I’ve observed a deeply
problematic trend on social media of late, one that has been amplified amidst
Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings by the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Committee and the several concurrent allegations of sexual assault leveled against
Kavanaugh that have been made public in the past several days. Many people—who are
(rightfully) outraged by the ubiquity of sexual violence against women, who are
(justifiably) exasperated by the default mistrust of women’s accounts of sexual
violence done to them, and who are generally
sympathetic to the victims of sexual assault as a matter of principle—are expressing
their sympathy, exasperation, and outrage in tweets, or Facebook status
updates, and IRL statements like “Fuck Kavanaugh” (or variations on
the same sentiment: “fuck prep schools,” “fuck GOP
Senators,” “fuck frat boys,” etc., etc.). In my experience, these
declarations are frequently made in the very same breath as condemnations of
(general or specific) sexual assault. Such statements strike me as not only morally
suspect, but self-contradictory.
problematic trend on social media of late, one that has been amplified amidst
Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings by the U.S. Senate Judiciary
Committee and the several concurrent allegations of sexual assault leveled against
Kavanaugh that have been made public in the past several days. Many people—who are
(rightfully) outraged by the ubiquity of sexual violence against women, who are
(justifiably) exasperated by the default mistrust of women’s accounts of sexual
violence done to them, and who are generally
sympathetic to the victims of sexual assault as a matter of principle—are expressing
their sympathy, exasperation, and outrage in tweets, or Facebook status
updates, and IRL statements like “Fuck Kavanaugh” (or variations on
the same sentiment: “fuck prep schools,” “fuck GOP
Senators,” “fuck frat boys,” etc., etc.). In my experience, these
declarations are frequently made in the very same breath as condemnations of
(general or specific) sexual assault. Such statements strike me as not only morally
suspect, but self-contradictory.
In the following, I want to advise
against dropping the F-bomb in any way, for any purpose, or toward any end in our
discussions concerning the current controversy surrounding Kavanaugh,
specifically. As a feminist philosopher, I want to also advise that we all
(myself included) exercise considerably
more prudence in how and when we deploy the
F-bomb generally. I have become convinced that this specific speech-act
inevitably implicates its users in the replication and proliferation of
anti-feminist/anti-woman ideology and, by extension, the reproduction of actual
material conditions of harm for women.
against dropping the F-bomb in any way, for any purpose, or toward any end in our
discussions concerning the current controversy surrounding Kavanaugh,
specifically. As a feminist philosopher, I want to also advise that we all
(myself included) exercise considerably
more prudence in how and when we deploy the
F-bomb generally. I have become convinced that this specific speech-act
inevitably implicates its users in the replication and proliferation of
anti-feminist/anti-woman ideology and, by extension, the reproduction of actual
material conditions of harm for women.
When we say
“FUCK (x)” or “FUCK (someone),” especially when we do so in anger, we
are explicitly validating rape culture. That is, we are actively employing the
(implied) threat of nonconsensual sex as a coercive power, a desire for cruel sexual
punishment, and a declaration of our wish to see the other sexually degraded, debased,
and dehumanized.
We see a similar phenomenon unfolding,
I think, in discussions surrounding the recently-convicted serial sexual
predator, Bill Cosby (as we frequently see in discussions of any convicted
rapist who is sentenced to jail). When you articulate your anger at the offenses
of Cosby and his ilk, however right or righteous that anger may be, in
statements that effectively “wish” that sexual offenders be raped in
jail– i.e., that sexual violence be done to sexual offenders— you, too, are
contributing to the epidemic of rape culture, to its casual, causal, and
ubiquitous affirmation, to excuses for the most fundamental presumptions that
maintain its threats as threatening. By extension, you are also contributing to
the existential imperilment of women, in particular, and to the existential
imperilment of the most vulnerable among us, more generally.
I think, in discussions surrounding the recently-convicted serial sexual
predator, Bill Cosby (as we frequently see in discussions of any convicted
rapist who is sentenced to jail). When you articulate your anger at the offenses
of Cosby and his ilk, however right or righteous that anger may be, in
statements that effectively “wish” that sexual offenders be raped in
jail– i.e., that sexual violence be done to sexual offenders— you, too, are
contributing to the epidemic of rape culture, to its casual, causal, and
ubiquitous affirmation, to excuses for the most fundamental presumptions that
maintain its threats as threatening. By extension, you are also contributing to
the existential imperilment of women, in particular, and to the existential
imperilment of the most vulnerable among us, more generally.
