I sign his birthday card with a heart next to my name. A love-heart, two lopsided curves arcing into each other. I can make the same shape on my keyboard; <3. I fixate on the defibrillator sign opposite me on a train in Japan as he and I hurtle from one city to the next. That same symmetric shape is one of the only things I recognise, the only clue I have to the machine’s purpose, and it looks nothing like the organ it represents. The heart that beats in my chest is lopsided, pulpy, plugged into my body with veins and arteries. Were it to stop on that train, the machine that could save my life would be branded with a caricature of it.

Most of the humans who have ever existed had no idea what was inside of them. They felt pain in organs they could not identify by sight, lived and died because of mechanisms hidden under their skin. The shape we know as a love-heart is peppered throughout history, in art, in jewellery, in coats-of-arms. Historians speculate where its shape came from: perhaps its curves resemble breasts or buttocks, or a fig leaf, or a seed once used for contraceptive purposes. It was first used to signify love in a drawing accompanying a fourteenth century Italian poem, in which Cupid stands naked atop a horse, showering a crowd of people with arrows. The artist’s intentions have been lost to time; I do not know where he conjured this shape from, why he chose it to mean love. Perhaps, to him, love was the rounded shape of a female body, or the curve of a seed used for pleasure, or the silhouette of a leaf that symbolised loyalty. Or perhaps, when he placed a hand on his chest and felt a pulse beneath it, this was what he imagined beat within him.

In a different drawing from a hundred years prior, a man extends a red shape to a woman. It is rounded at one end and pointy at another. To the best of contemporary European anatomical knowledge, this was what a heart looked like. Over time, with the softening of norms around corpses and the advance of scientific implements, anatomists were able to sketch the heart with more accuracy. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci scratched ink into paper, cross-hatching the contours of the human heart after hasty excavations from the chests of recent cadavers. A dense, fist-sized red muscle with chambers, the number of which was disputed, attached to the body around it with veins and arteries. This heart is fleshy, messy, intertwined with the other organs it fuels; far from the neat shape inked by the Italian artist years before.

The purpose of the heart has long been associated with life force. Ancient Greeks considered it the hub of activity in the body, the originator of intelligence and emotion. Aztecs carved the hearts out of sacrifices with a flint blade, believing the organ to be a relic of the Sun as well as the captor of an individual’s essence. Ancient Egyptians believed their hearts, representative of a person’s soul, were weighed against a feather from the goddess of truth in their journey to the afterlife. Confucius pinpointed the heart as the origin of mind, governance, and morality. It is unsurprising that a vital organ has so historically been associated with vitality, especially one that functions so transparently — its beats resonate in the chest cavities of the living and are eerily absent from the dead. In the absence of deeper scientific understanding, of course one would conclude that the essence of humanity are our hearts. I think back to the man in the ink manuscript, shoddily rendered heart in his outstretched palm. The artist, fingers cramped, tracing the best outline they can to represent the muscle that keeps them alive. The raw tenderness of that offering; I do not know quite what force keeps me alive, it seems to say, but whatever it is, I give it to you.

Metaphor tends to temper over time as it becomes culturally ingrained. Startling imagery — butterflies in stomachs, iron fists — sanded down to mundane notions by the rough tongues of decades of speakers. Seeing a t-shirt emblazoned with “I ♥ New York” is perfectly normal, and yet the idea that one would feel so passionately about a city that they would devote their most essential organ to it is absurd. I wonder about the people who first coined the metaphor of heart representing love. There is poetry to the urgency of it; love is life or death.

In the minutes before we unfurl and drift off to sleep, he and I lay tangled in each other every night. It’s an unspoken ritual, a gentle brush that sweeps the border of waking and sleeping into a soft haze. I lay with my ear pressed to his chest, tha-thud tha-thud tha-thud punctuating the silence of the night. If I muster the energy I can imagine countless ears pressed against countless lovers’ chests, an infinite tempo cupped in the warm place between bodies. But in those moments, the only lovers I can think of are me and him, and it’s as if his heartbeat is an original thought. I envy the first people to describe their hearts as loving. Perhaps I could have written poetry unburdened by syrupy cliche, the kind of poetry I hear in his pulsing heart. It stutters out syllables: I live for you.

In the course of his anatomical studies, da Vinci said, “The heart, of itself, is not the beginning of life, but is a vessel made of dense muscle vivified and nourished by an artery and a vein, as are the other muscles.” There is nothing preternatural about the muscle which pumps in a person’s chest, and yet its pulse is considered by some as the inception of a foetus’ personhood. It fuels the flush of a rosy cheek, the warmth of an embrace. The cartoonish, symmetric love-heart is not an anatomical heart, but the heart has more significance than its anatomy. The heart makes us human. Oh, to be the poet who loved deeply enough to attribute to it their humanity.

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An old lamp sits on the desk of my childhood bedroom. Its oval shaped head spilled weak white light over the countless essays, artworks, and books I passed under it over the years I used it. It was given to me by a childhood friend – her name was Nayoung, but my teacher called her Jenny. She gave me the lamp because she could not take it back to South Korea with her, and ever since, it has stayed in my room, Korean plug connected to an Australian adapter, bowing its head over my desk. I haven’t spoken to Nayoung in years.

Before my grandfather died, he held my hand and told me he loved me. Through stuttered sobs, I thanked him for being a good grandad. He snorted; “I haven’t done much.” I said that he had, trying to articulate through my running nose and gasping breath how much he had done for me, but in the moment, I couldn’t.

My friend Stella and I used to go to art classes together. We both loved to draw, and would doodle on scraps of paper in class. I used to copy the way she drew eyes. I can’t remember if she was bothered or not — or if she even knew — but I remembered thinking her drawings were cool and wishing mine were the same. As I grew older, and time pushed us apart, I kept drawing eyes the way she had, improving bit by bit with each one. I paint portraits now and in each stroke are years of muscle memory. Under layers of paint are the same eyes that she used to draw.

What I told my grandfather is that, just the day before, I had borrowed shoe glue from my dad. I asked for it to fix a pair of sandals which were falling apart. My dad has an ice cream tub full of different tubes of glue that he keeps in the garage, each of which are optimised for different uses. Shoe glue is different from normal glue, because it allows for more flexibility of the repaired bond, so your fixed shoe won’t fall apart again with the movement of your foot. I know this because my dad has helped me fix many shoes in the past — ever since I was young, he has helped me mend, rather than replace, broken things. He tells me he learnt that from his dad.

I told my grandfather this, and he laughed. I’m not sure that he understood what I was saying. I wish I had said it better.

I catch myself slipping into my boyfriend’s syntax. Our message exchanges sometimes just look like echoes. I love the way he uses words; I envy his efficiency. I have screenshots from years ago of things he has said that remind me I am loved, but I don’t look at them often. I remember them as I might a poem.

When I make comfort food, I add butter to my rice. It makes it taste almost like it does when my best friend cooks rice with ghee. Her rice is always better than mine.

I have a scar on my ankle from a time I sat by a fire pit with friends, trading stories, too engrossed to notice an ember had jumped out of the flames and into my boot, burning a little crescent into my skin.

I wish I had told him that he had done more than I had words for. That when I was travelling, I obsessively photographed every meal we ate in preparation for a slideshow I would show my family, the way he used to make slideshows of his journeys that he showed me as a kid. That when I solved tricky clues in the Sydney Morning Herald crossword, my dad would praise me by comparing me to him. That my dad walks the same way he does, arms clasped behind their backs, steps slow and deliberate. That I see his thumbprints indented all over the moulded clay of my family.

I know the words to a song I have never heard because my friend used to sing it over and over during Year Ten science class while we were meant to be doing work. Over coffee, I share again and again a fun fact a friend told me about how it’s not the material of a mug that keeps your drink warm, but rather, the shape. I sleep with a blanket my aunt knitted me.

We are all just constellations of the love we have known.

The last thing my grandpa said to me was that we would see each other again. I have seen him ever since.

CW: Discussions of abuse and sexual assault.

I did my best to avoid hearing about the defamation suits between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Quite simply, I was not interested. I do not have enough investment in either of their personal lives to care if one was slandering the other. However, despite my apathy, I found it hard to escape content on social media about the case — the funny moments, the shocking revelations, the accusations flung at either party. Overwhelmingly, this content — TikTok fan edits, Twitter memes, Instagram updates — favoured Depp. Even before the American ruling in his favour made on 2 June, the court of public opinion had absolved him of any potential wrongdoing.

That absolutely terrifies me.

This case was not, as I had initially convinced myself, simply about an interpersonal dispute between two people who were worried about their image and future income. Or at least, it was not taken as such. This case became a microcosm of #MeToo, a synecdochic representation of the world that misogynists dog-whistle about. Amber Heard, in the eyes of the public and, in a way, the law, lied. She seemingly misused a movement that came to her defence. And for some reason, people are happy about it.

I remember being sixteen, sitting by a pool, talking with schoolmates about the allegations Heard levelled against Depp at the peak of the #MeToo movement in 2016. I remember saying that I did not know enough about the case to know for sure who was telling the truth, but that, as in every other case of sexual violence being brought before the media, I was inclined to believe the victim. To this day, I do not regret that inclination — in this case or any other.

Sexual crimes are tragically underreported, and only around 5% of sexual assault accusations are false. Speaking up about assault is not easy to do — you face judgement, mockery, and threats — and it is not a risk many are willing to take even when they know they have been assaulted. The idea that #MeToo could easily be weaponised to ‘take down’ powerful men is ludicrous and insulting. Even within the recent history of the movement, which has brought sexual misconduct in Hollywood out from the rug it was swept under, the most salient cases have resulted in underwhelming punishments.

Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood executive faced with a plethora of assault and harassment accusations from almost 90 women, was only convicted on one count of sexual assault and one of sexual harassment. Kevin Spacey, an actor accused of sexual assault, pled not guilty before all charges (and the complainant’s civil suit) were dropped. He has since resumed making films. Women who speak out have nothing to gain, and the men they accuse are rarely held to the standard of accountability that the justice system ought to provide.

Back at the poolside, I distinctly remember the girl I was talking to pouting, furrowing her brow, and saying, “but like… Captain Jack Sparrow.” She, and many other people, did not want to believe Depp was abusive. He was too charismatic, too handsome, and played too many loveable characters. Not only was it hard to reconcile this image with someone violent and cruel enough to hurt another human being, but him being an abuser would mean that we could no longer look at him the same way. It would mean we could not watch Pirates of the Caribbean with the same glee as before, could not drool over him in Nightmare on Elm Street, would not be able to watch a single Tim Burton film again — or at least, not without guilt. And for a lot of people, despite their intuitive support for #MeToo and the survivors it champions, it is really hard to completely renege every positive association they have with those who are revealed to be assailants. This makes sense. In the limited capacity that we have as onlookers observing a carefully constructed image, of course we could not have known that Weinstein, Spacey, or even Johnny Depp were abusive. It makes no sense to include something as evil or taboo as that in their public image. But a public image is not a whole person, nor a defence of assault or abuse.

That is why, I think, such a collective sigh of relief was breathed when Depp sued Heard for defamation. He was not an abuser; Heard had just lied. The charismatic, handsome guy was good all along. Order was restored. Fans no longer had to feel guilty for not believing that he could be a bad person. Never mind the verdict reached by a UK court in 2020 that found 12 of 14 alleged instances of abuse to be proven; Heard was a liar, wasn’t she? Worst still, had she abused Depp?

Domestic and sexual violence are, overwhelmingly, issues that impact women. That does not mean that men cannot be abused, but it does mean that, in dominant narratives within the #MeToo movement, men tend to fall into the role of perpetrator, and women the role of survivor. It is devastating that this leads to underrepresentation and delegitimisation of the violence men suffer. We ought not dismiss the experiences and trauma of a person because of their or their assailant’s gender. I have seen criticisms of Heard’s supposed role in entrenching the narrative that men cannot be abused, culminating in the damning recording of her daring Depp to tell the world a woman was abusing him with confidence that he would not be believed.

This criticism is legitimate and important. But, at least in the discourse I have seen in my own exposure to the US trial’s coverage on social media, this is not the most common criticism lobbied against Heard. I have seen criticisms of her demeanour, of her relationship with her lawyer, and speculation about alleged improper conduct like posing for a photo or sniffing cocaine. I have seen her mocked for her appearance and her voice. I have seen her presumed guilty by the court of public opinion with no chance of being proven innocent.

I do not know if Heard abused Depp — I have never been privy to their relationship. I also do not know if Depp abused Heard. The US ruling did not convict Heard on criminal charges, nor did it absolve Depp of any. That was not the point of the trial. The point was to determine whether an article that Heard had written was a fair and accurate description of Depp. The jury ruled that it was not. The court found that some claims that Heard had made were inaccurate. It’s also worth noting, however, that the court found claims by Depp’s representation inaccurate too. There was evidence presented to the court that Depp did not disprove — evidence that he had written messages to Heard in his own blood, that he had threatened to hurt her and himself. It is not lost on me that this trial has received much greater media attention than the 2020 UK trial which ruled in Heard’s favour, and that, even in the course of these proceedings, evidence that damned Depp did not occupy the limelight as much as that which damned Heard. The only thing that seems clear to me is that the relationship the two had was toxic, and traumatic, and that both are likely better off out of it. It was clearly distressing for all parties involved, and I understand why it was distressing for many to hear the details of the case. What disturbs me the most, however, is not any of the evidence that was presented in court.

A Streetcar Named Desire is one of my favourite films; I find the nuance with which it explores domestic abuse and female characters impressive even by today’s standards, and it was made in 1951. The first time I watched it was with my English class. Stanley, played by Marlon Brando, is a vile character. He is cruel, and conniving, and violent. But in one scene right before the end, after his child has been born, he celebrates becoming a father with a sense of carefree glee. I recall watching that scene in class, with one of my classmates remarking, “oh, he’s actually quite cute!” That moment, I think, revealed the brilliance of casting Brando — someone much younger and more attractive than the Stanley from the script — in such an awful role.

