The crux of this post is to argue that, while we are governed in large part by our neurophysiology we can emancipate ourselves from the more negative implications of that fact through critical literacy.

Critical literacy, it must be remembered, helps to guard against manipulation by fallacy, particularly appeals to emotion. Our emotions are the product of neurophysiological processes that qualify our experience of the world around us. Emotions are necessary, but their necessity also makes us vulnerable. Emotional fallacies are the bread-and-butter of populist politicians, fear and envy perhaps the most commonly preyed upon. Language, as our primary tool of communication, is also the primary tool of manipulation. Language, it must also be remembered, presents only an approximation of the world around it; the world language represents is, as such, malleable. The world we live in bombards us with meaning from every angle and over a period of time that extends further than our personal memories; the legacy of ancient events from far off places still affects us, shaping our experiences from remote locations in space and time. In short, life is much more complex than can be captured in a linear language.

Language is an extension of our mimetic capacities into an abstract space. "Metaphoric space" is perhaps a better term. Recently, I have begun blogging on a fourth thread on sexual politics, where I have discussed the role of the imagination and the metaphoric processes of meaning-making that are grounded in the human body. Metaphor is an extension of our embodied experience in and understanding of the world around us, and language is grounded in metaphor; language is metaphor. Merlin Donald perhaps puts it best: "language floats on a sea of metaphor." Language is a projection of our embodied, mimetic experience into an abstract "metaphoric" space that can be translated, reproduced, and shared. Importantly, however, our experience can be shaped in that space; it is a reciprocal process of meaning-making.

Nevertheless, while language can shape our experience it is still our experience, which presupposes that which does the experiencing: the human organism. Language can be viewed as a filter through which human experience is channelled and refined. To extend the metaphor, a lot of the sediment that gets filtered out in the process, however, is still meaningful to our embodied experience. This has considerable implications for our understanding and our communication. There is an argument to be made, for instance, that the experience of women is filtered in just such a way (this was suggested to me recently in a reply to a previous blog, which I have responded to elsewhere). It is important, then, to understand the short-comings of language, as well as the processes whereby it enacts this filtration of experience. This is the role of critical literacy.

Our experience has shape prior to language, but language comes to superimpose itself on the native shapes of human experience. Importantly, language does not supplant our natural mimetic and embodied understanding of the world; we retain "body language" and other pre-linguistic modes of communication and expression, including the native intonations of voice on which, as my favourite poet Robert Frost would say, our "words are strung." There are sounds before words, and those sounds are meaningful, but that's a topic for another day. This is not some special case I'm making for human sounds; all animals have the capacity for some kind of vocal signalling, all mammals at least. Only humans have a complex conceptual language that they exalt above their other modes of communication and expression.

Language goes further than our embodied modes of communication, but is nonetheless grounded in them. Language cannot mean anything without its reference point being the body; more than they, language loses its meaningfulness when it loses it reference to the culture it sustains. A "dead language" is one that has fallen into disuse because it no longer supports the culture, or the collection of social activities, that promulgated it, and upon which it relied for its own perpetuation. We come so much to rely on the conceptual structure that language provides us that the substratum of embodied meaning is overlooked or diminished, except where it supports or augments linguistic meaning; for example, sarcasm is a prosodic augmentation that changes the meaning of the words used through inflection. The sarcastic utterance means the opposite of the conceptual meaning of the words used.

The problem, of course, is that language also empowers us to go beyond our immediate experience. We cannot do away with language; we cannot revert to "body language" and pheromones. We are our bodies, our brains, our chemistry, our instincts; but that is not all we are. We are the stories we tell about ourselves, about our experiences; we are the ideological (political and religious) debates we have about the shape of our community; we are out poetry and our songs. We shape and re-shape the perception of ourselves through our language; this can change the way we interpret our embodied experience, which in turn can change our behaviour. Even though our fundamental experiences have not changed, our understanding of them does.

