The power of words is that they are what we use to give form to thought and feeling. Tellingly, so many of the words we use about gender are loaded with shame and violence. After so many years of writing, researching and thinking about this topic, I am still sometimes surprised by the power of words to create shame and how often this happens without anyone noticing.
The way we use words to describe the victims and perpetrators of men’s violence against women provide an easy example. A “spurned lover” in one headline is the “violent controlling man” in another one. The “drunk teenager” is also the “child raped by a man in his 40s”. A woman’s “fatal errors” could more accurately be described as “a man’s decision to kill her”.