We, like Stanley’s wife Stella, forgive charming men. We forgive men like Depp who roll their eyes at a lawyer’s silly questions or share lollies with the people at the bench next to them. We forgive men who we have had childhood crushes on. We forgive them because we never truly believed they were evil in the first place. Evil is a sweaty man in a trench coat in an alleyway at night. Evil doesn’t dress nicely or visit children’s hospitals or deliver performances that make you laugh and cry. We are so much more comfortable with believing that nice young men are just that that we are happy to mock and demean the women that condemn them the second we feel it is socially acceptable.

It does not matter if Depp won the suit. He may well have never been abusive; his behaviour speaks for no one but himself. But as fans lined up to shower him with support as he arrived to court, or made video edits of his “court highlights” to post on Twitter, or laughed at Heard as she gave testimony about the suffering she alleges, their behaviour speaks to something greater. This narrative, that being charming absolves abusers of potential guilt, is the narrative that made #MeToo necessary in the first place. It is the narrative that forces the majority of sexual assaults to go unreported because women do not feel they will be believed. It is the narrative that convinces people — especially women — to stay with the partner who hurts them, because he’s actually quite cute, right? This narrative forces people into silence. It traps them in silos of their own trauma. It kills people.

Do not confuse the alleged actions of one woman with the beating heart of an entire movement. Demand justice for male survivors of violence without it coming at the cost of believing women. Know that as you repost a meme that mocks Amber’s tears, the women in your life who are already ashamed of their trauma only bury that trauma deeper.

Keep believing women.

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In 2021, Elon Musk’s ill-fated SNL appearance featured a sketch called ‘Gen Z Hospital’, following a script peppered with terminology such as “cap”, “finna”, “lit”, and “cancelled”. As the title of the sketch suggests, such words have trickled into mainstream consciousness under the umbrella of internet- or Gen Z-specific slang. Despite this recent conflation, these words have a rich history which predates Twitter by decades, if not centuries. Most of the terms we consider “Gen Z slang” come from Black culture, from both African American English and Ballroom Speak. Let’s explore where these words come from, how they found a home on the internet, and what taking them out of context does.

Both African American English (AAE) and Ballroom Speak are dialects of English. Although there is no hard definitional difference between dialects and languages beyond political and cultural distinctions, a good heuristic is “mutual intelligibility”: as an Australian English speaker, I can probably understand someone speaking British English, but not someone speaking Amharic. As such, the former is likely an example of someone speaking a dialect of the language I speak, and the latter is a separate language. Although English has multitudes of dialects, very few are taught or recognised in institutional contexts.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr Rachel Elizabeth Weissler, a scholar of linguistics, psychology, and Black studies at the University of Oregon, for my podcast, Standard Deviations, which discusses “non-standard” dialects of English. Although I had heard it referred to as African American Vernacular English, Dr Weissler explained to me that many linguists prefer to drop the term “vernacular” when referring to the dialect that she studies: “the term ‘vernacular’ has a bunch of weight, and can disproportionately associate the variety with not being equal as a language.” AAE is a dialect which was born as a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade.

There are two theories as to how AAE came to be. The first is that enslaved people from Africa brought to the United States, who were forbidden from speaking their native languages, developed AAE as a means of communicating with other enslaved people from different African speech communities and the slave holders who controlled them. The other is that it arose from contact between Southerners and enslaved Africans. The dialect has continued to evolve and still exists today. Words like “finna” (meaning “about to”, coming from “fixing to”), “woke” (aware of prejudice), and “cap” (lie or exaggeration) are all instances of AAE.

Similarly, Ballroom Speak is a dialect originated by a specific cultural group. Ballroom culture describes the underground movement of LGBT+ Black and Latinx New Yorkers which emerged in the late 1920s, replete with artistic and social traditions. Ballroom culture functioned not only as a social network to connect those interested in participation, but as a (sometimes literal) safe space for queer PoC to escape rampant racism and homophobia, dress and act in a way that affirmed their gender, and find peace. Alongside artforms like voguing, Ballroom culture originated a dialect which was unique to its participants. Words like “yas” (yes), “mother” (describing an older, sometimes legendary figure within the community), and “slay” (to “kill it”, or succeed emphatically) all derive from Ballroom Speak.

These dialects emerged for several reasons. The most obvious is that when discrete speech communities are brought into contact, and when speakers in this new context are not concerned with adherence to a prescriptive set of rules, linguistic innovation is inevitable. Enslaved people needed a way to communicate with each other and the white slave holders they came into contact with. Without access to education in standard American English, the emergent dialect, a combination of English vocabulary and grammar from West African languages like Yoruba, reflects the context in which its speakers were situated.

Fluency in standard English is often used as a tool of exclusion, as a proxy for denying people barred from education or otherwise deemed “undesirable” from opportunities such as jobs. Sociolinguist William Labov refers to this as “overt prestige”. In contrast, though, non-standard dialects such as AAE are often awarded “covert prestige” by the communities they originate from. Speaking AAE or Ballroom Speak fluently is a marker of status in a community, a way of connecting with others from that community, and a rejection of imposed definitions of prestige.

This signalling of group membership goes deeper than just claiming prestige; a language that is exclusive to your community is a meaningful and significant tool. The term “cancelled” also originates from AAE, referring to individuals or businesses who were deemed hostile towards Black people. This label was an important mechanism of self-preservation: knowing to avoid individuals who had been “cancelled” could be the difference between avoiding severe prejudice and not. Similarly, having a dialect specific to queer people was a survival mechanism for the Ballroom community and other underground LGBT+ movements in times when laws and society were hostile to queer folk. Being able to connect with others like you by testing how familiar they were with your secret vocabulary set was less risky than outing yourself to a stranger. Across the globe, a similar dialect called Polari was incepted by queer British people as a coded way of communicating in spite of the UK’s stringent anti-gay legislation. Speaking a non-standard dialect is not just a quirk of participation in a minority community — it is a lifeline.

Of course, the features of these dialects have not remained the exclusive domains of the members of the communities who speak them. As I flagged earlier, much of what might be labelled “Gen Z speak” by an internet user is derived from AAE or Ballroom Speak. This is not a recent phenomenon. “It’s not new that African-American English is appropriated,” Dr Weissler explains. “We’ve seen it in historical films and things like [that]… it’s just more public now with social media.” This appropriation, she explains, is a repeat of colonialist history.

“If we think back to slavery, why were Black people brought [to America]? They were brought to have their labor be used… and so from that moment, Black people have been used for what they can do.”

The product of Black culture and labour is too often stripped of its context and used for clout by white people. Dances like twerking and music genres like rap and R&B are examples of Black cultural products which have been appropriated and used for personal gain by white people such as Miley Cyrus and Elvis Presley. “[Appropriation of AAE] falls under that same umbrella of, we take their language, we take their style, we take their hairstyles, we take their labor, we take advantage of the fact that they don’t have generational wealth or knowledge,” Dr Weissler explains.

Why is it the case that AAE and Ballroom Speak have been so readily appropriated as “internet slang”? I can think of three potential reasons. The first is that the dialects have universal appeal and utility, which compels users on the internet to use them irrespective of their connection to the speech communities who originate them. In the same way that a white person might just like the sound of rap music, words like “slay” and “cap” might just be especially relevant to things that non-Black people on the internet want to express.

The second is that, with the increasing democratisation and accessibility of the internet and social media, more queer people and BIPoC are able to have their voices broadcast to larger audiences than was previously possible with a traditional model of media. Pre-social media, the few people who had the power to publish their opinions were likely from a racial majority, and, even if they weren’t, were likely forced to conform to “standard” dialectal features in their writing style to meet the demands of their publisher. With the advent of sites like Twitter, it is easier than ever to share your thoughts irrespective of your cultural or linguistic background, with very little, if any, pressure to speak in a “standardised” way. It is also relevant that, despite being far from perfect, social attitudes towards LGBT+ people have progressed greatly since the inception of Ballroom culture, mitigating the need for an encrypted dialect. Perhaps, there are just more Black and queer BIPoC on the internet than have previously been in the public consciousness.

Finally, though, it is possible that white people just like cherry-picking parts of minority cultures which we see as “cool”. It is impossible to ascribe the cultural weight of a word like “mother” to it when it is read in a vacuum by someone from outside the community. It is inconceivable to many white people that a word like “cancelled” could be a safeguard against the most abhorrent kinds of racism, and not just a flippantly-applied adjective. This is the same mentality that views twerking as simply a lewd dance move, cornrows as a cool hairstyle, or rap just as someone singing quickly. When viewed through a white lens, there is no reason these dialects or cultural features should not be appropriated. It is easy to underestimate the value of cultural exclusivity when you have never had to fight for your culture’s right to exist.

This raises a complicated question: is it okay for white people on Twitter to say “slay”? Is linguistic appropriation inherently harmful? I posed this question to Dr Weissler.

“Language varies and changes all the time, and, as globalisation continues, we will use different aspects of language from different cultures – this is one of the greatest benefits of diversity – allowing us to learn from one another.

“The key issue here is when appropriation happens and credit is not given where it is due… the impact can be dire. Erasure of the language origins can be tied to erasure of the innovation that comes from the Black community. It’s important to educate ourselves about language origins, and understand what we’re saying and where our words come from.”

It is, of course, hard to cite the origins of words as we use them. While knowledge that words like “cancelled” come from AAE is important, that does not mean that non-Black people shouldn’t use them, just that they should use them consciously. A bigger issue, in my opinion, is the use of language appropriated from AAE or Ballroom Speak as a marketing gimmick to generate profit for companies or public figures like Ben Shapiro. We ought to be critical of the ways that corporations ingratiate themselves into young or progressive communities, especially when they bastardise rich cultural properties.

“Appropriation and erasure can leave black people feeling alone, mistreated, worthless… only as good as their labor,” Dr Weissler explains. Black people and the Ballroom community have contributed a truly astonishing amount to popular culture and language today. We owe a lot to speakers past who would never have dreamed of words like “slay” and “finna” being widely used and celebrated. It’s time we acknowledge this rich etymology.

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are represented ten times more in Australia’s prison population than the general population (32% of prisoners are Indigenous, but only 3.2% of Australians are). This can be attributed, in part, to the over-policing of Indigenous communities. However, once someone is arrested, Indigenous people, alongside other people of colour, face further systemic disadvantages when navigating the justice system. These disadvantages are linguistic, cultural, and invisible to those who make up the cultural hegemony. Without tearing down these barriers, our justice system cannot serve true justice.

Language is not a neutral mechanism for describing the state of the world. The tools that exist in languages are in a symbiotic relationship with reality: they at once shape and are shaped by the cultures and perspective of the people speaking them. This is especially evident when we look at the politeness resources that languages afford us. In some languages, for example, there are different second-person pronouns for different levels of formality, like how in Italian, you might refer to a friend as “tu” but an older stranger as “Lei”. In English, we only have “you”. Other languages like Japanese have honorific systems which are affixed to the end of names — like “-san” or “-chan” — to indicate levels of respect and social distance. Again, we don’t have similar resources in English. Beyond different linguistic tools, there are also different definitions of politeness across cultures. In Arabic cultures, for instance, it is polite to decline an offer initially before taking someone up on it, whereas that isn’t true in Anglo cultures. Politeness is a social construct, and, as such, it varies across cultures.

Typically, misunderstanding different cultural definitions of politeness is only problematic insofar as it creates some awkwardness when people aren’t on the same page. More insidious problems arise, however, when we impose hegemonic linguistic and cultural standards of politeness onto structures which govern broader society.

The justice system is a particularly impactful example of this. We use the same arbitrary, Anglicised standards to determine whether all people, regardless of their culture, are criminal or not. This only compounds the disadvantage that people from marginalised backgrounds, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, face in legal settings. There are several ways these linguistic and cultural standards are imposed.

Firstly, we rely heavily on semantics when assessing witness evidence, and these semantics are deeply culture-specific. In a common assault case, for example, a defendant may be examined on whether they “hit” or “tapped” a complainant. Although the difference between these verbs may sound intuitive to a native English speaker, it may be less clear if it is not your first language. The former constitutes an offence, but the latter may just be a means of getting someone’s attention. They are not interchangeable, and they are often the best gauge a courtroom has for determining the severity of an offence. For non-native speakers, this makes them more susceptible to accepting untrue or incriminating versions of events from prosecutors due to semantic ambiguity. This exists even when the defendant speaks English fluently; there are many dialects of English which ascribe different semantic meaning to words. A clear example is how “deadly” can mean “great” in Aboriginal English, but “fatal” in Standard Australian English. A judge may be lenient to a witness or defendant who they can tell isn’t fluent in English, but that same leniency may not exist for a speaker who is speaking a different dialect than they are, for the simple reason that a lot of us just don’t know that there are other dialects of English to begin with. Relying on semantics to gauge the severity of an offence disadvantages those who use language differently to you.

Standards of politeness also factor into the way witnesses and defendants are treated in examinations in court and prior questioning. There are many examples of differences between various Indigenous cultures and white Australian standards of politeness. Politeness could inform the way a witness answers a question. Gratuitous concurrence, for instance, is a politeness strategy used by many Indigenous people which involves agreeing with a statement as a show of respect. To disagree can be seen as presumptuous and rude. If a cross-examiner puts a scenario to an Aboriginal witness, then, it is possible they will say that they agree to it even if it doesn’t match their own recollection. It should be clear how dangerous that could be.

Differences also arise in the way people from different linguistic backgrounds describe events. Tense systems in English (past, present, future) differ substantially from tense systems in many Indigenous Australian languages, which have less rigid distinctions between periods of time. Even if a witness is fluent in English, or speaks English monolingually, they may describe passages of time differently to an Anglo Australian speaker. As such, an Indigenous witness might be unable to give a specific time when an incident took place, or use loose terms like “before dinner”, which could lead a cross-examiner or judge to assume their recollection is faulty or that they are being purposefully deceptive. Part of a judge’s role is to assess the credibility of witnesses or defendants. If they deem them poor sources of evidence, their testimony can be neglected or given less weight than a “more credible” witness.