Let me be clear: I get it
that, in everyday parlance, what we mean by “fuck you” is something
generically insulting, something like “a pox upon your house!” or, in more
contemporary slang, “eat shit and die!”. One might object to my advice
against dropping the F-bomb by claiming that when you say “a pox upon your
house!” or “eat shit and die!,” you do not intend for a literal pox befall your
target and their heirs, or you do not mean for your target to literally eat
literal shit and literally cease to be.
that, in everyday parlance, what we mean by “fuck you” is something
generically insulting, something like “a pox upon your house!” or, in more
contemporary slang, “eat shit and die!”. One might object to my advice
against dropping the F-bomb by claiming that when you say “a pox upon your
house!” or “eat shit and die!,” you do not intend for a literal pox befall your
target and their heirs, or you do not mean for your target to literally eat
literal shit and literally cease to be.
To which I would reply: yes,
of course, these are the well-known and well-documented, academic vagaries of “slang.”
Slang never means what it literally says, of course. As an informal register of
language, slang maintains its communicable function only by virtue of the
shared, and often implicit, cultural, political, and/or social understandings
that constitute the group that employs it qua
a shared-language group.
of course, these are the well-known and well-documented, academic vagaries of “slang.”
Slang never means what it literally says, of course. As an informal register of
language, slang maintains its communicable function only by virtue of the
shared, and often implicit, cultural, political, and/or social understandings
that constitute the group that employs it qua
a shared-language group.
The real moral/political question
at issue with our current and too-common slang deployment of the F-bomb, I
would argue, is not whether one literally
means that another should be non- consensually, sexually violated when one says
“fuck you,” but rather why it is that we so easily, so unreflectively, and so
intuitively resort to this particular
metaphor? Especially when we have at our disposal so many other,
non-sexual, non-patriarchal, non-heteronormative, and non-violent slang expressions
to articulate offense or insult, why do we say “fuck you”?
I am more than willing to stipulate
without objection that it is, in fact, the case that, in common American slang,
“fuck (x)” is deployed as a generic
insult, a generic indication of one’s desire for a generic harm to be visited
upon its target, a generic signal of ill-will, disapproval, or condemnation.
(I’m leaving out, for lack of space herein, the more nuanced linguistic
analysis of the effectiveness of this particular phoneme— “fuck”— with its particularly aggressive audible force.) And I’ll
concede that I was, prior to this week, semi-sympathetic with the argument that
there might be a way to “reclaim” the F-bomb for women in the same way that
other, historically pejorative terms have been reclaimed, as either an
indication of (or an assertion of the necessity for) reorganized power dynamics.
without objection that it is, in fact, the case that, in common American slang,
“fuck (x)” is deployed as a generic
insult, a generic indication of one’s desire for a generic harm to be visited
upon its target, a generic signal of ill-will, disapproval, or condemnation.
(I’m leaving out, for lack of space herein, the more nuanced linguistic
analysis of the effectiveness of this particular phoneme— “fuck”— with its particularly aggressive audible force.) And I’ll
concede that I was, prior to this week, semi-sympathetic with the argument that
there might be a way to “reclaim” the F-bomb for women in the same way that
other, historically pejorative terms have been reclaimed, as either an
indication of (or an assertion of the necessity for) reorganized power dynamics.
Upon reflection, I am
decidedly not so inclined anymore.
Here’s the fact with which all of us must
reckon: rape culture is a culture.
decidedly not so inclined anymore.
Here’s the fact with which all of us must
reckon: rape culture is a culture.
None of us, fully-embedded
and socially-constituted as the subjects that we are, can escape the siren calls
of culturally-imposed affirmations and sanctions that form us. We aren’t merely
pinballs in an entirely predetermined Universe, in my considered view—I’m a
fallibilist about that claim, fwiw—but none of us, even and especially (we)
righteously angry feminists, can sever the ties that bind us to social,
political, familial, and institutional structures that determine our default
dispositions toward power and/or the available resistances to power, I think.
Even if we, philosophers, were to ignore the quite literally overwhelming majority
of scholarship produced by other humanities disciplines over the past two
centuries, which we frequently do, we still have more than ample arguments to
find in our own house—since at least the 19thC. (in Hegel, Marx,
Nietzsche, and Freud), and the libraries-worth of “identity”-based scholarship
by 20th and 21st C. philosophers of critical race theory
(Mills, Anzaldύa, Alcoff, Bernasconi), feminist philosophy (Young, Beauvoir,
Fricker, Card), gender and queer theory (Sedgwick, Foucault, Butler, Halperin),
trans* philosophy (Rubin, McKinnon, Halberstan, Bettcher, Haraway), etc.—to
confidently affirm that one’s subjective lived-experience is
thoroughly-predisposed to confirm the prejudices of the culture in which it is
formed.
