Anita Taylor's post on Judge Sonia Sotomayor

If there is a place anywhere to carry out a dialogic, thoughtful and passionate analysis of language and gender (including all gender’s many facets including race and class) in communication, OSCLG should be it. I hope to initiate such a dialogue.

I was primed to open this blog discussing ways we have described Judge Sonia Sotomayor and her proposed appointment to the U. S. Supreme Court. I wondered for example how the commentary has proceeded outside this media and political hothouse in which I live, Washington D. C. How do sources and media other than those based in DC & New York present the information about Sotomayor’s appointment? What do they include? What omit? What emphasize? How do commentators, journalists, respondents there describe the judge? What, for example, do writers and speakers choose to use as descriptors? Is Judge Sotomayor Latina, Hispanic, Nuyorrican, a NewYorkRican, a Newyorkrican, Latin@? And what might such references imply? Or hide?

I also wondered what it means when the furor about her 2001* comment is first raised by white men and focuses on race. Even overlooking the nuances, her statement was obviously as much about her sex as about “race.” Do respondents’ ignoring gender mean, as one commentator claimed, that the current ubiquitous presence of women in the public world has rendered gender unremarkable? Or does it signify, as I suspect, that we continue to bury and hide the effects of gender and class in how we see and treat people. Note, for example, how when either Sotomayor’s ethnicity or her sex is referenced it is as a characteristic she “has,” not something that others attribute to her and respond to.

But then . . . and yet . . . and here I commit a cardinal error: Raise two ideas in one essay. Never mind that they relate. It would take the academic’s essay length to show that; and this is a decidedly different medium. Still . . . comment I must. In an op-ed piece in this morning’s Washington Post, Graham Allison writes that “Iran has lost its nuclear virginity.” The descriptor eerily evokes a news story of just a week ago (May 24) in which the Post reporters noted that Secretary Clinton had just completed her “maiden” diplomatic trip to China. OMG.

The metaphors defy comment. And, not coincidentally, Allison’s comment appeared on the same day as the horrific story of George Tiller’s murder while he served as usher in his church. Violence – sex – gender. A truly deadly triangle.

Five years ago, M. J. Hardman and I asked the question, What new can be said? when it comes to discussing war, language and gender (Women and Language Fall 2004). We gave many examples of the tight interweaving of generative metaphors involving sex, gender and violence; we cited and referenced others who’ve explored the issue. Our collection of such examples continues to grow, exponentially, because those of us who think and talk in U. S. English still accept implicit violence in relationships and tolerate explicit violence in both our popular culture and our daily lives. How willing we are to recreate and reinforce the connections of sex and violence through our language!

I say it’s time we call a halt. It’s time we expose the hidden patterns, unlink sex and gender from violence. Enough with the innocence of “maidenhood” and the virility of armament. Enough with ignoring the class / gender / race-ethnicity of white men and tagging only “others” with such identities.

It’s time we publicly and repeatedly call out the mindless repetition of language patterns that undermine our expressed hope for all individuals and groups to flourish. Let this become a space where we do so.

*Access fulltext of the speech at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html