Interesting. I agree with you that the effects of statements are independent of the original speaker’s intentions. (At least in the sense of not being necessarily related; I would expect the two to be statistically dependent). For that reason I can easily accept that the comment was innocently intended, but at the same time think that such statements, in general, are not innocent in effect, and that they should ideally be reduced.
However, I don’t agree with this at all:
that sentence doesn’t “promote” in the sense of “encourage others to think” or “put that idea in their heads”
I wonder whether part of the reason is that I think that both the attitudes in question (e.g. “thinking of women as trophies”) and the means of their promotion can be (and probably are) less conscious than your analysis suggests. It seems perfectly possible to me that someone could both consciously affirm the proposition “women are not trophies”, and that they could nonetheless think about women in a way that bears problematic resemblance to the way they would think about trophies. (For the avoidance of doubt, I do not intend to accuse anybody here of this.)
As a result, it also seems perfectly possible for language to promote thinking of women as trophies even if (a) individuals’ do not consciously interpret its meaning as affirming the proposition “women are trophies”, and/or (b) the individuals would consciously deny such a proposition themselves. I do think that the extent to which someone consciously believes “women are not trophies” should reduce any subconscious effect of this sort, but I see little reason to think that it must necessarily have no effect for that reason; and it’s not at all clear to me why the idea that women are trophies must already be in somebody’s head for such an effect to occur at all. In part from personal experience, it seems to me that the cumulative effect of language that normalizes particular patterns of thought can be quite strong.
NB: As a vaguely related aside, one thing that has struck me about many defenses made here of particular forms of language use is the extent to which they rely on claims about how reasonable people should consciously interpret a statement’s meaning. For a site that so frequently discusses issues of subconscious priming and bias, this focus has always struck me as a little odd.
Interesting. I agree with you that the effects of statements are independent of the original speaker’s intentions. (At least in the sense of not being necessarily related; I would expect the two to be statistically dependent). For that reason I can easily accept that the comment was innocently intended, but at the same time think that such statements, in general, are not innocent in effect, and that they should ideally be reduced.
However, I don’t agree with this at all:
I wonder whether part of the reason is that I think that both the attitudes in question (e.g. “thinking of women as trophies”) and the means of their promotion can be (and probably are) less conscious than your analysis suggests. It seems perfectly possible to me that someone could both consciously affirm the proposition “women are not trophies”, and that they could nonetheless think about women in a way that bears problematic resemblance to the way they would think about trophies. (For the avoidance of doubt, I do not intend to accuse anybody here of this.)
As a result, it also seems perfectly possible for language to promote thinking of women as trophies even if (a) individuals’ do not consciously interpret its meaning as affirming the proposition “women are trophies”, and/or (b) the individuals would consciously deny such a proposition themselves. I do think that the extent to which someone consciously believes “women are not trophies” should reduce any subconscious effect of this sort, but I see little reason to think that it must necessarily have no effect for that reason; and it’s not at all clear to me why the idea that women are trophies must already be in somebody’s head for such an effect to occur at all. In part from personal experience, it seems to me that the cumulative effect of language that normalizes particular patterns of thought can be quite strong.
NB: As a vaguely related aside, one thing that has struck me about many defenses made here of particular forms of language use is the extent to which they rely on claims about how reasonable people should consciously interpret a statement’s meaning. For a site that so frequently discusses issues of subconscious priming and bias, this focus has always struck me as a little odd.