I'm taking a slightly different approach to this month's theme.  First, is a re-print of a blog post from April 2009.  Yeah, the way-back files.  But it's still (in my opinion) a pretty fresh take on the power of language to, well, grant power.  My apologies if you find the language a little crass, but it is a post about power, afterall.  Power can be crass.

So here's the re-print from the Hegemommy files:

Okay, so you’ve heard that I’m in one of those “transitions.”  Yes, I gave up my lucrative career as a full-time nut-cracking litigator to string words together for a living.  When I first announced this decision one of the more common responses from my peers (male and female) was: “Wow.  Good for you.  That takes a lot of balls.”  Not everyone said this with the same tone, but I took the statement to be variations on a theme.  Balls.  Bravery.  Guts.  Maybe even slightly stupid.  But all interchangeable parts, right?

For the first time ever this phrase stopped me in my tracks.  I mean, it’s not like this was the first time I had heard it, let alone used it.  I always talk about needing balls to do this or the balls to do that.  I employ it ironically and not-so-ironically.  Sometimes when I talk about having balls to do something I mean courage, and sometimes I mean recklessness.  But it is always associated with action, with putting yourself out there consequences be damned.  But here I was, about to strike out on my own, to make my own name for myself, and all of a sudden this phrase took on a new complicated complicity.  Did I really want to have the balls to do anything?  What did that mean????

Words matter, and am I not the first to point out the interesting association between these shorthands for power and action, and human anatomy.  After all, sex is power, and when we want to create an appropriate visual of that source of power, the default should be to those organs.  It is beyond stating the obvious.  I mean, without such a truism there would be no Hegemommy.  Go back through this sad little blog and find a post, aside from the disclaimers and re-starts, that does not have as it’s central premise the connection between sex and power.  See.  Told ya.

The shorthand works just as well in reverse and speaks volumes to our collective unease with female sexuality.  Pussy.  Weak.  Cowardly.  Passive.  Once again, a shorthand I’ve employed as a slur for someones perceived weakness.  But now, as someone who depends on words for survival, let alone identification, these shorthands are becoming increasingly problematic.

This is complicated turf.  I see creativity coming from that same vat of primordial goop as sexuality– a raw and charged power source that defines many different aspects of personality.  So as a writer, my creativity is undoubtedly linked to my sex and my sexuality.  How could I then continue to employ language shorthands that diminished the very power source I rely on to keep my lights on?

I’ve decided that I can no longer be complicit in the cultural demegoggery of  female sexuality and power, and I’m taking over my own shorthand.  Feel free to use it if you like.  Pass it on.  Like all things cultural, it may gain its own cache, find its niche, and create the counter-narrative to the presumption that an active display of power is a masculine trait.  That’s right.  It takes tits.  Not balls.  Tits.