[lbo-talk] Re: O'Reilly v. Moore - 2

[Carrol Cox]

I've talked to some of the women who worked at Mitsubishi -- and it
really was a hellhole there for women. (There is also a lot of racist
shit, but in ways that have been harder to prove.) And language like
"dick" and "pussy" was just a minor aspect of it, but they are an
entering wedge.

The English language is not so impoverished that we can't find less
sexist obscenities.

To some extent -- minor but not in the least insignificant -- depriving
an attitude of its vocabulary makes that attitude harder to maintain.

There has been a good deal of discussion on this list of the necessity
of keeping anti-zionism separate from anti-semitism -- for example by
referring to Israelis rather than to Jews when we are speaking of the
horrors of the Zionist state. It is simply not _necessary_ to use the
(even faintly) anti-semitic language to express our anti-zionist rage.
Exactly the same principle applies here. It is not _necessary_ to use
language that has been used to put down women, fat people, cripples, et
cetera to make our various points (to express our rage), and if it is
not necessary, then it really is at best stupid to use the language.

Carrol