Women talk: the legitimate fear

Legitimate means “lawful” and “social recognition”. The word legitimate use in language
means that society and our culture made up a setup where they set man in high command
position and forced us to think man as some kind of Greek God. They forced upon to people to
believe that man create language and man has all rights on language .culture attitude concerned
with women talk as they believe women talk is dangerous and it can destroy the image of man
that they create. So society stops the voice of women with two ways

 Physically
 Emotionally

Around us we see thousands of cases where male intimidate women with violence and
abusing her to stop raising their voices. They will emotionally blackmail them and don’t give
them any credit.

If we talk about grammar that we used in language we can see a huge difference among the
grammar that we use for men and women for example words like gossips, bitch, nag. It’s not
like that men don’t engage in these kind of activities but , when they do society use more
appropriate and more fragile words to describe their activities.

 Consciousness Raising as Subversion

The revolutionary of CR can be seen in this context and it is not coincidence that CR groups
have played a major contributing role in the growth and inspiration of the women’s movement
When women first began to experience the need to talk each other they were usually talk to each
other they were usually obliged to meet in each other homes for there was nowhere else no
public space for them to go (Cassell,1977).And the males who objected to who were even
frightened by this radical change had good grounds for their anxiety .They were justified in
thinking women talk was dangerous and a threat to their existence.

 Many women have commented on the conflict that their attendance and such meetings
caused .this bounding between women evoked resentment hostility or ridicule from
husband and lovers Stares Joan, who appeared to perceive women in groups as a threat
(The most positive male reaction reported was an uneasy often reiterated (WHAT DO
YOU TALK ABOUT WITH THEM)(1977;50)That men were threatened by this
development is the testimony of many , many women in the movement.

Although many people aware of the conflict which arose between some men and women chose
to get together to talk few of them seem to have been quite as statue as the above women in
discerning the probable basis of this conflict. Sometimes very different rationalizations have
been offered.
Gene Marine (1972) for example has written a male guide to women’s movement to males who
might find themselves, involuntary or otherwise, associated with it he attempts. To re assure
males who are living with women who are attending CR session and he feels obliged to make
some very soothing remarks about women talks (There is one uneasy question )say marine ;to
which every husband and boyfriend wants the answer he wants to know; does she talk about me?
Marine (1972;182)

Marine answer is yes. He can’t eliminate this fear but he does not try and minimize it he informs
his renders that women will most definitely talk about the men that live with, but with goodwill
and tolerance, on the part of the male, this difficulty can be overcome. The closest marine comes
to identify the crucial factors in this woman talk is when he advises male to. Stop gnawing at the
pedestal of your own ego, (p182) and tries to convince them that it is not so terrible to have some
of once weaknesses exposed. He suggest that men would be better served by concentrating their
energies on building better relationship with their new ,liberated women ,then anguishing over
events over which they have no control.

 Undermining Male Control

Males are not generally used to being without control and this could be just as traumatizing
to some as the actual subject matter being discussed, Anxiety may stem from what women might
say but it may also stem from the realization that men no longer control what women might say
in CR.

Just about every woman I know who lives with a male have problem, they want to know what
you are doing, where you are going, what time you will be home, what you are going to talk
about you know, every little detail they can. As if knowing it all is somehow going to bring it all
under their control they feel pretty insecure at times my guy things there is some sort of
conspiracy going on and that he is going to lose. He is vague about it, but that really what it is, I
find I have to put a lot of energy into convincing him, that’s why, I think, women are finding it
easier to form relationship with other women, because ,well women are not threatened in the
same way by the dependence of other women as men are, most of the men I know want women
to be accountable, otherwise they think they do not know where they stand. They cannot control
things if they do not know that,

When women begin to talk to each other as they have done in CR, the image supremacy of
individual male is at risk. The stripping away of one male façade of superiority is not sufficient
threatened patriarchal order, but when multitudes of male are exposed, patriarchal order is at
least temporarily at risk. Given the pervasiveness of that patriarchal order I have no doubts that
the forces regrouping and already that new strategies to quite women and evolving. They way in
which attempts have been made to discount to ridicule. Or trivialize the word many women in
the women movements are all too familiar .the image of the women libber as neurotic. Disturbed
and significantly unable to get a men is but another example of the forms of intimidation that are
employed against women who speak out they should be silent, and if they are not, there is a price
they must pay. Their words and their selves can dismiss.