By fundamental experience I mean the embodied processes, the organs of perception, the mimetic engagement, and the chemical and neurophysiological processes that underpin our experience; these processes, which we do experience, whether in the form of basic percepts, or emotional responses, do not change. Our understanding of them, as represented in art and language, do change. Love, for instance, perhaps to most common aesthetic object in human history, whatever stories, songs, poems, customs, or laws are produce with regard to it, the chemical responses remains the same. It is the language of love that changes. I mention customs and laws quite deliberately; love has been legislated, and in many ways still is. Marriage laws, divorce laws, sodomy laws, interracial marriages laws in the U.S. to name but a few. Language is used to impose control over behaviour; but language is also used to undermine such control, the "marriage equality" movement is a worthy citation here. The term "marriage equality" is an important departure from other prominent terms, such as "gay marriage" and "same-sex marriage." "Marriage equality is a much more inclusive term.

Language matters; that's why critical literacy matters. A thorough understanding of the relationship between language and our embodied mode of understand is also vitally important. We must understand where our meaning comes from, because it comes to us in a highly filtered form; if we simply accept that filtered meaning without critical analysis, or without reference to the origins of meaning-making in human understanding, then we abnegate our control and our contribution to human understanding. What's worse, we risk giving up our own bodies in the meaning-making processes; we risk letting others tell us what our body means, how it means. Language is neither perfect, nor isolated from human embodied experience; but it plays a critical role in how we perceive and represent our experience within society. As such, it is important that we maintain a critical relationship with language so that we are not manipulated by those who seek to impose their experience, their "wisdom," on us.

Difference, Metaphor, and the Collective Imagination

In a response to a previous blog, the responder, Jessica, critiqued my argument regarding apparent homogenous nature of what I referred to as “the collective imagination.” She argues that my formulation of the collective imagination denies or relegates difference, in particular sexual and gender difference. I believe this is the most important quote: “The problem with a unifying 'imagination' is the effacing and denial of difference that does not allow the possibility of other subjectivities.” Her criticism stems from a French Feminist position, most notably an “Irigarayan” perspective. I do not have the background to respond directly to this criticism; my response below will, at best, be tangential. I believe, however, that the differences between myself and the responder are conceptual, and not fundamental. What follows is (hopefully) a clarification of my argument regarding the importance of the collective imagination, and the importance of difference to that metaphoric space.

The collective imagination is not a homogenous space. The term is, perhaps, misleading. The emphasis should be on “imagination”; its “collective” nature is grounded in the common embodiment and environment from which the material of our experience, and by extension our imaginations, is drawn. Our neurophysiology is the same regardless of gender differences, but gender differences are the basis for quite different experiences. The same metaphoric processes of meaning-making underpin our experience, but the physiognomic differences do affect the kinds of material experience, or stimuli, an individual is presented with. However, while physiognomic differences have persisted throughout human history, the material basis of experience, as well as the metaphoric value-systems through which such experience is filtered, have changed. This is a complex point that needs unpacking, but ultimately it can be understood through the evolution of the collective imagination as a heterogeneous space.

Whatever the differences between men and women, the senses of perception are the same. This is not to diminish gender differences or the historical and political disadvantage that has accompanied them, and in many ways still does. Humans are meant to be together, socially, sexually, mimetically. Gender differences combined with our social impulsion makes sexuality a political space. Where there is difference there is a contest for control, because difference implies multiple dimensions; that is, multiple dimensions of a metaphoric space in which human thought and behaviour must operate. Multiple dimensions means complex non-linear movement, which further entails non-predictability or non-uniformity.

While we have a common embodiment in terms of the senses of perception, the kinds of material experience presented to those senses, filtered through physiognomic difference, are not uniform. Being a man is different to being a woman; differences are further exacerbated by culture and religion. Childbirth and the menstrual cycle are material experiences that a male simply cannot understand as an experience. In some cultures, a woman is considered “unclean” during her menstrual cycle. The culturally pervasive obsession with a woman’s virginity – and its corollary of insouciance toward male virginity – is another example of politically filtered gendered experience.

