The author of Breaking the Patriarchal Code, Louise Goueffic, 1996, Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, Manchester Ct., is reprinted in Canada by Sapien Books, sapienbooks.ca. She is giving a talk entitled Playing the Sex Card in Language on May 13, at 7.00 p.m. in the Wren Room of the Eaton Chelsea Hotel, 33 Gerrard St. in Toronto. You are all invited. Please tell your friends. Thank you.
She would be happy to give this speech to your group or organization. Please contact her at: fem1@cogeco.ca
Filed under Uncategorized
“At first sight nothing seems easier to understand in the philosophy of language than our own use of proper names: here is the name, there is the object. The name stands for the object.” J. Searle. (1969 Speech Acts. Cambridge: University Press.
There is no way to soft pedal the facts. The most culpable supervillain of embedded lies in speech is the name “woman.”
Unhappy with what some names in everyday speech were broadcasting Louise Gouëffic looked at names believed to be Truth that bullied people, a global strategy of imposing belief through names containing embedded lies. In this article she shares crucial knowledge about our species withheld from you to keep you in ignorance. Ignorance makes you believe in lies.
From 1973 to 1993 she collected 20,000 items of speech addressing the species that makes and uses speech and found that 95% embed bias. Culling out ancient ones that influenced people long ago she analyzed 10,000 of the most recent and relevant. Breaking the Patriarchal Code was published in 1995 by Knowledge Ideas and Trends Manchester CT. (Visit http://www.sapienbooks.ca)
Patriarchy started with a few males claiming to be above all others, elite. These few entitled themselves to control all others ‘below’ them. They even went as far as prescribing the name ‘man’ for the whole species where only half are male. ‘Man” excludes half the species.
Names that prescribe all as “man” are tactics of predatory bullying in the strategy.
Names that describe simply reflect the facts defining the entity-in-question.
While collecting the items Gouëffic realized our species was primarily a name-making and name-using one. We make names to satisfy a need in order to communicate it. Jam, book, in, jump, see and read are names we needed.
Patriarchy’s elite “needed” to prescribe elite-male power and control. For example, ‘testify’ is from the practice of placing the hand on testicles to “swear they were telling the truth.” Testicles -> testify -> testament.
Semen claimed to be the first principle of everything made ‘seminal’ now meaning profound. Seminary is the place where one studies male divinity. Semen -> seminal -> seminary. Elite-makers!
Three historical events lead to the global strategy of bullying
Long before patriarchy became entrenched in society ‘fem’ named herself fem and her gender feme. The male named himself wer and his gender maal. The name sapiens preceded hu +man by thousands of years. Fem and wer both evolved simultaneously with the abilities and capabilities to make and use speech due to evolution.
The strategy started with an ancient law that came out of the centuries-old tradition of deeming some people to be “low-born” who would serve those who entitled themselves as being “high-born.” Hammurabi’s rule had low-born slaves serving the high-born but not by law.
* In 2400 BCE Manu of the Hindi subjugated the feme half of the species to the male half by law, Sloka V. Manu claimed to be divine, a God to be rightfully addressed as Lord. Being “in manu” was to be a slave. Legal slavery started in the name of Lord Manu. It divided the genders and started a centuries-long program of bullying, obedience demanded.
* 1000 years after Manu ‘God’ was given the name Emanuel, meaning “the manu in us”, giving Lords the right to enslave people “sacred” support. Clever in scope, Lords sprouted like mushrooms.
* In 200 BCE the Romans put into law “the authoritative control of the husband over the wife” , the Manus. In Latin, manus means hand, the ‘us’ ending denoting male. Thousands of high-born Lords exploded on the scene. So 2000 years after Manu Lords had power as intended in his law.
** The names Manu, manu, being in manu, Emanuel, Manus and manus manufactured the foundation for 4000 years of injustice-riddled patriarchy, legal slavery and brutal feudalism from 2400 BCE to 1853 CE.
In the 4000-year span of legal slavery Lords changed the names of both genders to fit being “in manu,” slavery The male, wer, was renamed man meaning male slave, original meaning. Fem was renamed w-o +man meaning slave wife of slave male. Man always meant only male. Feme was changed in the 13th Century CE by a poet who wanted his lines to rhyme changed feme to fe +male. Hu +man appeared only the 15th Century CE! Naming the species ‘mankind’ followed.
Lords, male, were not ‘men’, slaves. As high-born males they were Lords, Kings, Nobles, Royals, Emperors, Czars, etc., and deities e.g. Manu and Hu. Lords ruling low-born men and fem lowest-born as w-o +men divisive at core it was the greatest bullying strategy ever to be invented and developed on planet earth.
Patriarchs had 4000 years to make language suit their power-grabbing needs, 10,000 items of speech embed elite-male bias, names promoting the few elite ‘high-born’ fathers as agents of control and power owed to their superiority.
Patriarchal language is exclusive, false, misleading and dis-informs. In its divisive character it promotes prostitution, frauds, pornography, conflicts, rape, violence, wars and more all requiring bullying tactics. Appearing to target mostly one gender the language harms both genders to the same extent. Men are unknowingly superior as petty bullies and (fem as) w-o +man is inferior by being bullied into submission. From this viewpoint Gouëffic knows that a change in language is necessary, a change from exclusion to inclusion.
