Getting a Grip on Language and Justice
jess September 19th, 2007
(Jess) There’s an entire chapter in Getting a Grip on the power of the words we use, and I was brought back strongly to it when I read that last Friday, Nebraska state Senator Ernie Chambers filed a lawsuit against God. According to KETV.com, “the lawsuit accuses God ‘of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.’ It says God has caused ‘fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.’” The suit “seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.”
Why has Chambers filed such a patently inflammatory suit, and what does this have to do with language choices? In a statement on Monday, he claimed that his suit is intended to “prove a point about frivolous lawsuits.” He believes that some suits ought not to be allowed to be filed in the first place. In essence, the Senator wishes to undermine one of the foundational elements of our democracy and our justice system: that “the courthouse is open to all.”
This would be troublesome enough by itself, but there’s more. Chambers’ prime example of the kind of “frivolous” lawsuit he’s protesting is the September suit filed pursuant to the July 2007 Tory Bowen sexual assault trial. In that trial, Bowen, 24, testified against her alleged rapist; Lancaster County Judge Jeffre Cheuvront prohibited her from using the terms “rape,” “sexual assault,” “victim,” “assailant,” and “attack” on the grounds that they might prejudice the jury against the defendant.
The language we use to talk about our world inherently changes the way we see it, as Frankie discusses in Getting a Grip. To forbid a victim of sexual assault from using language she feels accurately describes her experience is an outrage. Bowen’s July case was declared a mistrial after extensive outcry against the judge’s injuction. Her only recourse now is to sue the man whose actions repeatedly forestalled her attempts to obtain some redress for injustice.Progressives should heed Bowen’s, and Chambers’s, cases closely. It grieves me that Chambers, renowned for his civil rights work, should so belittle and parody a suit filed seriously by a rape victim whose attempts to obtain justice have—as a result of the judge’s ruling—so far met with three mistrials. And it grieves me that Mother Jones has reported Chambers’ suit enthusiastically and appreciatively.Our language makes our world. And we can only hope to create a world in which we’d like to live if we are willing to stand up and declare our right to define ourselves using the best words we know: not only the examples in the Bowen case, but others as well: living wage rather than minimum wage, for criminalizing abortion rather than pro-life, engaged citizen rather than activist. There’s a whole lot at stake here. -Jess (Via PinkDome and Feministing)