Our metaphoric processes of meaning-making are the basis of our behaviour; the conceptual systems of our morality (and our politics whereby our morality is contested) are the basis of our choices, but they are formulated through our metaphoric processes. Our metaphoric processes, however, are informed by our embodied experience, which is itself predicated on our physiological makeup. The physiological similarities and differences between the genders (among other conventional biological and cultural distinctions) constitute a background of meaning, the contextual field of historical, cultural, and political information that shapes our perception of interactions and events. A homogenous collective imagination would be constituted by wholly the predominant perspective, in almost every case a male perspective.

The metaphoric space of the imagination where our values are ultimately formulated is a diverse space, but it is a contested space. It is the site where difference can be communicated, appreciated, valued. While language is an important extension of the imagination, and the imagination is an important space wherein our material experience can be represented and altered abstractly, which in turn affects our material experience, language is complicit in the homogenisation of the imagination because it cannot satisfactorily capture the nuance in the imaginative reshaping of material experience. Language is linear and struggles to capture the multi-dimensional nature of human experience; language, furthermore, because it is linear, only moves in one direction, whereas meaning comes to us from multiple directions and in multiple forms (through the different senses).

Language, however, remains an extension of us, our most important communicative and expressive tool. Language, so long as it remains spoken and replete with human emotion, remains essential to our experience. Language, while does not capture certain dimensions of experience at all well, is nonetheless an evocative approximation of experience. We are a species of story-tellers and poets, and I will discuss the importance of poetry in the diffusion of language in a later blog. It’s the stories we tell about our experiences that shape our experiences; these same stories serve to reinforce rules of behaviour as well. Because language only moves in one direction, the telling of a story is a forceful event. Language controls emotional response because it moves in one direction; that which is left unsaid, the material experience that is not expressed in words, is suppressed. And that which is not presented in language is not presented to the imagination, or more specifically, is obscured from the imagination by what is presented in language.

It is, therefore, the homogenisation of language that leads to the homogenisation of the collective imagination. To foreshadow a future blog post, language filters all other forms of expression, including pictorial representations of the human form, because language limits the way in which such images can be talked about. Representations of sex, for instance, have historically been limited because the language associated with sex has been considered taboo. “Swear words,” which are almost always derived from sexual acts and bodily functions, are still largely taboo. Conversely, it could be argued that the words are taboo because the acts are taboo; language, however, is the vanguard of the act. Boundaries and limitations – and taboos – are challenged first through language; manifestos are circulated, plans formulated, protests organised, songs, chants, poems, news stories; coherent information must emerge in order for a collective consciousness revolving around a common cause to emerge subsequently.

Language prefigures material change because it operates in the metaphoric space of the imagination where values and beliefs, our shared abstract models of the world and our experience of it, are formed. Our beliefs are actionable metaphors, and language, however imperfect it is, gives us access to that metaphoric space. Language, therefore, is the critical site of conflict in the contest over meaning. Language matters; it may seem a long way to go to get to an obvious point such as this, but this fact needs to be understood in its proper context. Human relations, including race, gender, and sexuality, are filtered by language. Language shapes the “metaphors we live by,” and it is in that metaphorical realm, in the realm of the imagination, that nuance and difference must be expressed and defended. The collective imagination is where the perceptions and values of the material world are changed, and language is the most important point of entry.

Critical Literacy and the Conspiratorial Mind

The conspiracy theorist and the critically literate have something in common. They also have considerable differences, but let's start with the commonalities. Our environment is populated by signs and symbols, ranging from the obvious to the esoteric. There are deep connections between phenomena and events that aren't immediately clear; it may take several decades of careful study and scrutiny to find these connections and to satisfactorily explain them. The conspiracy theorist sees these connections. All of them - everywhere! Everything is connected somehow for the conspiracy theorist. We may wave the conspiracy theorist off as paranoid or delusional; almost always, this is the case. But the conspiratorial mind is just like any other mind: hungry for knowledge, hungry to know how the world works and to know its place in that world, however dark it may be.

