Language as a tool for gatekeeping.

I’ve been meaning to write about this and following yesterday’s post it seems like the perfect time to write this.

I am a self proclaimed feminist and I know many other women who are feminists deep within but just don’t know it because they don’t quite understand what feminism is. Google academic articles about feminism and any form of activism and tell me how much of what is being said you actually understand.

I find that the language activists and/or feminist scholars uses is exclusionary. There are lots of things that have been said on public forums that many people would agree with and support if only they actually understood what was being talked about. I do not understand why we can use simple language for all other communication and then choose the biggest, most confusing words to communicate things that are supposed to help people.

In my previous role I worked at an NPO. Social justice organization, I think. I say ‘I think” because I could never say for sure what we did as an organization. I attended just about every meeting from each department to try and understand better what they did and I always walked out of those meetings more confused than I was when I walked in. The language that was used was definitely English but I could never tell for sure what exactly they were saying.

There were a lot of words being spoken and written which did not make any sense to me. I was not born into the social justice space so you’d expect that the language being used would be inclusive of everyone especially the people who were supposedly being helped. I once sent a friend of mine who’s a writer like myself a link to a publication which I thought she could write for. She came back to tell me that she honestly did not understand what she was being asked to write about.

This is a well educated woman, an avid reader and an eloquent writer at that. But she just could not understand what exactly she had to write about so she opted to keep on writing on her blog in a language she and her readers understood. That is not an isolated incident. There have been many others which are not being spoken about out loud.

Sometimes I think the language is intentionally used as a gatekeeping tool to avoid accountability because how can people who don’t even understand what you’re trying to achieve hold you accountable? If you spend enough time in social justice circles you’ll begin to notice a cliquey way of engagement where people’s importance, intelligence and their commitment to the cause (whatever the cause is) is measured by how much of the language they understand. If you seem to be falling behind and not using the correct buzzwords then you are automatically excluded.

I don’t mean to paint all charity organizations and activist spaces with the same brush. I hope there are some that speak clearly and actually follow through on what they say. I really hope there are cos sometimes I feel like all these organizations do is just talk amongst themselves in a language only they understand, exchanging high sounding nothingness. No real change can come from that.