Let’s wake up to the power of words.

I’m in the queue at the fruit and veg market. On the wall is a large photocopied photo of a smiling baby. So cute. I gush with the warm fuzzy feeling as my eyes delight in the image. Now I see the baby is wearing a t-shirt that says “LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS”  My circuits are blown, warm fuzzy has been strangled by the unconscious advertising of distorted sexist views  on a baby’s chest. Is nothing sacred anymore? Is this supposed to be funny?! I pay for the tomatoes.

What messages are we implanting in our children? Words carry power as written symbols and as spoken sounds.  What is the message here; that baby boys can’t control themselves and may dominate women against their wishes? that girls are objects that must be locked up (by others) for their own protection because they will have no voice of their own? or advocates?  Are girls victims of their natural beauty? Girls are punished either way; dominated or controlled for their own safety. And the boys? How are we educating them about their sexuality? Or is the T-shirt message implying that girls are so aggressive, and the baby prince going to be so irresistibly attractive, that girls will gang rape him when they set eyes on him? What are we saying to our children!! And why are we saying it?!  

‘Okay, settle down,’ my friend suggests, ‘It’s only a T-shirt.’  No, I won’t’ settle down, lest I be run over by our de-sensitised dominant paradigm.

“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”―political activist, anti-globalisation advocate, wise woman, author Arundhati Roy, War Talk