This issue of credibility also arises when considering the body language and conversational conventions deemed polite in many Indigenous communities. Direct eye contact can be seen as disrespectful by some Aboriginal people, but avoiding eye contact can be considered deceitful by Anglo people. Saying the name of deceased people is taboo for many Indigenous people, but refusing to speak a name or equivocating around it may be treated as hostile by a white court. While direct questioning is conventional in courtrooms, it is impolite in many Indigenous communities, which may lead Indigenous defendants to react uncomfortably in interviews or examination. All of these factors may weigh into a judge’s assessment of witness or defendant credibility. Imposing white standards of politeness onto Indigenous people in order for them to be treated as credible or trustworthy is a tool of colonialism that further disadvantages BIPOC experiences. Trusting white voices over voices of colour stacks the judicial process against marginalised people.

Beyond witness credibility, these assessments also factor into sentencing. Judges take remorse into account when deciding how long of a sentence is appropriate. These assessments of remorse are entirely arbitrary. The act of apologising differs greatly cross-culturally. In Korean, for example, the apologetic term “mianhada” carries a component of responsibility; it would be redundant for a Korean speaker to say “I’m sorry, that was my bad”, but the same isn’t true for English. Admitting responsibility is a major part of expressing remorse in a courtroom, which is why courts treat early pleas of guilty as counting towards remorse. If a non-native speaker apologises for an act in a way that doesn’t seem sincere to a native-English-speaking judge, that can contribute to a higher sentence. Prior character evaluations about a defendant, including misreading their expressions of politeness as standoffish, can also contribute to being overly punitive when evaluating how remorseful they are. This can be the difference between a community corrections order and a prison sentence, or bump time served up by months or even years.

Our justice system is deeply colonial in the standards it imposes upon those it governs. This disadvantages BIPOC in one of the most impactful contexts they could find themselves in. Our prison system is underfunded and dangerous, time away from families and communities can be traumatic, and a criminal record can complicate finding meaningful employment in a life-ruining way. In states like the USA, a felony charge can strip you of your right to vote or condemn you to death. A justice system that favours those who know the unwritten rules of white society and condemns those who do not is not just at all.

How can we decolonise our justice system? Unfortunately, this is a tricky question — one I am not qualified to answer. On a surface level, we can introduce more cultural sensitivity to our courts, training judges and lawyers in the ways that people unlike them may respond to the high stress situations they will encounter them in. More BIPOC at the bench and the bar table would also help challenge the Anglo cultural hegemony. More radically, we could deconstruct our justice system, have different courts for different people and cultural contexts, and remove the capacity for a judge to evaluate witness or defendant sincerity. It is not easy to decolonise systems that we rely on to function as a society, but it is necessary if we care about justice in any capacity.

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When I was introduced to sex ed for the first time as a kid in Year 6, I was directed to two books: one called Secret Boys’ Business, the other Secret Girls’ Business. Both were aimed at children, introducing them to the confusing and sometimes confronting parts of puberty — how your body changes, how things like menstruation, pregnancy, and erections work. Despite being presented as companion texts, aimed at teaching young boys and girls the same basic principles about their body, the former book was twice the length of the latter. Eleven-year-old me had only 32 pages of quirkily illustrated information about the confronting things happening to my body, while the boys in my class had 64.

There are a plethora of problems that come with under-educating people about their bodies, especially in the context of sex education. Improper or inadequate sex education leads to young people not understanding safe sex and possibly getting hurt. In a broader sense, though, it doesn’t equip people with the knowledge — or the language — that they need to take care of themselves, and to advocate for themselves medically or legally. When we deprive people — especially those assigned female at birth — of this vocabulary, we put them at risk. Language is a crucial part of healthcare.

First, let’s explore the linguistics underpinning this issue. Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to have a conversation without words. We build meaning with words and the definitions we understand them to have. It’s also hard to have a conversation with a limited set of words — if you want to express something but you don’t have a word for it, your explanation tends to be less precise, less streamlined. This goes beyond not being able to find that word on the tip of your tongue. It extends to an entire school of linguistic thought known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

The hypothesis is that our understanding of the world is filtered through the parameters afforded to us by the languages we speak. In his work as a chemical engineer for an insurance company, Whorf noted that English speakers misunderstood gasoline drums marked “empty” as containing nothing, rather than having been emptied of gasoline but still containing flammable gas, leading them to carelessly light cigarettes around such drums. Because English does not distinguish between both senses of “empty”, speakers don’t either. This correlation between the words we have and the way we understand words is also evident in how we identify things. Empirically, it’s easier to notice things with names you’re familiar with. I can easily identify when I feel sad or happy, because I’ve used the words “sad” and “happy” since I was a little kid. It is much harder to describe emotions which English doesn’t have neat words for, so I don’t consciously feel those nuances as much as I otherwise might. I didn’t really notice how often I felt déjà vu until I learned the term. Hence, a speaker of another language with a different set of words for emotions may have an entirely separate experience to me; the resources they have at their disposal are different. Our world is shaped by the words we have access to.

This includes the words we have for our bodies. The repertoire of names we have for body parts shapes the way we see our body, and the way we talk about it. Although the English words we have for body parts tend to be fairly comprehensive and standardised, that is less true for areas of the body we consider more taboo, such as genitalia, which we sometimes opt to refer to euphemistically.

While we use euphemisms and informal reference terms for body parts all the time — like calling your head a “noggin” — it’s unique that euphemisms and informal terms seem to be a preferable mode of reference for genitalia. This, I think, is especially true for references to female genitalia.

The words we have for female genitalia are broad at best and uncomfortable at worst. After anonymously surveying some AFAB people on their views on such words, a few trends emerged. The word “vagina” seemed to be preferred in conversational and medical settings, such as when talking to a doctor. Etymologically, “vagina” comes from a Latin root meaning “sheath” — something which a sword can be inserted into. It is not lost on me that even our most “neutral” word for genitalia is shaped by the way men interact with female bodies.

As one respondent noted, however, “vagina” is oftentimes misused. Anatomically, it refers to the internal parts of female genitalia, with “vulva” being the term for the external parts, but I — and most of the respondents I spoke to — only learnt this later in life. One respondent lamented the lack of a clear, all-encompassing label for female genitalia without the clinical or medical tone of “vulva” or “vagina”. These words sound awkward in casual conversation. In practice, they are often misapplied.

The euphemisms we have for female genitalia are equally awkward. Respondents identified truncated forms of “vagina” like “vag” or “vajayjay”, which evoke frustration: “an over the top euphemism is just annoying, because it’s not something that should invoke humour.” Others suggested “pussy” as a preferred term in casual and sexual contexts, which possibly comes from the Old Norse “puss”, meaning pocket.

The last term that came up in these discussions was “cunt”. “Cunt” stems from a geographical origin, being used to describe topographical features like gulleys or clefts, but has strong negative connotations, considered by some to be the most offensive word in the English language. Although Australian slang treats the term with less trepidation than other dialects, it is still used with negative connotations. Both “pussy” and “cunt” are used to deride and demean. It is not uncommon for words referring to taboo body parts to be used as insults — “dick” and “asshole” also come to mind — but “pussy” and “cunt” carry the unique pejorative connotations of weakness and shame, rather than just being a target of disdain.

The repertoire of reference terms for female genitalia that most AFAB people have ranges between misapplied medical terms and shameful euphemisms. This makes it hard to advocate for yourself in a healthcare context. How can you describe a symptom or a pain if you don’t have a word for its location? How can you understand what a doctor or gynaecologist is telling you if they’re using unfamiliar terms?

Furthermore, it steeps discussions of female genitalia in shame. If the only word you know for your genitalia is pejorative, you’re unlikely to bring up problems with a doctor in the first place out of embarrassment. This can be deadly. It can lead to AFAB people receiving improper or inadequate healthcare. This also applies in legal settings: feeling shame when talking about genitalia, or not having precise language, deters people from speaking to law enforcement or counsellors about legal issues involving them.

If Sapir and Whorf are correct, and we filter our world through the words we know, then the gap that exists in terms that describe female genitalia is devastating. We can — and must — do better to equip all people, young and old, with adequate and shame-free terms they can use for some of the most intimate parts of their lives.

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At one point in time, the words “witch” and “wizard” were simply gendered versions of the same concept: a magical person. Over time, however, one of those words has taken on another, more negative meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “witch” can be used as “a term of abuse or contempt for a woman, especially one regarded as old, malevolent, or unattractive.” Why is it that “witch” has come to mean something so pejorative, and no such thing has happened to “wizard”? I’m going to take you through the way that language evolves, and, in doing so, cast some light on the sexism baked into our language.

First, let’s understand what it means for meanings to change over time. We all understand words as having meanings; if we didn’t, nobody would be able to understand what this article is saying. These meanings are not static. They change with time and differing contexts. Some examples of semantic change are quite drastic: “bully” used to be an affectionate term for a sweetheart, and now means something quite different. In this article, I’ll be focusing on two particular types of semantic change: pejoration and amelioration. Both refer to the value judgements contained within words changing over time, with pejoration being a change towards negativity and amelioration towards positivity. “Bully” is an example of pejoration — a term with a positive value judgement became something negative. Semantic change happens all the time, often without us realising.

The question, then, is why does this happen? What drives semantic change? This is something hotly contested within the field of linguistics, so, unfortunately, I can’t give a definitive answer. I can, however, offer some theories. One is that the value judgements imbued in words change in tandem with social attitudes. An example is the way that words which refer to the LGBTQIA+ community have, arguably, ameliorated over time. Of course, there have always been people who used words like “gay” in a positive way, but in mainstream discourse, “gay” has gone from something taboo, or, in bigoted or ignorant settings, insulting, to something reclaimed in a positive way. Sometimes this happens organically. As society becomes more accustomed to new ideas, the judgemental power of a word is undermined. Other times, this change happens forcibly. Part of the civil rights movement in the US was the forcible amelioration of the word “black” in reference to African Americans, consciously recontextualising it as a positive thing rather than something derogatory. This trend makes sense — as our attitudes get more liberal, so do the value judgements in our language.

There is one peculiar exception to this explanation that I’d like to explore. Arguably, attitudes towards women in Western contexts have only gotten more progressive over time. This, however, is not reflected in our language. As with the example of “witch” and “wizard”, there are many instances of ‘apparent duals’ — sets of words whose meaning is differentiated only by gender — for which the feminine version of the word has pejorated, and the masculine version either hasn’t changed or has ameliorated. “Courtier” and “courtesan” are an apparent dual, both being terms for members of a court. “Courtier”, the masculine, has not changed meaning over time. “Courtesan” has taken on the meaning of a sex worker, which (unfairly) carries negative connotations. “Master” and “mistress” were both initially honorifics for unmarried people. “Master” has actually ameliorated, to become someone who is skilled at something, while “mistress” carries the negative judgement of an adulterer. Other similarly pejorated duals are “bachelor” / “spinster”, “buddy” / “sissy” (being derived from “brother” and “sister” respectively), and “governor” / “governess”. Time and time again, we see words that are feminine-coded which have degraded with time into something that is, at best, belittling, and, at worst, insulting.

Sexism exists elsewhere in English too. Many pejorative terms are semantically coded with gender. “Bitch” initially referred to female dogs. “Pussy” and “cunt” are both slang terms for the vagina. In some instances, these words are intended to be insulting in specifically gendered ways. Calling a woman a “bitch” implies that she has negative characteristics stereotypically associated with women — being bossy or catty. To call anyone else a bitch ascribes other negative, stereotypically feminine traits: weakness, pettiness. Part of the insult is the identification of, or likening to, an unflattering caricature of womanhood. In other instances, the insult itself is entirely divorced from gender. “Cunt”, as far as I can tell, is not exclusively used in a context which has sexist ramifications. It exists simply as a ‘bad’ word. It seems not to be a coincidence, however, that many ‘bad’ words come from a place of misogyny.

If it were true that negative value judgements temper with social change, then femininity should no longer be a damning component of semantics. Perhaps, then, that claim is too general. Maybe, it would be more accurate to say that meanings change when people collectively, consciously change how they use words. In many of the cases listed above, a speaker might not be conscious of the misogyny that underlies the words they use. Bossiness may be a negative trait worth disparaging with “bitch”. “Cunt” may be a satisfying word to say. “Witch” may be a good descriptor for a particularly nasty woman. However, it is worth being conscious of the ramifications of sexist language. The more we normalise femininity as a damning trait with our words, the easier it is to damn women. By choosing words that reflect the values that you espouse, you help inch our language in a more positive direction. Speak kindly. Help make witches magical again.

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“Articulate” comes from the Latin “articulus”, meaning small connecting part. To articulate something is to divide it into small joints, each of which comprise a whole. Over time, this took on a metaphorical meaning: to break an idea into parts for ease of communication. Now, “articulate” has a positive value judgement imbued in it. Being articulate means being able to use language well.

I acquired language, I expect, in the way that every child does. Babies start babbling at around six months, testing the sounds that they can make with the parts of their nascent mouths. They don’t know it, of course, but the parts of their mouths that they are getting used to — their larynx, their soft palate, the alveolar ridge and the gums from which their teeth will start to grow — are called articulators. At one and a half years old, babies typically start to utter words with meaning. These words are often short, simple patterns of consonants and vowels. By virtue of a baby’s still-developing articulators, the first consonant sounds they are able to utter are usually bilabial, where the point of articulation is the baby’s lips: [m], [p], [b]. It is no coincidence that the most common first word for babies is “mama”. “Mama” is designed to be said by newborn mouths.

The exact origin of language is unclear. Linguist Noam Chomsky proposed the idea of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD): an organ possessed by humans and no other animal which makes the development of language possible. It explains, he argues, how humans are able to acquire language so easily, and why no other species has developed something equivalent to human language. Animals do, of course, have communication systems. These systems can be quite complex. There is evidence that dolphins have systems of individual reference, and Campbell’s monkeys can develop protosyntax. Human language, however, is infinitely more complex and advanced. It is self-referential — we can talk about prior conversations. It can talk about the past and the future, and other abstract ideas. It provides means to use metaphor. We are, so far, alone in this capacity. Chomsky’s LAD is widely contested. Academics like JF Stein suggest that humans were able to evolve language due to several physical factors in our evolution: our left brains developed, our larynxes dropped, we started walking upright, and these factors gave us greater control of our vocalisations. Additionally, with the advent of society came an alleviation of natural selection. As we formed communities, built houses, cared for each other, learned to farm, it was no longer true that everything we did was driven by survival. In these communities, the language that we now know — the gossipy, poetic, metaphor-rich way we speak — was born.

