Describing the Female Experience is Wrong, Kids

Words are tools. You don’t use a hammer to screw in a nail, and there is a right word for every job, too. Language matters. It defines our experiences and gives them a voice, so feminism has spent a century giving women the means to define their lives. It’s redefined words like “slut” because sexuality isn’t worthy of shame. It’s refined the definition of words like “consent” because we cannot have autonomy if we haven’t defined the absence thereof. It’s added nuance to words like “rape” so that we can tell the difference between sex and abuse.

Feminism has given volume to terms that we once only whispered in private: the female orgasm, say, because it matters just as much as the male’s. Abortion, say, because until we normalise reproductive rights, we can’t fight for them. Intimate image abuse, say, because as long as we refer to it as revenge porn, we assign guilt to the wrong party.

But the internet is removing the very tools we’ve worked so hard to hold onto. YouTube removes ad revenue from videos that “depict violence,” (Their words, not mine) so you can’t use words like rape or murder without losing ad revenue. Books aren’t safe either. American schools are banning books with scenes of rape, and many social networks are simply banning the words altogether.

If you write about your assault, you will be censored. Even menstruation has been deemed unacceptable. Not so long ago, Instagram removed a picture of a fully-dressed woman with a blood stain between her legs, but the site is perfectly okay with sexualized images of under-aged girls. Periods = offensive. Sexualised women = A-Okay…

… unless their nipples are showing because Renaissance paintings are porn, apparently, and breasts are bad, folks.

In short, social media is deeming the female experience unacceptable. It’s a losing strike in a war we’ve fought for decades. If you’re in high school, we’ll pretend your assault never happened and that describing your experience is wrong. The sexualized images that help create a thriving rape culture are perfectly okay, though, so please post another picture of a 16-year-old in fishnets. We’re okay with that sort of thing, and rape doesn’t happen. Periods are bad. Nipples are sexual, but the adolescent female body isn’t sexual enough.

Imagine if social media managed to eradicate intimate image abuse as successfully as they have the “R” word.

Yep. It’s become normal to say things like “The R Word.” That makes me feel ashamed of a crime somebody else perpetrated against me. My conscious brain knows that censorship is bunk, but on a subconscious level, I’m learning silence.

Women need conversations about sexual violence. Teens need information about consent. Rape culture thrives wherever there is silence. If we can’t speak freely about our trauma, we are forced into isolation and shame. I feel for the generations who are too young to recall how hard feminism fought for a language we’re losing one word at a time.