It should be no wonder, then,
that in a culture in which sexual violence is both positively affirmed and its
sanction is regularly denied—in a culture of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and
compulsory heteronormativity—our knee-jerk expression of insult is “fuck you.” That
response did not sprout up out of the ground like broccoli. It is the
consequence of a pandemic. The widespread, relentlessly reiterated, often
unreflective, sets of behaviors that enable (as Patricia
Rozee has argued) “sex role socialization practices that teach non-overlapping
ideas of masculinity and femininity” have, in American culture, produced
exactly the sort of environment in which victims of sexual violence are
culturally conditioned to view the best (or only) punishment for the violation
done to them as a repetition of the same violence.
that in a culture in which sexual violence is both positively affirmed and its
sanction is regularly denied—in a culture of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and
compulsory heteronormativity—our knee-jerk expression of insult is “fuck you.” That
response did not sprout up out of the ground like broccoli. It is the
consequence of a pandemic. The widespread, relentlessly reiterated, often
unreflective, sets of behaviors that enable (as Patricia
Rozee has argued) “sex role socialization practices that teach non-overlapping
ideas of masculinity and femininity” have, in American culture, produced
exactly the sort of environment in which victims of sexual violence are
culturally conditioned to view the best (or only) punishment for the violation
done to them as a repetition of the same violence.
In her most recent text Rape
and Resistance (2018), Linda Alcoff argues against viewing sexuality in
the exclusive terms of (what she calls) the “juridical” or “contract model,” an
insight that I think is eminently helpful for thinking about the many
shortcomings in the way we are currently thinking and talking about sexual
violation in the context of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The Kavanaugh hearings
have been represented to the general public as being explicitly and exclusively
“juridical,” i.e., about determining the verity of the parties’ testimony and the
innocence or guilt of the accused. (Senate Judiciary hearings are not, for the
record, properly “juridical” in either of those senses.) To wit, for the general public, everything that
matters in these deliberations hinges on what Alcoff calls “the thorny question
of experience.”
and Resistance (2018), Linda Alcoff argues against viewing sexuality in
the exclusive terms of (what she calls) the “juridical” or “contract model,” an
insight that I think is eminently helpful for thinking about the many
shortcomings in the way we are currently thinking and talking about sexual
violation in the context of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The Kavanaugh hearings
have been represented to the general public as being explicitly and exclusively
“juridical,” i.e., about determining the verity of the parties’ testimony and the
innocence or guilt of the accused. (Senate Judiciary hearings are not, for the
record, properly “juridical” in either of those senses.) To wit, for the general public, everything that
matters in these deliberations hinges on what Alcoff calls “the thorny question
of experience.”
That is a very thorny question.
I wrote my dissertation on
truth commissions, primarily focusing on the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, but also considering several other similar bodies (in
Argentina, Rwanda, Chile, and the former Yugoslavia, among others.) That is
just to say that I have spent an inordinate amount of time deep in the archives
of victims’ testimonial accounts, as well as parsing the nuances of what truth
commissions (which are not, properly speaking, “juridical” bodies) took to be “true”
in the thorny question of victims’ testimonial experience. The South African TRC
was unique in providing, in their Final Report, a taxonomy of “truth,” which included
four distinct categories: (1) factual or forensic truth, (2) personal or
narrative truth, (3) social or “dialogic” truth, and (4) restorative truth. I do
not have space here to elaborate on the South African TRC’s taxonomy— I encourage
readers to investigate it themselves—but I want to note that categories (1) and
(3) were effectively inseparable in the view of the SA TRC
This should be a lesson to us
now.
now.
I presume that all (minimally
decent) moral agents can agree that it is imperative that we make every effort
to determine the factual or forensic truth of the allegations against Brett
Kavanaugh are. Unfortunately, the congressional (and juridical) mechanisms at our
disposal for making such determinations are woefully flawed. To wit, I think we
have a moral obligation to err on the side of the victim, and not the accused.
decent) moral agents can agree that it is imperative that we make every effort
to determine the factual or forensic truth of the allegations against Brett
Kavanaugh are. Unfortunately, the congressional (and juridical) mechanisms at our
disposal for making such determinations are woefully flawed. To wit, I think we
have a moral obligation to err on the side of the victim, and not the accused.
That said, we should NOT err
on the side of the victim by deploying the logic, the strategies, and the language
of the accused.
on the side of the victim by deploying the logic, the strategies, and the language
of the accused.
There are plenty of ways to articulate
one’s outrage at justice delayed or denied, In
common parlance, what we mean by “fuck you” is something like
“eat shit and die.” However, I encourage you, friends, to opt
for the latter statement, which is also an awful invective, but which does not
make you complicit with heteronormative/patriarchal rape culture in the way
“fuck you” does.