It seems obvious to say that language has always been important to me. It is a tool that enables us to ask for things, to apologise when we have hurt our friends, and to learn more about the world around us. From the moment we start putting concepts to sounds or signs, language is a part of what it means to be a human. I have always loved language, though, in a particularly nerdy way. I prided myself on being able to spell words correctly, and still remember bitterly losing a class spelling contest because I was tricked with a homophone. I read voraciously. I wrote my own stories, too.

Words, to me, were comforting, and not just in the images and emotions they proved themselves able to conjure up. Words were little keys to ideas, to arguments, and the more I had in my hands, the more I was able to learn, to say, to communicate. I collected words like a bower bird collects shiny things, keen to adorn my homework and speeches and dinner-table conversations with them. I did this for myself, for my own insatiable appetite for learning. Just like a bower bird, though, I knew my adornments made me stand out. Teachers told me I was smart. Adults praised me for being eloquent. To be articulate, it seemed, was to be esteemed.

The first evidence of written language comes from Mesopotamia. Tablets inscribed with Ancient Sumerian, over five thousand years old, are some of the earliest records of writing we have. Before that, there is evidence of proto-writing — depictions of objects or people, painted or etched in public places to tell stories. “True writing”, though, is the correlation of sounds to symbols. Writing is thought to have spread from Sumeria, being adopted as a useful tool for record-keeping, forming contracts, and recording the law. For much of history, though, written language was exclusively the domain of the elite — those who had the capital to barter contracts or the prestige to have their words etched into stone. Before the invention of printing, it was laborious to replicate written words. The vast majority of people had no reason to encounter orthography – they learned through spoken words, stained glass Biblical scenes in Church windows. The printing press helped democratise writing, but even then, it remained exclusive to those who could afford schooling, both the cost of tuition and the time taken away from work. Today, despite ever-increasing efforts to make literacy more accessible, there are still over 770 million illiterate adults in the world. Most of them are women.

Not having access to orthography, though, does not mean that people cannot speak language. It also doesn’t mean that people cannot speak language well. Of the over 7000 languages spoken around the world, just over 4000 have a written component. Writing can be useful, especially when communicating with large groups over large periods of time or geographic distances. It is not an essential component of language. In ways, it can stagnate language evolution – meticulously kept records of language can make deviations from its past forms obvious. Writing makes things like grammar, punctuation, and spelling more central to language expression. It hinges “good” communication upon having the fortune to be educated. On top of this, dominant languages are more likely to be taught, further shaping what we understand articulate to mean based on being part of a social or ethnic majority. This, of course, is arbitrary. Some of the world’s greatest poets may have never even picked up a pen.

Being known as a grammar nerd meant that, even in primary school, my friends would ask me for help with their English homework. I did it gladly — part of it was fun, and another part of it was a chance to prove how well I knew words, how strictly I could follow the rules of the English language. Every comma I added, split infinitive I repaired, hung preposition I cushioned in noun phrases was proof that I was articulate. Articulate was the last few marks on my English assignments, the judge’s feedback from the debates I won, the glowing words printed on my report card. To be articulate was to be intelligent. To be worth listening to.

Although humans do not have a LAD, Chomsky’s vision of language as an organ has some merit. Spoken and signed language lives and grows, shaped by the mouths and hands of those who use it. With time and new speakers, words change their meanings, grammar slips and slides, vowel sounds dance around our mouths. Linguistic change is organic and important. It reflects new concepts, like the creation of new words like “unfriend”; new attitudes, in how pejorative terms for certain people or concepts ameliorate over time; and it embeds metaphorical meaning into words that, when we use them now, we don’t realise ever used to be literal (like “articulate”). Divergence from a written or formalised standard of language is not a sign of incompetence, but, rather, a natural byproduct of language as a living, growing thing.

The speakers of language who are most likely to innovate it are those who are most likely to be excluded from the bodies that regulate it. Young people, women, racial and ethnic minorities, and members of subcultures with jargon are consistently at the fore of linguistic innovation. This is true for a number of reasons. In some cases, in-group language is a necessity to create a community, especially a covert one. Participants in Ballroom culture in the US — a queer subculture dominated by Black and Latinx speakers — produced coded language that could be used to identify other members of the same group without outing yourself. Many of the words they innovated are used widely today: “throwing shade”, “realness”, “yas”. The same is true for Polari, a dialect created by queer people in the UK — the name itself is a pun on “parlare”, the Italian word meaning “to speak”. Linguistic innovation brings safety and community.

Beyond this, innovation is an act of reclamation and ownership. Dialects like African American English and Aboriginal English were born of colonial contact between English speakers and the people who they enslaved or stole land from. Colonisers stripped the people they subjugated of their languages, separating speech communities and forcing them to speak English. To take the coloniser’s tongue and make it your own, imbuing it with Yoruba or Wiradjuri grammar, subverting the arbitrary conventions it inherits from generations of elitist academia, is to make it your own. Evidence of this reclamation is evident in AAE in its embedded copulas, habitual tense, and double negation. Contact between speech communities produces innovation, especially when that innovation fortifies the identity of those communities.

Linguistic innovation occurs when language is spoken freely, without judgement, in groups not concerned with prestige. The frontier of linguistic innovation has historically been women’s meeting places, the kitchens and laundries that they gathered in to chat. The act of idle conversation, unconcerned with proper syntax or pronunciation, in groups which span wide networks of people, breeds linguistic change. The same is true of young people on playgrounds. These conversations reset norms around what is and isn’t understandable, swirl together outside influences, weed out redundancies or complications. If language is an organ, linguistic innovation — the very kind championed by those most excluded from academia — is the heartbeat which pumps blood through it.

One of the factors that sets human language apart from animal communication is its capacity to be self-reflexive. We can use language to talk about language. In the last five years, I have done an awful lot of talking about language, both in my coursework and the articles that I write. I began University clutching the descriptor “articulate” to my chest, holding it tightly for fear of losing the value it had brought me. Learning more about language has caused my grip to slacken. The value I gleaned from “articulate” was a blunt and arbitrary tool used to diminish the opinions of those who didn’t speak the way I did. Perhaps, there was no pride in knowing what an Oxford comma was. Of course there wasn’t. The value of an idea should not be contingent on the words and punctuation used to express it.

Beyond that, though, I was confronted with another jarring revelation: I’m actually not that articulate. In written word, I make grammatical mistakes all the time. I don’t know the difference between “which” and “that”. I begin sentences with conjunctions and end them with prepositions. My spoken language is even worse. Listening to recordings of myself interviewing others or making an argument in a debate, I recoil at my half-sentences, my mismatched verb and noun agreement, the filler words I use to plug silence with. I’m not concise at all, and I overuse specific turns of phrase like “that is to say”. I am no better a language user than anyone else.

And that’s perfectly fine. In fact, it’s kind of beautiful.

When a child learns language, they are not unlocking some part of their brain which has vocabulary and syntax ready to go. Everything they learn, they work out from the sounds they hear. This deductive process extends beyond initial language acquisition. The lexical ornaments my young self adorned her writing with were plucked from the books I rabidly consumed, the conversations I had, the movies I adored. When I debate, I steal turns of phrase from speakers who I admire for their eloquence. These words and expressions enter our mental lexicons both consciously and not. The tools with which we express ourselves are fashioned from years of hearing others’ self expression, from learning and loving and making things anew. I would like to think that, with thought and revision, I write things coherently. When I speak aloud, though, my bumbling mess of phrases is nothing but a string of all the words and syntaxes I have heard said to me.

Before it gained the metaphoric sense of eloquence, to be articulate was to be composed of a sum of small parts. The way we speak is, fundamentally, a sum of small parts. The dropped larynx of a Neanderthal eons ago. The first “mama” from a baby’s lips. A fragment of an engraved tablet. Quips traded around a communal oven. A defiantly embedded copula. A phrase with a covert meaning drenched in both love and fear. A slip of my tongue as I make a point, echoing the friends I admire. To speak is to be human. To be human is to be articulate.

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Blanche DuBois is not a relatable character. This is what makes her role as the main character in A Streetcar Named Desire intriguing; her actions have an alien quality to them, as though she is being compelled by something unrecognisable. The play unfolds during Blanche’s visit to her sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley after leaving her hometown under clouded pretences. Blanche lies compulsively, obsesses about her image to extraordinary lengths and takes pleasure in provoking and flirting with Stanley, despite his short temper and violence. Among her eccentricities, though, there are moments of familiarity, like loanwords from your native tongue in a sea of foreign dialogue. Her fears of abandonment, of not being desired, of being disliked, are very human and not uncommon. Blanche is not relatable, but she is pitiable for recognisable reasons. One of her lines of dialogue, however, has stuck with me despite how different I think myself to be from her. I find myself repeating it in my thoughts and conversations more often than anything else from that play, or from most other texts I have read. “Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable”, she says. “It is the one unforgivable thing … and the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty.”

I am of two minds about police reform. I am quite sympathetic to demands to abolish or defund the police, and to cries of all cops being bastards. In my work at a local court, I have seen firsthand how broken our justice system can be. Countless people who are brought before the courts, especially for lower-level crimes, should not be there—people with mental illnesses or disabilities, people with addictions, people in crippling poverty or dealing with personal tragedies. These people deserve justice, but our first port of call when dealing with them should not be the police. I am unequivocally in favour of a justice system which diversifies its community outreach, investing in social workers, therapists, addiction counsellors, and other less confrontational support workers. Police are not equipped to deal with the plethora of reasons which underpin crime, and they cannot reasonably be expected to be so; we should not, and cannot, rely on the same group of people, with the same training and goals, to resolve domestic disputes, comfort mentally unwell people who are ‘disturbing the peace’, chase down runaway perpetrators and fact-find about cases months after the fact. In addition to this, police officers are often imperfect and sometimes cruel. They wield the unique power of state-sanctioned violence and are often defended when it is employed incorrectly or unnecessarily. They can import prejudices into their work, into who they investigate as potential suspects or who they choose to stop and frisk. Low-income and marginalised communities are demonstrably overpoliced, and BIPOC are disturbingly overrepresented in carceral systems in many liberal democracies. Something about policing needs to change.

Despite this, I cannot consider myself truly anti-police, for the simple reason that there are some crimes I think are worth policing. These crimes are not those which arise out of poverty, addiction or other coercive factors, but those which arise out of cruelty—deliberate cruelty. I know far too many women and gender minorities who have been sexually assaulted, harassed or otherwise abused by men to believe that all crimes happen for reasons that could be solved with more social workers. These crimes are motivated by a slew of things which I will not even pretend to be privy to, but one such motivation is undeniably power—perhaps a pursuit of power over a victim, or a drunkenness on the power afforded them by a culture which turns its back on victims, but power nonetheless. This power, both awarded to and sought by perpetrators, breeds entitlement and cruelty. When people I love have confided in me that this type of crime has been committed against them, I have told them to report it to the police and to pursue criminal charges. I do this despite my scepticism of police and my broader criticisms of incarceration as a form of justice. I do it because sexual and gendered violence scare me, in a primal way, and I want to believe that insofar as justice exists, it ought to be served in the face of deliberate evil.

When my loved ones have told me that they have suffered male violence, one sentiment keeps coming up: that despite the enormous psychological pressure these women are under—the physical harm they have suffered, the ongoing reckoning they are having with their bodies and spiritualities, the ever-unfolding pain of divulging such a personal cruelty to others in an effort to not feel alone—they do not want to act as though something abnormal has happened. They attend their classes, work their shifts, keep up their personal commitments despite the great ugly thing which is gnawing at them. If they cannot keep up appearances, it is agonising. When describing it to me, multiple people have used the exact same metaphor: that to diverge from normalcy would be to let their perpetrator ‘win’—to give him power. There are many cruelties that make up gendered violence. This is one of them. Perpetrators drop a burden onto their victims: the burden of moving on. Of making polite conversation with their rapists and abusers and assailants so as not to draw attention in social settings, of smiling when it would be abnormal to frown, of relearning intimacy and losing the fears that plague them. If they cannot move on, these women will be crushed. They will lose.

It is convenient for me to imagine cruelty, and criminality, as a dichotomy between circumstantial and deliberate. It soothes the cognitive dissonance that plagues my thoughts on policing: we could use social workers and therapy to resolve the former category of crime, and police and incarceration for the other. This, however, is misguided. Complaints of sexual crimes are not reliably handled well by the police or the courts. Only a fifth of police reports of sexual assault proceed to trial. These trials are draining and humiliating. I have sat through hearings where complainants’ retellings from years ago were relentlessly poked through in cross-examination until both story and complainant lay hollow and defeated. Questions which are integral to the functioning of a just courtroom—how reliable is the complainant? Was the accused accountable for their actions?—can be excruciating when recounting such intimate violence. Even if the charge results in a conviction, the victory is hollow. The burden of moving on does not magically shrink. Our justice system cannot truly compensate victims of gendered violence, and it is built in such a way that those victims are subjected to even more cruelty if they are brave enough to seek justice.

In the climax of A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley, Blanche’s brother-in-law, rapes her. This unconscionable act of cruelty shatters her already fragile mental state, which Stanley uses as an excuse to send her to an asylum. The world of the play moves on. Blanche does not. In the film adaptation, this is Stella’s wake-up call: she gathers her things, grabs her newborn baby, and storms out of the house, muttering to herself that Stanley went too far while his despondent cries of ‘Stella!’ chase her out. There is no justice for Blanche, but Stella, who has been the victim of his violence throughout the film, is freed as the credits flash on the screen. It is a hollow victory, but a victory nonetheless.

This ending was doctored by the Hayes Code which demanded that characters receive endings which befitted their morality. Stanley, as an evil man, could not get a happy ending, and so was sentenced to being abandoned by his wife. The play ends differently. As Blanche is driven away, Stella stands, distressed, holding their baby. Stanley stands beside her. He wraps his arm around her and sticks his hand down the front of her blouse. The stage goes dark.

If I don’t go to class, he wins. If I cry on the train, he wins. If I can’t move on, he wins. My heart breaks. He wins no matter what.

