Violence against women—it's a men's issue.
This last point he illustrates both beautifully and chillingly using an exercise created by Julia Penelope, a feminist linguist. I imagine that this will be familiar to some readers already – I found it very compelling. The exercise shows how language can determine discourse. How quickly it is that violence is the fault of the victim, and, in particular, how the focus on violence shifts away from men, as the perpetrators.
First, he writes:
“John beat Mary” – object verb subject – perfectly normal grammatical sentence. The active voice places the emphasis on the person doing the action. Then:
“Mary was beaten by John” – technically the same information in the sentence, but using the passive voice (passive voice implying a sense of being acted upon, a sense of helplessness, perhaps?) and the focus has now shifted to Mary with John “almost off the end of our psychic plane”. Next:
“Mary was beaten” – John has dropped off altogether now. The next sentence he writes reflects a further change in the discourse informed by how the conversation has been framed in the domestic violence context, again implying a passive sense:
“Mary was battered” - where finally the sentence becomes:
“Mary is a battered woman” – back to the active voice, carrying with it a sense of possession, of owning the descriptor. Mary’s identity now, in the discourse, is that of a battered woman. The focus is on her, and she owns the problem – maybe, even, the problem is her fault to begin with. John, meanwhile, left the conversation a long time ago.
- See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/01/11/whats-with-men/#sthash.nE6QP96p.dpuf