language, and why it matters

I’m still feeling a lot of shock and grief over the Tiller murder. Yesterday it was hard to get my mind on anything else; thank God I had something non-cerebral to do like weeding the garden, or I would have gone crazy reading news stories. This morning I should be preparing the house for a visit from the appraiser later today (we’re refinancing), but I’m finding myself with a desperate need to write, to keep myself moving forward through this tangle of unpleasant emotions so I don’t get mired in them.

Some of my friends organized a vigil here in Lawrence on Sunday night (which made national news), and I’m wishing now that I’d made it a higher priority to go. Maybe I’d feel more closure now if I had. I got caught up in yard work and the Sunday night chore scramble, and made excuses to myself. It was easier than admitting that I didn’t want to go because of the possibility of crying in public at an event certain to be covered by the media.

This murder feels personal, to me and to a lot of people, because Dr. Tiller was such a symbol for the pro-choice movement in Kansas. It wasn’t just that he was willing to perform late-term abortions, as horrendous as those procedures are, in the rare instances when they are medically advisable. It was that he was well known as a physician who respected women, who trusted women, who treated his patients as human beings whose personal choices were of paramount importance to their healthcare. Since the murder, many of his patients have spoken about what a kind and respectful doctor he was. (This article is a must-read.) He was a feminist, who believed so strongly that women deserved this kind of respectful care that he was willing to risk his reputation, not to mention his life, to provide it. He also worked tirelessly on the political front to further the cause of women’s health and reproductive freedom. In a state where legions of misogynist legislators regard women’s healthcare as an acceptable casualty in their fight to restrict abortion wherever possible, his presence meant a lot.

I’ve been struggling a lot to figure out what I can do, besides just stewing with grief and outrage. I donated to Planned Parenthood in Dr. Tiller’s memory. I signed an online condolence book for his family. (If you’re at all moved by this incident, look at this book. You’ll see how much he meant to people.) But more than anything, I’ve been moved to look more closely at language—its relationship to violence, its relationship to peace, its relationship to social change. And ultimately, how I perpetuate these things through my own use of language.

I read a thoughtful piece yesterday on Jezebel.com, On George Tiller and the Profound Power of Language. It’s worth a read—skim the extensive quotes from anti-choice zealots if you can’t stomach them—because it raises some pithy questions about the relationship between rhetoric and physical violence.

And of course, these questions are being debated everywhere this week. Bill O’Reilly apparently went on a rant last night (does Bill O’Reilly do anything that doesn’t qualify as a rant?) about “far-left” groups blaming him for Tiller’s murder because he demonized Tiller so often and so venomously on his show. And anti-choice groups are scrambling to frame the fallout to their advantage, warning liberals against “exploiting” Tiller’s murder for “political advantage.” Meaning, basically, that if we suggest that the far right is perpetuating an atmosphere in which killing medical providers of abortion is considered morally defensible, we are the exploitive ones.

I said in my last post that I know I can’t hold the entire anti-choice movement (actually, I prefer “anti-choice” to “anti-abortion”—it offers further clarity) responsible for Tiller’s death, even if I feel, in my anger, like doing so. And I still believe that, very much. But I think Bill O’Reilly is guilty of more than he realizes. And I think the hateful people who lead Operation Rescue have almost as much blood on their hands as Tiller’s murderer. I do absolutely believe that the climate created by rhetoric matters greatly when it comes to the incitement of violence, and I’d be a fool of history not to.

Legal responsibility is a different matter, of course, and this isn’t a post about the limits of free speech. It’s personal responsibility I’m thinking of here, and for liberals, I think the lesson is less, “How can we make these people stop saying such hateful things?” and more, “Let us not become the evil we deplore.” Last night Eric and I talked about the article I mentioned, and then we got to talking about Dick Cheney and his latest load of crap. We were edging towards our usual language when it comes to Dick Cheney, which for me, goes something like, “I wish that foul son of a bitch would just drop dead before he fucks up the world any more than he already has.” And then we both kind of pulled back, thinking the exact same thing. Our angry words sounded uglier than usual.

Getting people who believe that abortion is morally equivalent to murder to stop calling people like Dr. Tiller mass murderers—I have no idea how to do that. Of course, it is worth noting that anti-choice leaders made a deliberate choice to shift from demonizing women who get abortions to demonizing the medical providers who perform them, meaning, perhaps, that the act of demonization itself is a powerful source of fuel, regardless of the target.