 Politics and Women Talk

Less than ten years ago, it was acceptable for gender to be segregated at social media. Men
try their indirect control over women talks; talk of the women was not perceived as a threat; but
trivial but harmless. Men cannot take women talk seriously; women’s serious talk is like an
earshot for men. Women feel uncomfortable even when they are talking about their home-
making and child rearing, but man cannot. In the absence of males, women could be relied upon
to reproduce the dominant definition of the world to subscribe to the dominant reality. In the last
decade; women were genuinely and completely muted.

According to Dale Spender, when a woman attends the CR, many communities can be changed.
Women can no longer be trusted to engage in trivial and innocent talk. Women talk has emerged
as extremely relevant for them. Here Dale Spender shared her experience that whenever they
came from any gathering, mixing up with her friends and she had been talking to other women,
she had been starting to see the thing, she hadn’t seen before. And when she was talking to her
husband it, he couldn’t hear the things she was saying. According to her husband, women were
influenced by other women. Her husband refused to see what she was talking about, and
explained that it was just others influence.

Male uses many devices of the dominant reality to discredit her meanings. Deprived of indirect
control over her talk with other women, male attempts to reassert him through indirect control
and restrict her opportunities for talking to them. But anyhow, the major changed was their
unwillingness to reproduce, without any question, the male meanings which ordered existence.
Now, women are beginning to encode their own definitions, they are unmasking the patriarchal
ideology, which has defined and confined by their world.

“Ideologies do not have the same power to organize behavior when they are unmasked”

(Burn, 1973)

Women began to make sense of the world with them as central, housework, for example,
emerged in a new light.

“Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there”

(Susanne Langer, 1976)

Women are making new discoveries that their existence and their talk have been circumscribed
by male control; they are rejecting those males made parameters and suddenly seen their
existence afresh. Dale says that a new idea is a light is a light that illuminates presence which
simply had no from for us before the light fell on them; women’s experience is now being
illuminated by women themselves. Male have no longer controlled over women, and women
who were no longer playing according to predictable and patriarchy rules.

But on the other hand, Dale spender told us that the women are subscribing to the dominant
reality, not through choice, but necessity. Many women’s cant affords to participate in CR
activities because they have to see their house, kids and they were depending on their husband so
that it was not as simple as that, women talks might be regrettable and they are none the less
realistic. Many members of dominant group are within their right, patriarchy orders, in utilizing
those resources to their own ends. Politic is the name of this game.

“The talk which women engage in today is often even seen as political by males.”

(McWilliams, 1974)

The personal is political and women are involved in serious politics when they begin to talk
about their personal experiences from their own perspective. Women can’t reproduce their own
definitions of themselves as ordained by the dominant group. Two challenges can be faced to the
dominant group. One is the assumption of male supremacy because if women will not be
subordinate it is difficult for men to appear superior. And the second is the dominant reality for
some individual makes who are finding them living in condition of intimacy with women who
are constructing different definitions of reality. The dominant group may begin to lay down the
lay or directly remove the sources of their inspiration for these new meaning. And they may
begin to move toward understanding and appreciating women’s meanings. But all these show
insecurities.

Anyhow, directly or indirectly women reveal their own comments the significant of their talk in
patriarchal order. Reality is constructed and sustain primarily through talk. Those who
controlled the talk are also able to control reality. And there is no doubt that in CR groups
women have been moving toward acquiring control over their own talk, and it can change
society.

 Are Males the Right Models?

An analysis of woman talk and its role in society must remain fairly speculative because, not
surprisingly, it is not a topic of that has been pursued vigorously in the research community.
Little and no work has been done on the talk of woman. The absence of woman talk in growing
area of communication is also apparent, and if by chance women have been included, the results
are mostly tinged with sexist bias.
Reasons:

1. First reason is that usually men set up models about women and then check with other
men for validation, thereby continuing to construct the muted nature of woman.