A language of inclusion reduces harms and eliminates the seminal lies patriarchy sought to make permanent. Gender-inclusive and gender-neutral names greatly enhance and benefit both genders. Furthermore, no step in evolution shows that two sapiens, fem and man were changed into “two men of opposite sexes as Hu +man, mankind.”
Gouëffic’s work consists of three books written in everyday language describing and explaining the strategy of bullying in language used by ordinary people on the street. She saw that terrorizing lies were often told in language deemed “beautiful”. She knew that truths advantageous to the greatest number of people can be told in ordinary street language without taking anything away from factuality, clarity and precision. But like many today are entranced by body beauty at the expense of the mind many today are entranced by “beautiful” writing that tells them what they want to hear at the expense of knowledge, a hurdle she hopes to destroy.
The 10,000-strong patriarchal “words” are names that bully our species making us believe in lies like man = whole species. The tactic of embedded lies in ‘words’ hides the withholding of crucial information. But language is flexible, resilient and always growing. It is changeable, crucial information can always be re-established.
The biggest sociological impact of patriarchal language is the extent to which it is the greatest bullying strategy ever to be developed. The biggest philosophical impact of Lordly language is the extent to which Lords imposed belief in seminal lies as being Truth. The greatest historical impact is the story of man as ‘great’ men who made it leaving out the information that slaves and submissive wives hoisted them up the wealth and status ladder.
Patriarchy institutionalized ignorance about our species as something ‘good’, many live in blissful ignorance. Scribes paid by their moneyed Lords in pre- and post-medieval times wrote reality according to their Lords’ lusts, the lust for power, status, money, control of feme sexuality and the lust to keep their self-interests intact for eternity, divinity being ‘immortal’. Scribes were the only ones who could read and write and they would satisfy their patron’s lusts. Belief in seminal lies = testified Truth! It needed bullying, violence and wars to make it reality.
Our species suffered 4000 years of violence-riddled patriarchy, legal slavery and brutal feudalism from 2400 BCE to 1853 CE and even to 1960. The harmful effects can’t be erased in a mere hundred years. It takes a change in language to give us a push in the right direction.
Slavery and feudalism are patriarchal systems of control, ideologies of superiority and divinity in males ‘born’ higher than the rest of us. Today we are ignorant of or have forgotten our 4000-thousand-year-long slave past laundered in history as a mere coincidence in ‘mankind’. So today w-o +man a man that’s not a man at all is made to walk on earth as a not-male man.
Her three books Breaking the Patriarchal Code, An Inconvenient Lie and The Rofemtic Movement discuss at length the false Truth and the many truths and facts withheld . www.sapienbooks.ca
Breaking the Patriarchal Code gives the arguments showing the theory of man false, and lists the 10,000 items of speech imposing belief in seminal lies to be Truth.
An Inconvenient Lie discusses the false theory of man in greater detail and describes the harms seminal naming inflicted on the mind and bodies of our species. She discusses old hidden information, introduces truer fact-based naming and proposes a theory of inclusion for a species of thinking-and-feeling beings never before proposed.
In The Rofemtic Movement (to be released January 2013) she discusses the advantages and societal enhancements a language true-to-reality, honest, transparent and inclusive of both members brings to our species. She explains that critical thinking is neither hard nor scary and brings solid self-esteem, more honesty, transparency and better emotional balance.
Gouëffic’s Thesis:
The species of animals that evolution brought about capable of making and using speech to communicate consists of two members, fem and man. Both evolved simultaneously as sapiens with the talents and abilities to make and use correct names and symbols to communicate. Both are necessary to express truths as logic-affirming agents in name-making to develop rationality, knowledge, moral civilization and harmony in society. Both contribute to good reasoning by making names that are factual and true-to-reality by definition.
The Foundation of Rationality stands on two beings fem and man doing good reasoning in name-making, symbol-creation and speech-using. Reason-based names and symbols affirming logical reasoning make us wise, sapiens, and this wisdom regulates our emotions. Regulating our emotions and using names reflecting truths lead to solid empathizing with others, more moral behaviour and greater harmony in society.
Reason-based language sapient in basis is wise, with a propensity for moral solutions because it communicates through moral items of speech, truth-conveying names and symbols, the choice between truths being the conveyor belt to morality.
Eradicating and de-listing the false names w-o +man, hu +man, fe +male and ‘mankind’ as species leaves the name ‘man’ with the only meaning left, that of male being, the only truth having cold hard evidence in reality.
Patriarchal lies support patriarchy, illogical goals and irrational ideologies of male control. The sociological, philosophical and historical impacts of seminal lies harm both genders. Choice among lies is neither efficient nor effective leading to irrational and immoral behaviours.
The price of one lie is the loss of many truths®
The Rofemtic Movement invites people to make and use names true-to-reality by definition. Giving people choices among truths advantages both genders. Copywrite2012LouiseGouëffic
Filed under Uncategorized
This blog is about names we use everyday, names put in language hundreds of years ago. They were passed on from generation to generation from individual to individual. You received them from parents, teachers and elders. We trust them to be truth. But one problem is that some crucial names don’t reflect the facts seen in reality. Names that don’t reflect and state facts lie and bully.
bullyinginlanguage 