The critically literate mind looks for connections too, because the connections between phenomena and events are not always clear. The critically literate mind seeks to break down the surface structure of facts, the events and phenomena as they present themselves, and dig deeper to find those connections that are often hidden beneath appearances. Empirical enquiry is the purpose of the mind; the mind only exists so that it may know. It's evolved that way. But where the conspiratorial mind sees causation, the critically literate mind understands correlation and the significant gap that exists between the two. The critically literate mind knows and can name the fallacies: post hoc ergo propter hoc; cum hoc ergo propter hoc. The critically literate mind also knows what empirical means. The burgeoning mind will take a moment to look the word up if it's not sure.

Being able to read and write is not empowering by itself, it actually makes one vulnerable. Basic literacy is a gateway to new ideas - but there is no guarantee that the ideas one comes across (especially in the formative years) are any good. Basic literacy makes us vulnerable to opinion and propaganda, and in the Internet age there is an abundance of both. The conspiratorial mind is a threat - as is the religiously zealous mind - but it, too, is vulnerable. Or, rather, it was vulnerable, but is now too late to save. Religious and conspiratorial mania (both related) evince the broad vulnerability of an open mind, particularly when it first starts to open and cannot withstand the indoctrination of those already equipped with language.

I say an open mind makes us vulnerable, and language is the tool which opens the mind, because it must be. Understanding the world requires that we be sensitive to it, as well as to the other human beings with whom we cohabit that world. The necessity of language, as a tool, is predicated on the existence of other minds; there would be no point in talking if there was no one to talk to. Language is needed to share the world with others, to make it ours. Language changes the world; it changes the world because it changes the perception of the world, and it changes the way in which it is shared by like-minded cohabiting individuals and groups. But language is not the world; it is, at best, an approximation, an abstract reorganisation, of the world. The world that language represents, therefore, is contestable.

It is in the world that language represents that the connections between disparate phenomena and events are made; it's where connections can be made, because language is essentially a metaphorical laboratory where ideas can be tested independently of physical facts. A "hypothesis," in the scientific sense, is simply that: its an idea to be tested. A critically literate mind, it is important to point out, also understands the difference between "hypothesis" and "theory." We hypothesise all the time; it isn't all that different to having an opinion. But hypothesising is not enough, and a hypothesis needn't be respected intellectually if it is not offered up for testing. The conspiratorial mind is filled with hypotheses - although we should call it speculation - but the laboratory is furnished with unsuitable instruments with which to conduct the proper experimentations of thought that are necessary to test them. The basic set of tools may certainly look suitable, everything may be in its place, but the quality of the tools is highly questionable. The tools may even be dangerous to handle.

Poor language skills are a source of major conceptual error, errors of expression and errors of logic. Basic literacy, the ability to read and write, comes with no guarantee of articulate expression or a grasp of logical relations. Logic and expression are related; if you can't articulate the logical relations of two conceptual objects then you can't be said to understand their relationship. There may be objections to this claim, but it should be remembered that language is a communicative tool: language represents the world, but this function is predicated on the existence of other minds with whom it is necessary to communicate.

Language requires other people for it to be meaningful, but language also makes us vulnerable to other people. The ability to analyse language, to understand grammar, rhetoric, and logic at the very least, is necessary to inoculate us against the contagion of bad thinking that is always incubating in the minds of others. The appearance of the right tools does not equate to a functioning laboratory - the tools themselves must be tested. That is the only way we can know if the language-user employing them is rigorous enough of mind to test their own hypotheses, let alone anyone else's. The conspiratorial mind is conducting experiments with inferior instruments, resulting in dramatic errors. It is the job of the critically literate mind to conduct its experiments in a rigorous fashion, in a way that is repeatable by other critically literate minds.