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Dear Mould,

I didn’t want to break things off in this way. I really didn’t. But every time I try to end things, you keep coming back. No matter how much vinegar I wipe across my walls, how often I use a dehumidifier — you just won’t quit. I’m writing this letter because…well, this is it.

Please don’t take this the wrong way. It’s hard enough as it is. I almost didn’t want to do this — it’s so much easier just ignoring the issue — but my friends (and NSW Health) say that you’re toxic. And honestly, I can see where they’re coming from. You’ve changed me. Sure, you take my breath away — my asthma is never worse than around you — but you demand so much of my time. If I don’t pay attention to you for one day, you spiral out of control, covering my furniture and eating up the paint on my walls. It’s exhausting, and I just can’t do it anymore. I need my space back.

Don’t get me wrong. There were good times. When we first met, and our mutual friend told me you were the reason my rent was so cheap, I pictured our future together right then and there. I remember the first time I saw you, in the corner of the living room, so shy and unassuming. I could never have imagined things would turn out the way they have. At first I loved how tall you were, but now, I can’t get over the height difference; even standing on a chair, I can’t reach all of you. And I can’t keep buying this much vinegar, Mould — it’s killing me, and I think, deep down, it’s killing you too. I can’t go on like this. It’s not healthy.

Once my landlord approves the mould removalist, it’s over. I want you out of my house, and you can take all your things with you. You deserve someone who loves you for you, in all your spore-y, sprawling glory. As for me, I need time to work on my studies, on my career, on just… breathing easy again.

Maybe, one day, we’ll meet again. When I’ve graduated and I’m looking to buy my first place and every house I see is out of my budget. Maybe I’ll find a place that’s surprisingly cheap, go and inspect for myself. The agent won’t name you, but I’ll see you, and I’ll know. I could recognise you from a mile away.

Until we meet again.

Love,

Nicola

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As I write this article, I’m awaiting marks for the thesis I spent all of this year writing about the semantics and pragmatics of apology. This is the tail end of five years spent studying linguistics and media / communications. While my studies are drawing to a close, one thing that has been constant throughout these years has not abated — in fact, it has increased. When making small talk about my degree, one question always comes up: what can you do with that?

I have a few answers I default to — AI desperately needs linguists, and there are many jobs which need media skills in communication roles — but, in truth, I really don’t know what jobs I can do with the specific combination of degrees that I am graduating with. When choosing my degree at the end of high school, employability was omnipresent, a fine mist sprayed over every course guide and University pamphlet I pored over. My school’s career counsellor challenged me when I expressed fleeting interest in criminology: “but what are you going to do with that?” She saw me as a manager at an art gallery, a career pastiched together from the list of HSC subjects that sat in my file in front of her. Business and visual arts were the degrees she pointed me to.

Her suggestion, framed more as a diagnosis than advice, triggered a feeling that still eats at me in any discussion I have about employability. It is a feeling I still can’t quite explain; I loved learning and writing about art, but I didn’t want a career in it. The same was true of my other HSC subjects — Physics, Maths, Italian, English — and, indeed, of various University units I have done: introductory Arabic, great works of literature, public relations. This feeling is an anxious, smothering one. As if, by studying subjects like art and literature that I didn’t see a career in, I had somehow been dishonest. It also entails a question that I feel even less sure of how to answer: if I feel instinctively averse to several jobs which relate to subject matter that I, ostensibly, enjoy, what kind of job do I want?

Attending University is a privilege, especially in a country like Australia with high standards of public tertiary education. That I was able to study at all is the direct result of not having urgent financial pressures that necessitated full-time work once I left school. To study a degree without a clear transition into a workplace is a further privilege still; I have the luxury of part-time jobs to rely on, and the safety net of a family who could support me if need be, in the time I take to settle on a career path. The indecision I feel, no matter how anxious it makes me, is a blessing. Despite this, I did not attend University simply for fun. The dedication of time, money, and resources I have committed to my studies over the last five years are an investment, one which I hope to get returns from.

The most obvious way to get these returns is through a career. I understand why my relatives, career counsellors, and work colleagues are so curious as to what job I can get with my degree — the assumption is that I studied specifically to train for a particular career. However, this assumption is overly reductive. It rests on the flawed premise that the only factor differentiating careers from one another is the subject matter that the job revolves around. However, there are a myriad of factors which make career paths intellectually distinct; the kind of tasks one would be required to do, the ways of thinking that are most rewarded, the different interpersonal skills most frequently exercised. I loved art in high school, and still love it now; the reason I balked at being a gallery manager was not that I didn’t understand artworks, but that I have never had a head for business, for the investment weigh-ups that a manager would have to make, and that being in a managerial position of power has no appeal to me. Enjoying the subject matter of your career is good, but no more important than enjoying the procedures and dynamics that compose your workday; I would argue it is markedly less so.

Why, then, do we still correlate interest in subject matter with prospective careers? In truth, I think it’s just a lot easier to do so instead of grappling with the infinite other ways a career path could be determined. Subject matter is more accessible and explicable by both students and well-meaning advisors: it is easier for me to say I think language is cool than to say I like puzzle solving, and working alone, and tinkering away at multiple projects at once. This ease is also reflected in the way we structure degrees. Universities such as USYD seem aware that there is more to a career than just subject matter; compulsory OLEs and units focused on interdisciplinarity allude to an awareness that you need more than a set of facts in your head to be employable, and certain units are structured to specifically instruct students on ways of thinking and communicating. However, constraints, both unavoidable and arbitrary, limit how much students can cultivate different interpersonal, communicative, and procedural skills. Some skills are just categorically hard to teach and assess; interpersonal skills are difficult to identify, let alone assess without biases such as ableism. Tests of knowledge such as exams and essays are the easiest tests to administer. Beyond logistic constraints, administrative decisions, like cuts to subjects and amalgamation of arts cohorts into generic honours subjects, suggest that Sydney University does not care as much about providing students a range of opportunities to gauge how skilled they are at certain processes as they are their bottom line. The unfortunate fact is, if you’re a student looking to work out your strengths and weaknesses for career aptitude, you’re on your own for all but subject matter related questions.

This isn’t to say, of course, that my degree has not been instructive for my career preferences. I have learnt I like working alone and improved on working as a team; I have established routines that I intend to transfer to the workplace. The way I coped with degree stress is enlightening and helped shape how I interact with my mental health. The skills you learn in your degree, no matter how remote from a job title they may seem, are transferable to your working life.

Beyond this, though, there are other ways that you can get a return on your investment into University. I may never work in a domain that overlaps with linguistics, and yet studying it and writing a thesis in it has enriched me immensely. The way I prove logical conclusions has been sharpened; I know more than I had ever hoped to about the way that we speak and why we make the choices that we do. I am a repository of fun language facts, which makes for excellent small talk. I emerged from my media degree with a portfolio of pieces I had created all by myself, including a podcast that I’ve since published and shared internationally. Even if none of these accomplishments translate directly into a career, it is silly to say that they don’t amount to anything.

I joke about my degrees being useless, but I don’t really believe that. Even if they aren’t the key which unlocks certain career paths for me, they have changed the way I think, understand myself, and have endowed me with so much knowledge. My advice, however ill-equipped I am to give it, is this: study useless degrees. Learn things that make you feel satisfied to learn. Get to know the way your brain works in whatever context most befits it. Education is invaluable.

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Human history can be mapped through language. Etymology traces the evolution of ideas, of the dialects speakers use, of the advances which require the conjunction of morphemes in new ways. There are hidden graveyards in old texts of words that have fallen out of use over time; there are languages which have not been spoken in years as their speakers have passed away or learned to speak a colonising tongue. The symbiosis of language and culture is clear in the influence that religion and religious institutions have had, and continue to have, on language. This essay does not comment on the virtue of this influence, but instead explores the inextricable link between faith and the ways we speak.

In one sense, the use of language in religion is unexceptional. Linguistic communication has long been the way humans pass information from one to another. In the case of religion, which categorically relies on the description or belief in something intangible, language is plausibly the best tool we have to capture and share ideas about it. This is true of other topics of conversation, too – philosophy, history, and storytelling are all fundamentally linguistic traditions. The relationship between religion and language, though, is distinct from those between language and other concepts. Religion is not just something which is learnt, but something which is maintained and spread, relying on linguistic mechanisms to do so. Praying, for example, whether spoken or internal, often uses words to connect an adherent to their god. Singing psalms or chants are vocal expressions of faith. Uttering specific phrases like the Shahada (the Islamic declaration that “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God”) or saying “I do” at a Catholic altar can constitute actions – converting to Islam (among other uses) or marrying someone, respectively. Many machinations of religions rely on language.

As such, a key part of many faiths is the belief that the language they use to enact their piety is, in itself, divine. The Quran is written as Allah was said to have spoken to the Prophet Muhammad, and dictates that it cannot be translated from the language chosen by Allah. Hindus consider Sanskrit sacred and “perfect”. Until the Second Vatican Council, Catholic masses could only be performed in Latin, a hangover from the status of Latin as that of dignity and scholarship during the Roman Empire. The sanctity conferred upon language through its use in religion allows adherents to feel closer to their faith when speaking it, but also has fascinating consequences on those chosen languages, their documentation, preservation, and evolution.

The use of language in religious ceremony has been instrumental in documenting those languages in a unique way. Religious institutions that needed to replicate spoken or written text to evangelise or service faith communities rely on linguistic documentation to ensure consistency. In the fourth century BCE, an ancient Indian scholar wrote the Ashtadhyayi, a comprehensive grammar of Sanskrit, the language which had been used in Vedic chants for centuries prior. Documenting the grammar of Sanskrit not only allowed for the chants to be shared and preserved over time, but also allowed for Sanskrit to be analysed and standardised. Reproductions of the Lord’s Prayer in medieval England provide invaluable insights into the evolution of English orthography over time and across different regions. This documentation is valuable due to its consistency – replicating the same prayer makes orthographic evolution stark. We can see the roots of modern English in these painstakingly but faithfully copied texts.

While religious texts can function to map linguistic change, they can also prevent it. As the Quran cannot be translated, its text has remained largely unchanged since it was written. While Arabic dialects have continued to evolve and diverge to the point of significant grammatical and lexical differences, the “standard” Arabic immortalised in the Quran has not followed that same organic evolution. Beyond providing invaluable documentation of contemporary Arabic (including the introduction of and changes to diacritics in written Arabic), this preservation affords a unique perspective on linguistic growth. Standard Arabic is not spoken conversationally, but is understood by speakers all over the Arab world due to its similarity to their own dialects and their familiarity with the Quran. Someone wishing to learn Arabic from outside the Arab world often starts with the standard form before learning dialectal differences. Arabic is not unique in its diversity, but the fact that the many dialects continue to identify as Arabic, despite being mutually unintelligible in some cases, is a testament to the inextricable link between the language and its social impact. It is impossible to imagine Arabic without the Quran.

The capacity for religious institutions to document and preserve language stems not only from the dedication of their adherents, but also of the resources at their disposal. For most of human history, creating permanent written documents was the domain of the elite. Writing requires resources, which can be difficult and costly to obtain — stone, vellum, ink, a printing press. More accessible resources such as papyrus or leaves were more likely to degrade over time. Literacy has also not been consistently common over time. The capacity to read and write was a skill often historically reserved for clergy or other elite; in Europe, for example, literacy did not become particularly common until the 1600s - 1800s. Few bodies had the resources, skills, and time to create writing on anywhere near the scale of religious institutions, let alone ones that were preserved and reproduced as fastidiously as these.

As well as archiving language, religion has shaped it. Many words and cultural metaphors are based in religious tradition. Beyond religious expletives or exclamations —“oh my God”, “damn” — English contains many phrases rooted in religion. Much language of apology — “excuse me”, “forgive me” — is rooted in Christian notions of sin and atonement. Words like “noon” (coming from the Latin “nona”, for nine, which referred to nine hours after monks awoke) or “cemetery” (from the German “Koiman”, to sleep, which referred to the dead sleeping until resurrection) stem from the historic dominance of Christian belief in the Anglosphere, though they lack religious connotations today. Many languages with semantic gender (categories of noun which differ based on whether the referent is male, female, or neuter) also reflect animacy in their gender distinctions; Tamil, for example, makes grammatical distinctions between “rational” and “irrational” referents. Cultural understandings of animacy and autonomy often stem from religious concepts, like who or what is ensouled, or what distinction — if any — exists between humans and animals. Languages are built over millennia of use to reflect the understanding their speakers have of the world. Some Indigenous Australian languages use tense systems that reflect their understanding of the Dreamtime, a spiritual belief in the interconnectedness of all points in time. When that worldview is steeped in religion, languages are too.

Language evolves organically every time it is used, but there are structures outside speakers’ control that shape its growth like a lattice underneath a vine. Religion and spirituality are central to the worldviews of many speakers and the societies they exist in. Our languages cannot be untangled from our cultures.

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Menstruating is an almost entirely terrible experience. Everything — everything — hurts, there’s so much blood, your body looks, and feels, and does things weirdly. Hangovers and illnesses get worse, and on top of all that, your emotions are thrown out of whack. Most people I know who menstruate wish they didn’t. Amongst this agony, though, is a phenomenon that those who do not menstruate may never get the chance to experience: Libra Odd Spots.

These little facts, printed in blue type on shiny liner backs, wing tabs, or pad wrappers, stare up at you as you sit on the toilet, blood clots dripping into the water below.

Odd Spot #71: The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by the Ancient Egyptians in 2000 BC.

After a brief moment of amusement, these trivia-stamped wrappers are crumpled up and stowed in the sanitary bins having served their fleeting purpose. You go about your day, probably in pain and miserable. But at least you know more about crocodile-shit-contraceptives now.

Odd Spots strike a peculiar balance of whimsy, recognisability, and camaraderie. Above all, they’re conceptually bizarre: who decided that, in some of the worst moments of your week, you would want to learn trivia?

In my quest to learn more, I reached out to Libra through several avenues. Most got no response. The only correspondence was from a representative called Jacki, who redirected me to simply Google “Libra Odd Spots”. Weirdly, there is very little content from Libra that addresses them.