As Lee Jenkins & Cheris Karamarae wrote:

Men have defined the games are supposed to play by men’s rules and judged women’s
behavior accordingly. That is men make up theory and the test situation based on their
experience and evaluated the women by their standards. The fact that women behave
differently in same sex group, the, seems like an interesting curiosity rather than an
indication of different modes of conduct.

If women have not conformed to male models they have generally been ignored they become
non-data. There is also a major bias in researches.

2. Secondly, there is also a major bias in researches. As we see most of the researches show
that women don’t have the ability to talk in gatherings including both sexes. They have
no logics, can’t put their point, and thus they are considered as muted community. It can
also best described by communication process that has rarely been commented upon.

Women as Good Listener:

Communication process is a two way process that needs a talker and a listener, but in our most
researches emphasis is put on talking, and listening is ignored as thinking it passive.

It is coincidence that listening is something that is done by women more than men, something
which is less visible, and thus mistakenly considered as passivity. Women are better listener
providing the understanding and sympathetic ear being more inclined to hear someone out. In
this way, a connection seems to be developed between devaluation of listening and devaluation
of women talk, because women are more familiar and more appreciative of the “Art of
Listening”, and are even more skilled at it than men who just know to talk.

Many issues have developed when women have talked about sex differences in listening. When
women just listen and then act on it men mostly say that women are intuitive. This great
misconception! It’s not the intuition of women but they hear the things and see the things that
men do miss while just talking.

Interaction V/s monologue:

According to researchers, women don’t have the ability to interact because they can’t talk like
men, but we should know that there is a hell difference between a monologue and interaction.
Monologue is just a person speaking; there would be no listening by that speaker. While talking
about interaction, roles of speaker and listener are continuously interchanged by persons
involved in that process.
Conclusion:

Under such circumstances it would not be males who were the models for interaction neither
would we be able to characterize the males as dominant community- for it is doubtful whether
they could exercise control over listening comparable to the control they have exercised over
talk.

 Single Sex Talk: Why women prefer to talk to women

According to Lack off (1975), men talk differently in presence of men_ not in front of
women while women talk differently in absence of men. But there are no studies which
systematically explore the similarities and differences of single sex talk.

Elizabeth Aries in 1976 has found that women prefer to talk to other women – this does not
preclude their acceptance of the patriarchal standard, for they may still value the talk of males
more even while retaining their for female talk-and before examining the unique single-sex
activity of CR (Jenkins and Kramer, 1978)- it is worth considering women’s preference for talk
with other women.

Factors:
According to Aries, there are many reasons due to which women prefers to talk to other women.
In single sex talk, women find some concrete advantages like no restriction in style, no
reduction in time, can choose any topic of interest, and can easily share their ideas, opinions,
thoughts etc. They find themselves in comfort zone in which women don’t keep asking them
what others want to hear then try and say it. There is rotation of speaker in female single-sex
groups and use cooperative verbal strategies to get fair outcome.

While in mixed sex talk, men get many benefits like using variation in interpretational styles,
defined the topic of conversation to women while for women it brings more restriction in style as
they attempted to speak in a manner which is acceptable to men and range of topics they could
talk about as they attempted to cater for men’s interest, experienced reduction in overall talking
time. For example: women mostly talk on human relationships while men talk on themselves in
which they tell their stories which shows their aggressiveness and superiority. Mira Komarovsky
(1962) has found that sometimes women cannot get their husbands talk to them. Phyllis Chesler
(1971) and Joan Cassell (1977) found the reason why women cannot get their husbands talk to
them because women cannot pursue their husbands to talk on their choice of topics, in a manner
which they find acceptable. Men uses competing strategies, verbal dueling so that statement can
be unchallenged.
How to overcome these problems in mixed sex talk:
Instead of being concern with making women talk more like men, it would be more productive to
modify the male community to listen more like women because they use cooperating verbal
strategies.