And I should know, because in my most profound moments of frustration with anti-choice politics, I’ve proclaimed the entire movement to be a pack of rabidly misogynist assholes who fear everything related to sex and want nothing more than to make women suffer for it. It’s cathartic, it makes me feel righteous, and it makes things conveniently black and white. It’s also inaccurate. It may characterize a large portion of the movement, but it’s not fair to call every anti-choice person a misogynist. I have also ranted that everyone in the movement who isn’t a misogynist at the very least subscribes to a paternalistic, infantilized notion of women as needing constant moral shepherding from dominant males. Again, certainly an accurate description of the ideology motivating many anti-choice folk, but also a generalization that would deeply offend some of the anti-choice women I know.

Why does it matter how clear I am about these things? Because lack of clarity, in the end, doesn’t make things better. I know this from the LGBT religious battles. How easy it is to brand every religious person who believes that queer sexuality is wrong as a hater. Many of them are. Hate motivates much of that group, too. And yet, while hatred has to be called what it is, casting the entire group as hateful has backfired on us. Many religious anti-gay people are now anxious to point out that they don’t hate LGBTs, that they “love the sinner, hate the sin,” and that LGBTs are still welcome to worship with them, so long as they don’t practice their “homosexual lifestyle.” Sometimes this is just manipulative rhetoric, with plenty of hatred behind it, but it also comes from good, well-meaning and often very narrowly experienced people who have been taught by their faith to believe things about human sexuality that I find utterly ludicrous. But I won’t get anywhere with these people by demonizing them, and furthermore, demonizing them provides me with nothing but short-term high. To keep it going, I have to keep demonizing, and the longer I keep demonizing, the more it looks like hate.

It’s hard, sometimes, to know where the lines are, to know what is polarizing, destructive rhetoric, and what is necessary and even prophetic truth-telling. So often, after appalling things like this happen, we make resolutions to speak with more kindness and compassion. Then we either backslide or slip into bland, status-quo-affirming moral relativity, because our definitions of “kindness” and “compassion” aren’t nuanced enough to incorporate the need, at times, to challenge injustice. And finally, we’re confronted by the fact that in many cases, such as in the abortion issue, we don’t agree on the definition of “injustice,” either.

So we don’t get an easy guide to this question of how best to use our power of language for just and nonviolent means. But precisely because language is so powerful, we aren’t allowed to throw up our hands and declare the problem impossible. We just have to discern, and learn from our mistakes, to grow in experience and hopefully in wisdom, and then ultimately to guide others by our example. It’s a tall order. It’s an especially tall order for a chronic hothead such as myself.

Language is where most of my personal power lies. When I’m truly angry, I have been known to completely eviscerate people with it. I once reduced my boss at a low-wage job to tears when I confronted her about her ill treatment of a fellow employee. (If I had needed the job as badly as the employee she was mistreating, I wouldn’t have had the luxury of confronting her.) As I watched this woman ride out an explosive wave of self-loathing, I stared at her calmly, thinking, This is power. I can use this.

That was a small-scale example of the high-wire act required when using language for the purposes of justice: How easily I could have slipped. I could have done the verbal equivalent of kicking her in the stomach, and stomp out, and I was powerfully tempted to do that—I was planning on quitting my job anyway, and I could afford to do it. Instead, I said something to indicate that I did not think she was worthless. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn’t. But I knew that treating her like a wretched sack of shit wouldn’t serve my ultimate goal, which was to make life better for the person she was mistreating.

I haven’t always done that. I’ve just as often gone for the stomach kick; I’ve gone for the stomach kick in arguments about abortion. But today, to honor this controversial man whom I greatly respected, I resolve to do better, to do my part to make this culture less violent and hateful. The research I plan to do for my PhD will lead me deep into the culture war. I won’t go in fighting.


(A final word: If you are one of my regular readers and are anti-choice, two things: 1) I value your readership, and 2) I respectfully ask you not to use the comments to defend or explain your position on abortion. Now isn’t the time for me. I certainly don’t mind if you identify as coming from that position in the context of responding to something else I’ve written here, but please, no political discussions on the rightness or wrongness of it. Not that I’m anticipating such comments, but I feel the need to add this, because I know how difficult this issue is for many people. Any disrespectful flamers will be deleted. I won’t acknowledge them, or give them any credence.)