An article by New Zealand publisher The Spinoff fact-checks some of these Odd Spots and cites Libra marketing manager Laura Demarchi, claiming that there are over 300 Odd Spots in circulation. There are several fan-run blogs and web pages which chronicle lists of Odd Spots — the oldest I found was a BlogSpot page from 2005. I found another New Zealand article from 2021, in Critic Te Ārohi, whose author had also communicated with a representative named Jacki after they were worried Libra had stopped printing Odd Spots (they had not).

Like that author, I had begun to worry that Libra had stopped making Odd Spots. I bought pads specifically for this article, and there weren’t any Odd Spots on them. However, in a YouTube video posted by Libra in August 2022, ambassador Abbie Chatfield reads out a selection of the “most iconic” facts. In this video, Chatfield suggests the Odd Spots have been around for over twenty years, but doesn’t say anything about them having stopped. This baffled me further. Why is Libra so evasive about an ostensibly well-loved facet of their brand? I’ve never seen a brand so determined to downplay a gimmick that its customers actively enjoy.

The facts themselves are also somewhat mysterious. Some of them sound really implausible. From the various blogs documenting the Odd Spots, I collected a few to fact-check.

#132: Boanthropy is a disease in which a person thinks they’re an ox.

True, weirdly enough.

#65: You are more likely to get attacked by a cow than a shark.

It is true that cows kill more people each year than sharks do, however, data on non-fatal cow attacks is difficult to find, so I can’t guarantee this fact is true.

#23: In the course of an average lifetime, you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.

Thankfully, this is not true, it’s an urban legend.

For those curious about the crocodile dung contraceptives: it’s true that in Ancient Egypt some types of animal faeces were used as a spermicide. However, they aren’t the first recorded contraceptives — condoms have been used since 3000 BC, with the earliest ones being made of animal intestines.

It’s possible that these have been updated since they were posted to the sites I found. Regardless, it seems that Odd Spots fluctuate in their accuracy.

The question remains, then: what’s the point of Odd Spots? If they are intended as a marketing gimmick, they are bafflingly under-advertised. The people I spoke to who like Odd Spots often consider them a fun little surprise when they open up a pad, as opposed to something they actively seek out. Surely, there’s a point beyond marketing.

In the article from The Spinoff, they quote Laura Demarchi as saying that Odd Spots are “a bit of light-hearted entertainment during an otherwise pretty mundane period of the month.” Perhaps Odd Spots are just intended to be a little bit of wholesome fun to make periods easier. Learning is enjoyable, and the facts are whimsical. There is camaraderie in returning from the bathroom with a fun fact to share.

Jacki’s instruction to Google “Odd Spots” initially struck me as pointless, as it did not turn up much official Libra content about them at all. Perhaps, though, the fact that a majority of the results are fan-compiled tributes tells me more about Odd Spots than I initially thought. As far back as 2005, people were excitedly compiling lists to share with each other. There is a longstanding community built around these fun facts. Maybe that’s the point.

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“I haven’t heard from my wife for weeks – I don’t want to interrupt her!” “I get this nagging feeling sometimes… it usually starts when I wake up, and disappears when she goes to bed.” “Behind every nagging woman is a husband not doing what he’s supposed to!” You may have seen one-liners like these before, peppering the Facebook walls of your older relatives. I’ve watched coworkers make these jokes, accompanied by rolled eyes and elbow-nudges, to a chorus of knowing chuckles, framed photos of them grinning with their wives sitting atop their desks. We don’t bat an eye when men say they hate their wives, and in fact, we sometimes expect them to do so. How are these roles – the nagging wife and hen-pecked husband – so ingrained in our culture? And why do we find them funny?

The ‘nagging wife’ trope has a long history. The ‘shrew’ that gets ‘tamed’ in Shakespeare’s play is a strong-willed wife; the verb “scold”, meaning “to tell off”, stems from a Middle English noun meaning “a chiding woman”. The trope crystallised in the West in the 1960s, a time when white-collar jobs rose in popularity, instilling a culture of men working nine-to-five and returning to a home-cooked meal, lovingly prepared by their stay-at-home wife. Women were, as they have been for much of history, relied upon to do ceaseless unpaid and unrecognised labour. Women could not get credit cards which were not in their husbands’ names, and divorce was still widely inaccessible and stigmatised. Marriage was at once a force of oppression and a lifeline; being an unmarried older woman was also looked down upon. At the same time, second-wave feminism emerged as a school of thought, a radical movement incensed by the patriarchy and all its arms. An awful lot of women were angry, and many of them took to the streets in protest: their anger was made visible.

This rise in visibly frustrated wives coincided with a boom in publicly accessible entertainment. During the 1950s, televisions had gone from a rare luxury to a commodity which the majority of American homes had access to. Sitcoms, which often aimed to depict ‘everyday’ people through recognisable caricatures, gained popularity in the mid- to late-1950s. Standup comedy evolved from underground monologue performances to bigger, televised shows. The nagging wife trope existed in comedy before these technological advancements: Henny Youngman, a comedian known for his one-liners in the 1940s, was best known for the line, “take my wife… please!” With these technological advancements, though, comics were tasked with entertaining larger audiences than ever before. What better way to do so than by appealing to the assumed universal of a wife who can’t stop complaining?

Clearly, this trope did resonate – and continues to resonate – with many people. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle still employ punchlines about their (real) wives being nitpicky, stubborn, or frustrating. If this was not an entertaining trope, it surely would not have endured over half a century in our media. So, why has it stuck around? Is it actually funny?

On the one hand, comedy can be an outlet for frustrations that are hard to express or navigate. Many people are trapped in unhappy marriages which are hard to leave for legal and financial reasons, alongside familial responsibilities. This could be for an infinite number of reasons, but a culture which treats a heterosexual marriage as something everyone must achieve – preferably when they’re younger – and divorce as taboo and a sign of failure certainly does not help. These pressures exist today, but were arguably even stronger decades ago when the trope first gathered traction, for all the reasons I outlined above. Combined with gender roles which insist upon men working long, tiresome days to single-handedly support a nuclear family with their income, and upon women bearing the brunt of housework and childcare, it is easy to understand why this trope is so resonant, especially with older generations who got married in a less progressive context. A man may well feel nagged when asked to tidy up after himself if he sees that as his wife’s job or is overtired. A woman who has to constantly remind her husband to do the bare minimum to keep their house clean could easily perceive him as a deadbeat. This trope is capitalism viewed through a funhouse mirror: it pokes fun at the very real tensions that emerge when you make society dependent on marriage. In a way, I can’t blame people for laughing along to it, nor for making jokes about it. It’s a coping mechanism.

At the same time, though, this is obviously a harmful trope. It dismisses the very real grievances of women as “nagging” – it is no coincidence that, when second wave feminism encouraged housewives to speak up about their oppression, men on television laughed at them for doing so. It perpetuates gender essentialism, or the notion that men and women are inherently different, by claiming that women are insatiably picky and men are doofuses who can’t take hints. This also shields men from blame for acting in harmful ways – it’s the same rationale as notions like “boys will be boys”. How could they be expected to know what women want from them if all women do is complain? Additionally, the expectations that marriage is a drag or that you hate your spouse are incredibly toxic. If people enter marriages with the expectation that they will become unpleasant, it makes them less likely to seek marriage counselling or divorce when they do go downhill. Of course, marriage and relationships can be tricky – humans are messy and hard to get along with perfectly, 24/7 – but, to be clear, marriage should not be a source of misery.

Like so many other tropes in comedy, the “old ball and chain” trope reveals something about those who laugh along with it. It speaks to the frustration of a generation who truly can’t live with, nor without, their spouses. As attitudes towards marriage, gender roles, and singledom shift, I can imagine this trope will lose its audience and fade into obscurity as it becomes less obvious why someone would live with a spouse they despise. You should love your spouse. Tropes like this obscure that.

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My Instagram explore page is populated by fluffy animals. The majority of my time on the app is spent watching Reel after Reel of cats snuggling up to each other and dogs being goofy little guys. In my browsing, I have observed a linguistic trend that has both fascinated and irritated me. A video of a dog barking at a passerby, captioned: “doin a heckin bork.” A ragdoll cat, labelled in the caption as “floof”. “Bamboozle”, “momther”, “hooman”, “hungery”. I have never understood this odd dialectal pattern: I don’t find it funny, and I don’t think it adds all that much to content which I think is already pretty excellent. Why, then, is it so wide-spread?

This internet dialect has a name: DoggoLingo. Its features are distinct. Many of its words clearly derive from English, but are slightly altered in how they are spelt or pronounced — “fren” for “friend”, “floof” for “fluff”, “hooman” for “human” and “smol” for “small”. It adds suffixes like -o (“doggo”, “catto”) and often turns the phoneme [ŋ] — the “ng” at the ends of words like “doing” — into [n]: “heckin”, “doin”. Many of its unique lexical items are onomatopoeic, like “mlem” for a lick, or are specific to things dogs do: to “sploot” is to lie with hind legs splayed, and to “blep” is to stick your tongue out slightly. There is also a decided wholesomeness to it; “heckin” is the expletive of choice.

The origin of both the dialect and its name are unknown, but are heavily steeped in internet culture. According to Know Your Meme, the first use of the eponymous word “doggo” was in the name of a Facebook group in 2014. However, the trend of altering language in relation to dogs predates this. The word “doge” was first used as an intentional mispronunciation of “dog” as early as 2005. In 2010, a photo of a Shiba Inu giving a sidelong glance to the camera went viral, and, when posted to Reddit, was referred to as a “doge”. The ensuing meme, characterised by rainbow Comic Sans text overlaying the now-iconic picture, consisted of punchlines communicated with very distinct stylisation. “Very wow”, “plz”, and other phrases appropriated English in an uncanny way, similar to the word “doge” itself – the altered syntax and spelling was distinct, goofy, and very early-2010s-internet. While the doge meme featured a specific dog, DoggoLingo repurposed this affectation as a way of describing dogs and referring to their actions. The dialect gained traction, receiving an upswing of attention in 2017 when NPR published an article about it. DoggoLingo thrived in memes and Facebook groups dedicated to sharing photos of dogs.

More recently, though, DoggoLingo has been adopted by social media pages who don’t just refer to dogs, but purport to be speaking on their behalf. I spoke to the owner of one such account: Karen*, who, alongside her husband Kevin*, runs the Instagram account @miss_poppet_the_samoyed, a page with 240k followers dedicated to their six (beautiful) Samoyeds. Many of the videos posted to this account feature DoggoLingo in their captions; “Omgosh, I’m hungery” overlays a video of Samoyed puppies crawling around on a carpet. I am a long-time fan of the account, despite my confusion about DoggoLingo.

Karen first created an account after getting the eponymous Poppet back in 2017. “[DoggoLingo] came about back in 2018,” she explained. She attributes her use of DoggoLingo to the owner of account @doggosbeingdoggos, who she worked with in the early days of her page. While the dialect predates this page, Karen suggests that the owner started the trend of Instagram accounts using it to communicate the first-person perspective of pets. Unfortunately, @doggosbeingdoggos did not respond to my request for comment. Since 2018, the dialect has gained traction among pet accounts of Instagram: the hashtag #doggo has 32.6 million posts on Instagram alone.

Why is this way of speaking so popular among pet content creators? Karen says that DoggoLingo is “more fun and playful” than other forms of captioning, and that it “opened up a whole new world of possibilities with storytelling.” She makes different linguistic choices based on the dog whose perspective she is emulating in a given post: “we put a lot of time into creating characters that reflect their existing personalities. Where one might come across as sassy, another could be more dopey or grumpy.”

DoggoLingo is not just evocative in the personality it creates, but it is also distinctly dog-like. Misspelling English words creates a charming childishness. The wholesome undertones feel innocent. Words like “smol” and “floof” convey a speaker who is a little bit silly, a little bit unsure of English, and very concerned with dog-like things like “pats” and “treatos”. This dialect allows account owners to linguistically embody their dogs’ perspectives, a pretence which followers of these accounts find endearing. “Videos largely do better and have more engagement with dog speak than without,” Karen explains. “There is a very small percentage of people who dislike it but the majority of people love it.”

It is hard to describe the utility of pet Instagram accounts. It’s not just about the joy of seeing cute animals – Google Image searching a term like “golden retriever puppy”, which produces thousands of cute animal photos, simply isn’t the same as following an account and becoming invested in a dog, its personality, its antics, and its life updates. For many people, DoggoLingo helps construct the illusion that they know the dogs whose lives they gleefully follow along with. Karen describes how she started her account because of the joy she saw Poppet bringing to those around her: “we started with the phrase “smile maker and selfie taker”, and since then that’s been our motto.” The playfulness and joy that comes from sharing these dogs’ personalities is only more poignant in the aftermath of the initial COVID lockdowns, a time when, as Karen puts it, “millions of people needed a lift.” Creating this content is also a source of joy: Karen describes her account as a “creative outlet” and “therapeutic”.

Accounts like Karen’s are meaningful to hundreds of thousands of people. She told me that people will recognise her husband, who also features in the page’s content, at the shops and the dog park. My initial critique of DoggoLingo is, I think, unfounded. I still don’t find it funny, but that’s not the point – or at least, not the whole point. To use DoggoLingo is to engage your audience in the playful fantasy that they are seeing the world through the eyes of a dog, and that fantasy offers respite, joy, and comfort. “In a world full of negativity,” Karen says, “we just wanted to make people laugh.” I, for one, think that she’s doing a heckin good job.

*Both names are pseudonyms for social media use

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I have long maintained that, with the exception of Arrival (which you should definitely watch), language is tragically underexplored in film. However, although it may not be the subject of many films, there is actually a lot to explore when looking at how language is represented onscreen, especially in the realm of translation. How do filmmakers translate dialogue between languages, or deal with multilingual scripts? How do they cater to a range of audiences, and how do they deal with languages that no one, in any audience, speaks?

