Cultural Appropriation
Noun.
When Justin Bieber unveiled his dreadlocks, the world exploded with anger – not because they made him look like a gap-year trustafarian, but because dreadlocks are traditionally a black hairstyle, and this was seen as a sign that he was cherry-picking from black culture without engaging with its underlying issues. Food, clothing and music, can be appropriated, too. It’s tricky, as nobody knows where the line between appropriation and “liking new things” is.
DON’T SAY:
“Are you going to wear your Native American headdress to the twerking class?”
F Fast Fashion Noun.
Cheaply made, low-quality clothing designed to be thrown away after a few wears. Fast fashion banks on overproduced trend pieces that can be farmed out to shops in almost real time, and it results in workers who are paid much less than the minimum wage, factories that churn toxic chemicals into water supplies and a carbon footprint that rivals the aviation industry. A better and equally cost-effective tactic is to buy fewer, better-made clothes from smaller brands.
fig 05. G Gaslight Verb.
To gaslight someone is to work to convince them that something obvious isn’t true. It’s often used as a tactic in abusive relationships, so that an abuser can maintain control over their partner. Or when you definitely didn’t just hand a multimillionpound COVID-19 contract to the bloke who used to run your local pub.
Gender Binary Noun.
This is the idea that people are born either male or female, with no other ways to identify – a viewpoint that excludes non-binary and transgender people. How can you dismantle this? Add your preferred pronouns to your email signature. That way, you’re helping to normalise gender discussions while signalling that you aren’t making assumptions about how other people identify. Which could potentially be seen as a sort of clicktivism, but we won’t go into that here.
DON’T SAY: “There is no such thing as gaslighting. Why did you just say there was? Everyone’s laughing at you now. You’re an embarrassment.”
G Contd. Greenwash Verb.
This is when a company goes out of its way to convince you that it’s more environmentally friendly than it really is. For example, a few years ago, McDonald’s switched plastic straws for paper ones – but it quickly emerged that their thickness made them too hard to recycle at the time. (And that’s not to mention the enormous carbon footprint of its livestock.) Meanwhile, H&M’s “Conscious” line of supposedly sustainable clothing hardly makes up for its fast fashion business model. A truly green company, such as the carbon-negative clothing firm Sheep Inc, will always give you specific details about their eco-credentials.
WATCH: Greenwashing: A Fiji Water Story on YouTube.
I Internalised Misogyny Noun.
Remember when #MeToo took off, and a few women were, like, “Isn’t it a woman’s place to be groped at the office?”
These people might have been exhibiting internalised sexism: a type of Stockholm syndrome, in which they’ve grown so accustomed to being treated badly that they no longer view it as problematic. It’s weird but, as we’ll see later, men are just as guilty of something similar.
LISTEN: The Shameless
podcast episode “The Uncomfortable Reality About Internalised Misogyny”.
Intersectionality Noun.
Strap in, guys – this one is pretty complicated. Intersectionality refers to the understanding that all social categorisations – such as race, class and gender – can overlap, forming interdependent systems of privilege and discrimination. So, feminism must include black women, gay women, trans women and working-class women to be considered intersectional. It’s essentially a reminder that everything is bad, but in a much more complicated way than you thought.
M Mansplain Verb.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about mansplaining or not. You probably haven’t. I’ll enlighten you: mansplaining is when a man, brimming with self-confidence, describes a basic concept to a woman who already understands it, because she is a woman with a simple woman’s brain.
You’ll sometimes see this on Twitter, where men often explain a scientific process to the female scientist who invented it.
DON’T SAY: “You probably didn’t know this, but it’s called ‘mansplaining’ as it's a compound of the words ‘man’ and ‘explain’.”