Radio 4 programme about how finding the right words can help us tackle big wrongs

[happydappy2]

4pm today on Radio 4, was a brilliant programme explaining how historically women didn't have the vocabulary, to describe sexual harassment within the workplace. It was happening and women were complaining to their male bosses who then also behaved inappropriately towards them...a Judge even ruled that 'boys will be boys' A Lawyer eventually proved that it was sexual discrimination as Women were facing a hostile work environment whereas a male worker wasn't being treated in the same way....really drove home the importance of words meaning what they are meant to mean-I found similarities between what is happening today when the word woman is meant to include males and it is deemed hate speech to correctly recognise the sex of someone....I do wish honesty would prevail and we could describe people as male without having to walk on eggshells....imho the only way to resolve this mess is to repeal the GRA, no males can be legally classified as women.

It was Sideways by Matthew Syed and was a really interesting listen. Like you I was struck by his thesis being that once you find the right words for things, in this case coining the term "sexual harassment", you can create protections and get justice and from that it's easy to see that once you eliminate the right words for things you can erode protections and make it harder to get justice (although the programme was only about the creation part).

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fmyw

I remember that! An older woman spoke about this at the time the word was introduced, stating that it was like a random pile of separate incidents became a coherent story in her mind as she was able to put together all those minor events during her life.

The power of naming is fascinating. So is the power of un-naming, it seems.

Sounds great, thanks for sharing!

I heard the last 10 minutes of this in the car and was riveted. So interesting, and enraging, to hear the facts about sexual harassment explained and dissected like that.

I also appreciated at the end when he invited listeners to think of areas of current life where language is framing how we think of and discuss things. I'm not sure what else that could be applied to apart from gender ideology!

Thanks for the recommendation it sounds really interesting.