Dealing with multiple languages in film is tricky. Filmmakers may run into the issue of translating in several contexts; they may depict characters who speak different languages to each other, or may have to translate their film into another language so that foreign audiences can consume it too. The most common method for this, from what I can tell, is subtitling, either for the entire movie or just for the parts where a non-dominant language in the film is being spoken. This isn’t perfect. Some audiences find it difficult to split attention between reading and absorbing information on-screen. Furthermore, these translations can fail to capture the nuance encoded in a script. When culturally-specific or semantically encoded nuance is poorly translated, audiences can miss out on plot-relevant observations and development, as well as beautiful writing. Squid Game was criticised for its English subtitling for this reason. Dubbing, or recording translated dialogue over the top of the original audio, also suffers from this, with the additional loss of the vocal performances of the original actors. There seems to be no perfect way of translating for film.

This may be why, then, many filmmakers ask viewers to suspend disbelief when thinking about language in film. Many films set in non-English-speaking contexts are told wholly, or at least in part, in English: The Woman King, Les Miserables, and Mulan, for example, are all told with varying levels of commitment to linguistic accuracy of the context they occur in. The most egregious example of linguistic “movie magic” I can think of is Disney’s Pocahontas, within which Pocahontas and John Smith, both speaking English in the film, are implied to have a language barrier until they learn to listen to each other “with their hearts”. Contextually inaccurate language use makes a film more accessible to whichever audience speaks the language the filmmaker chose, but it is still an imperfect solution. It creates audience aversion to subtitling, which makes it hard for non-English films to succeed in the mainstream (although there has been a recent pleasing upswing of non-English box office successes like Parasite).

With this in mind, translation can be more of an obstacle a director has to overcome than anything else. Despite this, many films go beyond including multiple real languages in their scripts, and opt to incorporate made-up language into their storytelling. These fictional languages are called conlangs (constructed languages). Famous examples include Klingon from Star Trek, Dothraki from Game of Thrones, and Na’vi from Avatar. Although it is not necessary for alien or fantastical speech to come from a comprehensively thought out language, filmmakers can hire linguists to develop grammars of conlangs for the purpose of consistency within its use in the film. In the cases of well-known conlangs, like the ones I listed above, enough work has been done on these languages to learn to speak them yourself. You can even learn Klingon and High Valyrian on Duolingo.

Despite this possibility, the odds of your audience having any understanding of what conlangs mean without subtitling are negligible. So, why go to the effort of creating a language, only to have to translate it back?

There are several possible reasons. The most intuitive reason, to me, is immersion. The world is a multilingual place. If there were life forms on other planets or in different realities, there’s no reason they wouldn’t also be multilingual. Cross-cultural contact in space ought to have all the linguistic barriers that cross-cultural contact on Earth does. If you are depicting distinct fantastical cultural groups or species, having one speak a conlang is an effective way of making them distinct from one another. It can be a tool for in-group communication on screen — Legolas and Aragorn can discuss their plans in Elvish in front of men who don’t speak it, cluing the audience into something that the characters are oblivious to. Having this linguistic diversity makes worlds seem more real.

Beyond that, the sounds of conlangs can also be evocative and immersive. There are a finite number of consonant sounds a human mouth is capable of making, but no language uses all of them. Drawing on sounds that fall outside of an English consonant inventory, for example, can make a conlang sound especially alien. Perhaps predictably, using consonant sounds as a shorthand for certain traits that a writer may wish to ascribe to an alien culture — brutishness for orcs or sophistication for elves, for example — can be fraught. “Black Speech”, the language Tolkien wrote for Orcs and other evil creatures in Middle Earth, is incredibly laryngeal, with a lot of consonant sounds clustered at the back of the mouth. Some of these sounds can’t be found in English, but can be in languages like Arabic. In contrast, languages that are meant to connote elegance and sophistication are more likely to borrow sounds from Romance languages. The associations that we have with sounds, for better or worse, tell us about the fantastical characters that speak them.

Language is an integral part of storytelling, in the most literal sense possible, as well as more poetically. Although it can pose an obstacle to audience accessibility, it can also enrich stories in their nuance and believability. Translating is an art form, and even though it can prove challenging, it transforms the media we consume in a really significant way. And I, for one, think that’s kind of magical.

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First published in Honi Soit on 06.08.2023. Original version here.

Before being known by its current name, and before the British labelled it “Ceylon”, Sri Lanka went by the Persian name of “Serendip”. In the 1500s, a fairytale about princes of Serendip made its way from the tiny island, through the Middle East, and into the storybook of an Italian author called Michele Tramezzino. He wrote of these princes, their escapades, and the remarkable luck they experienced. From there, the story was translated into English by Horace Walpole. English readers adored the story, the princes, and the charmingly happy coincidences that peppered their journey. They alluded to it in their conversations, applied it to their own fortunate circumstances, until, centuries later, we speak of “serendipity” without any thought of Persian princes.

For as long as we have been able to, humans have put our thoughts into words. These words were not handed to us by some preternatural force, nor were they devised by linguists to best capture the concepts humans may want to express. Just like brightly coloured beetle shells and frogs’ webbed feet, language evolved – and continues to evolve – as a response to a need. The way language changes over time mirrors the way we change, both within our own lifetimes and as a human race. Language is a map of what it means to be human.

Where do words come from? Language was born at the intersection of biology and community. Human brains evolved more complex left hemispheres, their larynxes lowered, and they begun walking upright, allowing them greater control over their vocalisations. At the same time, humans started developing societies, insulating themselves from the pressures of survival and allowing communication that was social, not just strategic. The more language evolved, the more thoughts humans were able to articulate. We became able to have abstract discussions, share our feelings, refer back to things that others had said. With the development of writing, language was no longer ephemeral; human ideas gained immortality.

The words we have at our disposals have changed in the millennia since language came to be. Each speaker has their own mental lexicon, their own associations and understandings of the words that are spoken to them and that they speak. Over time, this causes language to splinter, to gnarl like the branches of a tree. Minute differences in pronunciation village to village became entrenched, creating different dialects and then different languages entirely. Words got forgotten and left behind. Speakers made up new words to put labels to new phenomena — until the last few decades, saying you were going to “Google” something or “unfriend” someone would have been unintelligible. Language has no choice but to keep up with the rapacious and ever-changing minds of humankind.

Because of this, language and thought exist in a chicken-and-egg equilibrium. It’s hard to tell whether a word exists to put a label to a concept, or whether a word existing makes us aware that the concept it describes could exist. Feelings like “déjà vu”, “melancholy”, and “nostalgia” all seem like easily identifiable phenomena, but research suggests that people whose native languages do not include equivalent terms may not experience these sensations at all. If we do not know a word exists for a certain concept, it is really hard to put a finger on it, let alone notice it in the stream of ideas and sensations we are constantly processing. Anthropologist Robert Levy described this as hypocognition. He observed that Tahitian has negligible vocabulary for describing sadness, potentially contributing to high rates of poor mental health and suicide within Tahitian communities at the time of his research. We at once command language and are beholden to it.

Learning new words, then, has the power to shape the way we experience the world. With each addition to our vocabulary, the tools we have to understand and describe the world become richer and more diverse. Learning new words can be vindicating: being exposed to words like “gaslighting” and “love bombing”, for example, can help survivors of abuse understand and express their traumas in specific ways. Having names for processes like “gerrymandering” or “voter suppression” can make it easier to recognise and call out inequality, making discourse about those inequalities more productive, as all interlocutors can be on the same page. Having a richer vocabulary also makes it easier to describe everyday experiences precisely and evocatively. A singing voice is not just “nice”, but “mellifluous”; a soup not just “tasty”, but “unctuous”. The more words we have, the better we can conceptualise our experiences.

As a consequence of this, humans are ravenous for new terminology. There is no panel of language-makers that coins new terms for public use: even if such a thing were possible, identifying phenomena that need names are difficult because of hypocognition. You cannot generate a word for a concept you cannot describe. As such, the words we use are a pastiche of historic, intuitive, and communal meaning. They can come from metaphor: “love bombing” uses military metaphor to make sense of being overwhelmed by affection. They can combine concepts to delineate their intersection: “gerrymandering” is a portmanteau of the surname of a governor who redrew district maps – Elbridge Gerry – and “salamander”, which is what his redrawn map allegedly resembled. They can appropriate cultural knowledge: the term “gaslighting” refers to the 1938 play Gas Light, a thriller whose heroine is psychologically tormented by her husband. “Serendipity” is an example of exactly this. We are so desperate to put our thoughts into words that we cling at scraps of meaning and rebuild them anew.

This transformative process occurs on a macro level; the broadly agreed-upon definitions of words change over time based on how speech communities use them. On an individual level, though, the relationship people have with words is transformative. This relationship can be furthered through reading broadly and consuming as many new words as possible. Beyond that, putting your thoughts into words by writing is an exercise in self-discovery. Passing your experiences through the sieve of language crystalises them. We pen diary entries, love letters, and apologies, not necessarily because we want them read, but because we want them written. There is catharsis in actualising your experiences and emotions by concretising them in language. There is comfort in knowing that billions of speakers before you have shaped the words you use to describe your pain with their tongues, with pain of their own. There is beauty in slotting the otherwise boundless love that you have for someone into words on a birthday card or in a poem that they can read to learn they are loved. There is serendipity in learning a new word and feeling it click into place, a puzzle piece you didn’t know was missing.

Humans create languages, and languages shape what it means to be human. Our societies and cultures would not exist without a tool to externalise our thoughts, a common lens through which to share our experiences. The processes of speaking, writing, and signing are as vital to us as breathing and metabolism, sustaining our minds rather than our bodies. Words are both relics and harbingers of humanity. There is so much beauty in language.

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First published in Honi Soit on 28.8.22. Original version here.

The universe has its mouth wide open. Light blooms out, every colour at once, a symphony of sounds in a discordant harmony. Silhouetted against it is a man – a boy? – his edges blurred. He is a watery reflection of himself. He has tears on his face, and a word on his tongue but no voice to say it with.

Time unfurls before him. He can run his fingers through it. His eyes dart through the exploding fragments, desperately searching for the memory he has replayed in his mind over and over.

Over and over.

It had been his first Christmas in the big house. Ethan was seven, just tall enough to ride rollercoasters, a whistle in his voice after losing his first tooth. He had stayed up late the night before, despite his mother’s warnings. “The sooner you fall asleep,” she reasoned, “the sooner tomorrow comes”. And yet tomorrow, it seemed, was out of his reach, no matter how far he extended his arms.

The morning came eventually, as mornings tend to do. He remembers it in flashes: the bitter smell of the coffee his dad insisted they wait for, the cold tile floor beneath his bare feet, the bright blue of the wrapping paper taped over the cardboard box. The yelp. He remembers the yelp well. Before he had finished opening the box, its contents leapt up at him, a flurry of blunt claws, sharp teeth, and fluff.

“He’s yours now,” his mum had said, but Ethan could not hear her. The puppy had started licking his ear, breath and frantic tongue all he could hear. “What will you name him?”

He held the dog still, long enough to get a good look. His ears were too big for his head and paws too big for his feet, fur a patchwork of caramel and black. At this time, Ethan had finished watching Star Wars for the second time. He didn’t know that the awe with which he watched spaceships zoom and stars explode would never go away. His fascination with space would shape his whole life. Right now, though, Star Wars was just a really cool movie. And to him, Han Solo was the coolest person he’d ever seen. And what was Han without – “Chewie,” he said. “Like Chewbacca.”

The silhouette at the mouth of the universe stiffens. He grabs the memory before him. There’s Chewie, slobbery grin, all that fur. Ethan feels the memory thrum in his hands. Huh. The box was bare cardboard. There was no wrapping paper. The memory does smell like coffee, but it’s faint. Like a cup that has long been empty.

Chewie grew into his ears and paws much quicker than Ethan’s parents anticipated. His yelps became full-bodied barks. His fur lined the furniture in the home. Ethan and Chewie were inseparable. They shared a bed until Chewie outgrew the arrangement, and even then, Ethan’s mum had to intervene when she found him sleeping on the floor so Chewie could take the mattress. When Ethan got a spot on the school cricket team, he practiced bowling with Chewie as a fielder. When Ethan whined because he didn’t want to eat the beans on his plate, it was Chewie who ended up finishing his dinner. Ethan remembers these years as an idyll.

There was more to it, of course. There always is. No matter how much they tried, they couldn’t train Chewie. They joked that he wasn’t named for the character, but rather his taste for shoes. He barked wildly when skateboards rolled by. And he had a knack for escaping the backyard.

Time spins before Ethan like the wheels of a bike, each fragment a spoke. It’s hard to focus on everything at once. He has done this before – peeked into the folds of the fabric of time – but this is the first time he has torn it open. He is thirty-four now. He has worked on unravelling time his whole life. Well, not quite. At first, he just wanted to stop time. Then rewind it. But clocks, he had learnt, paint a deceptive picture of time. It doesn’t travel forward, marching the same path over and over. It folds. It crumples. It stretches. It wraps around you and spits you out.

There was one day he wanted to go back to. The day he had resolved to stop time. On that day, Ethan had missed his normal afternoon school bus; his desk was too messy, and his teacher made him stay behind to organise it. He often got in trouble for these sorts of things. When he stepped off the later bus, he saw his mother’s furrowed brow, her wringing hands. Chewie had gotten out again, she said. And she couldn’t find him.

Ethan rode through the streets on his bike until all the light had been wrung from the sky. His sides hurt from his panting. His throat stung as he yelled: Chewie’s name, over and over. Over and over. The streetlights danced in and out of his tear-blurred vision. His legs felt weak. He felt the rasp of asphalt against his knees before he knew he’d fallen, bike toppled over, wheels spinning aimlessly. Ethan sat and sobbed. He was too late. He was too late.

The door creaks open behind him. The memory he was holding disappears. The universe clenches its jaw, and time snaps back to normal. Ethan feels like a kid again, skinned knees, on the road without realising he’d fallen. He had been so close, so fucking close – “I’m worried about you.” His mother’s voice hadn’t changed much since he was a kid. Her words were still bubble-wrapped in worry.

He turns to face her. “You can’t just come in like that. It’s – it’s delicate. If you interrupt me, I lose it.”

“This is my house, Ethan. I can go where I like. And I don’t like this stuff. You know that.”

He did know it. She had made it very clear. At first, she had been supportive. When his research piqued the interest of local universities, and then less local ones, and the grants had started rolling in, she couldn’t have been prouder. She marvelled at the invites to speak at conferences around the world – Tokyo, Boston, Paris; to share his research with the brightest minds of their time. But Ethan didn’t want any of that. It was never about acclaim. This wasn’t a project or an exploration. It was an apology. An apology for having been just too late, in the only language Ethan felt fluent in: physics.

“Go outside,” his mother says, and she massages the fingers on her left hand. Her hands, he thinks, have changed since he was a kid. She still paints her nails, but her hands seem worn. Her skin is creased from all those years of anxiously playing with her fingers. “You never leave this room any more.”

“I do,” he says, but they both know it’s a lie. He has been awake in this room all night, recalibrating the machine on his desk. He clears his throat. Starts again. “I’m so close. Please, just let me be for a few more minutes -”

“You’ve been alone enough.” Her voice is harsher now – less cushioned. The words echo around the room. They bounce off the bits and pieces – prototypes made from Paddlepop sticks, boxes of cables, dozens of cups he hasn’t yet returned to the kitchen – but to her, it is empty. There is acid in her words.

When Ethan was eighteen, he missed his Year 12 formal. He had stayed back in one of the labs after school. It was the first time he had held time in his hands. It felt fuzzy, like TV static, like pins and needles. He had only held it for a second, but he had grasped it just long enough that that second felt like ten. The tingles it left on his skin stayed there for days. His formal date, Angela, had eventually gone alone. She left sequins on the couch from where she had sat waiting for him while his mother called, only to reach voicemail, over and over. His mum had thought Angela was a nice girl. She never spoke to Ethan again. He saw her once in a local shopping centre. “I’m sorry,” he had said, but even he wasn’t sure if he meant it. “I lost track of time.”

“Go fuck yourself,” she had said.

Perhaps he was alone.

“I’m not alone,” he lied again. “I’m busy with work.”

“You’re obsessed. It’s not healthy.”

“I’m not obsessed, I just -”

“I never see you any more, Ethan.” Her voice was louder still. “What’s this all for? Why spend all this time holed up in your room researching if you don’t want to share that research with the world? With me?”

“It’s hard to explain.” Another lie? He doesn’t know.

“Try,” she snaps. “You’re trying to turn back time. What are you looking for? What do you want?”

The word still sits on his tongue. His through still stings thinking about it. He has not said it aloud in so long.

“Chewie,” he whispers.

“Pardon?”

“Chewie.” Louder now.

“The dog?”

“Yes, the dog. I want to find him.”

A pause. Time seems to have slowed, but Ethan’s machine is off.

“Ethan -”

“He ran away, and I was too late to find him, and I just – I don’t know how to explain.” His mind spins like the wheel of an upended bike, frenetic but going nowhere. Words fail him. He has never been good at using words.

“Chewie didn’t run away.”

The wheel stops.

“You said -”

“Chewie died.”

Time stops completely.

“He got out one day and ran behind my car. I didn’t see him. I wasn’t going to tell you that at the time, but… Ethan, that was – that was decades ago. Is this…” She looks around the room, eyes dancing over every scrap, every pile. “Is that what all of this is about?” His tongue is too big in his mouth. Time splinters.

“Ethan…”

“Stop.”

“This… this is no way to live, Ethan. Grow up.”

The door closes behind her. The floor opens beneath him. All these years, and he hadn’t been too late at all.

No way to live.

What was it then? All these prototypes, these scraps, all this time – what was it if not survival?

He blinks, and time surrounds him again. He looks at his hand. He had switched the machine back on without realising. He watches as memories fracture before him. His young self, desperately calling for Chewie, biking around the quiet streets. He did that every day for two weeks. He watches himself fall and scrape his knees. He falls over and over. Over and over.

His knees are scarred now. He looks at them. The gnarled skin is a kiss from time. Memories dance before him – his mother’s wringing hands, creased with age; his dad’s lukewarm coffee; the sequins left behind by Angela’s dress. The wheel of his bike, spinning and spinning. Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps time wasn’t something that you could stretch and dive back into. Perhaps it did march forward, no matter what.

A yelp. Chewie’s tiny face, dwarfed by his too-big ears. The image flickers: he’s older now, head on Ethan’s lap as he sits at the dinner table, sneaking beans off his plate to him. Another flicker. The heat of Chewie’s breath as he pins Ethan down, licking him, as he giggles uncontrollably.

Just too late.

The universe has its mouth open. Silhouetted against it is a man, who used to be a boy. He takes a deep breath. He lets go of the memory he has in his hands. The dog’s face fades away. He turns off the machine.

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On my way to work, I like to listen to podcasts. One that I recently finished is Father Wants Us Dead, which covers the story of how John List murdered his family. It’s well-produced, with great research and editing, but there was something off-putting about its tone that I couldn’t identify until the final episode. Hosts Jessica Remo and Rebecca Everett reflect on the lasting impact the story had on those who knew the List family. Their conclusion caught me off guard: the List case, they reflect, “no longer feels like a true crime story.”

How could that be the case? How could a crime having lasting impacts on victims make it less like a true crime story? Yet, Remo and Everett came to a conclusion reflected in much coverage of this genre: there is a difference between true crime and True Crime.

True Crime has entertained us for decades; urban legends like Jack the Ripper are, arguably, an early example. The genre has, however, experienced an upswing in recent years. Podcasts like Serial and docuseries like Making a Murderer have received widespread acclaim. The increasing accessibility of media production means that now, True Crime can be produced by anyone with a YouTube or Spotify account.

In most cases, the expansion and democratisation of a genre is a good thing. It allows for innovative productions, driven by market forces and individual creativity, that can lead to the creation of breathtaking media. But True Crime, for me, is different to most entertainment genres. The characters and narrative beats are drawn from real people — real perpetrators and real victims. It covers real experiences of things that are violent and devastating, and, just like the List case, have echoes that continue to sound years after the crime was committed. When a creative is forced to make their content stand out in an ever-growing landscape, either by being more novel or sensational than their predecessors, they can forgo the sensitivity this genre deserves.

I have noticed this most acutely on YouTube. I fell down the True Crime video rabbit hole when a friend introduced me to JCS Criminal Psychology — long-form analysis of police interrogations — and I was hooked. It’s not hard to see why his channel, and others like it, have experienced a popularity boom in the last few years. The production quality is high and the subject matter is gripping, often being well-researched despite the small scale of the team behind it. However, the production scale and lack of industry regulations like those imposed on mainstream media can cause issues with this content.

As well as becoming more accessible, the genre’s exponential growth on YouTube has led to an evolution of the types of True Crime media being produced. Some creators have blended True Crime with other video formats as a way of capturing wider audiences. YouTubers like angel ASMR and The Empress ASMR create videos discussing true crime cases in an ASMR format, channels like Bailey Sarian and Danielle Kirsty recount crimes while doing makeup tutorials, and some creators, like Stephanie Soo, do True Crime mukbangs. This is where the gap between true crime and True Crime is most insidious.

I would argue that there is disrespect inherent in reducing the real-life trauma that someone has suffered to a topic of conversation while reviewing makeup or eating fried chicken. There is also an incentive for the creator to be flippant in their delivery: to build rapport with an audience, which is necessary to hold their continued attention and subscription, a YouTuber must be personable. This could look like cracking jokes, noting the killers’ zodiac signs as an ongoing gimmick, as True Crime makeup channel Hailey Elizabeth does, or interjecting with personal opinions at inappropriate times.

This leads to another problem: desensitisation. I have caught myself watching videos about serial killers and being almost unimpressed when they ‘only’ had ten victims. If a creator is talking about something dismissively, you, too, are likely to dismiss it. A weak claim here would be to say that this makes viewers more likely to commit violent crimes. I don’t think this is true, in the same way that violent games or movies don’t make people more violent; content that simply describes crimes without glorifying them isn’t likely to radicalise someone.

A better concern is that desensitisation to crime makes viewers condemn violent actions less. There is an alarming amount of empathy for perpetrators like Ted Bundy and the Menendez brothers on platforms like TikTok. Creator @bundyswifey makes fan edits begging Bundy to spit in her mouth, describing him as “the love of [her] life,” with only the phrase “don’t condone” in her bio to suggest any sort of condemnation of the many violent murders he perpetrated. This is an extreme example, but fostering any degree of empathy for violent criminals is dangerous. This empathy is especially pernicious when it is used to diminish the culpability of perpetrators, disproportionately favouring those who are young, white and conventionally attractive. It is the dangerous kind of empathy that asks us to forgive people in our own lives for their actions when they fit those same criteria.

This is not to say that no good has come of the democratisation of True Crime. True Crime has always been disproportionately popular with women, who have historically faced higher barriers to entry into traditional media production. Making content more accessible to previously disprivileged creators is important, especially when that content is meaningful to them, both as a form of entertainment, and outlet for telling stories that are more likely to impact them. True Crime media can empower survivors of crimes by celebrating their perseverance. It can educate viewers, to an extent, about behaviours that may keep them safe from falling victims of similar crimes. It can even help solve crimes: the List case was only resolved when somebody recognised List from a segment on America’s Most Wanted. True Crime can be a legitimate and important form of entertainment.

However, this legitimacy is contingent on respectful and informative coverage. When means of production are decentralised, this is harder to police. The most powerful mechanism that consumers have at their disposal is the capacity to hold creators to account. Call creators out when they are irreverent or too sympathetic to vile people. Don’t engage with content you find morally nebulous, and remember that at the heart of True Crime is true crime.

There are survivors who will never recover from the trauma they endured. There are victims whose losses have left irreparable holes in the lives of their loved ones. And there are people who are evil and desperate for attention, who watch people praise killers like Bundy, and see violence as their only path to recognition. True Crime as a genre has rapidly evolved, but don’t let it mutate beyond a point that we can control.

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I am white. As a kid, I was told that racism is evil, and that everyone is the same, regardless of their skin colour. This framing of racism is a simple one: if you, a small white child, refrain from being cruel to your classmates, you are doing the world a favour. Good for you! With age, though, this framing starts to fall short.

The term “white fragility” was coined by author Robin DiAngelo in 2011. According to DiAngelo, “White Fragility is a state in which even a minimal challenge to the white position becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves including: argumentation, invalidation, silence, withdrawal and claims of being attacked and misunderstood.” To better understand this, I spoke to a range of POC, who I refer to throughout this article.

Existing in a world that treats you as a priority can predispose white people to feel entitled to priority, and to feel threatened when that priority is re-allocated. This can look like moral panic in response to affirmative action policies, escalating as far as the US Supreme Court’s decision to bar universities from having such policies. Annie tells me that she has experienced backlash from “old white men who are used to having the world conform to them” when doing something as simple as getting on a train before them. She pointed to the trope of a “Karen” — an older white woman who throws a tantrum when she doesn’t get what she wants — as an illustration of how common this entitled fragility is (albeit an imperfect one with sexist implications).

For many white people, it is very easy not to identify with this type of fragility. It’s tempting to think of Karens and old white guys as a unique brand of white people — entitled, ignorant, probably conservative — that we, young, progressive white people couldn’t be less like. After all, we recognise our privilege. The issue, though, is that the bar to clear to have “recognised” something is incredibly low. Recognising just means “identifying”; it does not entail anything further. White fragility is very much prevalent within leftist and progressive spaces; if anything, this identity of progressivism can cause white people who are called out for their whiteness to double down — to be more fragile.

White fragility can result in the equation of racism to other forms of oppression. Multiple interviewees pointed to their own experiences with queer white people or white women downplaying their privilege by insisting that they can relate to the struggles of being discriminated against. Sujin describes it as “annoying” and a “petty competition”; Mehnaaz (in meme format) describes other “axes of oppression” such as queerness as bandaids with which white people use to cover their “white guilt”. In a binary between whiteness and POC, whiteness is, categorically, oppressive. Most white people don’t see themselves as oppressors, either because it is an abstract category with extreme traits, or because, as three-dimensional beings, they likely experience some hardship or oppression themselves. Introducing other axes of oppression is a misguided attempt to de-pedestalise oneself for fear of being cast as a villain. No matter how many other ways a white person is oppressed, they still benefit more from white privilege than a POC does — to downplay that is dishonest.

This deflection derives from the underlying tenet of white fragility: defensiveness. “White people get SO defensive when called out,” Mehnaaz explains, “it often really freaks them out to hear that they are also doing things wrong or can change.” This defensiveness is often born of a fear of being labelled racist. This fear can snowball into active harm: one interviewee described being a part of an activism group led by a white organiser who got so defensive when POC suggested that certain elements of their activism weren’t culturally sensitive that it became “no longer a safe community space”. Constant defensiveness — challenging POC on their interpretations of an action as racist, insisting that they cannot be racist, and shaming those who call them out — is actively harmful. It punishes POC for speaking up about injustice and forces them to console white people, all while continuing to suffer from racism. “Recognising” privilege means nothing if that doesn’t also involve reckoning with it.

Throughout this article, I have struggled to choose between first and third-person pronouns when describing white people. I relate to the fears which I have described in this article; I desperately do not want people to think that I’m racist. I have friends who are POC who I would hate to hurt or isolate. I have seen them hurt by systems which I profit from. I’ve heard countless rants about how dumb white people are, and have sat there, nodding, as though I can relate. Even now, writing this, I struggle to attribute my defensiveness to anything but a desire to be inclusive and thoughtful. In reality, though, that isn’t true. This defensiveness stems from the assumption that, unless I make it abundantly clear, the POC in my life will assume that I am racist. This is silly. It presupposes that I am the main character, that all the POC in my life need to be told whether I am racist or not, and can’t work out for themselves that I’ve grown up as a white person with white privilege and I’m doing my best. Of course they can.

Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, is white. When I pitched this article to my editors, Misbah said, “white people should be more critical of whiteness”. The burden that white people have — that I have — should not be to simply recognise their privilege, but to interrogate it, to wring it out like a wet towel and see what drips out. “I wish white people were okay with taking on that lil discomfort for the greater good,” Aleina explains. Discussions about racism should not be dominated by white people trying to prove that they aren’t racist, but by POC, who know what is racist. “So many white people are allergic to listening,” Mehnaaz tells me. “I don’t need a speech on how lucky you are. I just need you to know when to stop speaking.”

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