Slogans, huh! What are they good for?
Slogans can be helpful, but when everything is reduced to minute soundbites, we forget how to argue and even think beyond these.
Black Lives Matter.
Take Back Control.
Believe Women.
Make America Great Again.
Slogans are a funny old thing. In stark terms, particularly in the campaigning phase of any change, they can have real power. They can galvanise the faithful and bring together disparate groups under a single, straightforward banner. They are capable of distilling complex and important policy changes into an easy and bite-sized understandable position that most people can feel comfortable with.
Take the four slogans above. Assume for a moment that you have no idea what they’re referring to (I, of course, am assuming that anyone who is engaged enough to have found this - quite obscure - newsletter is also engaged enough in the political/campaigning world to know exactly what they are). There isn’t a lot on the face of it you could disagree with unless you were on such an extreme end of a debate that you were incapable of thinking that black people’s lives mattered, were convinced that all women are congenital liars, didn’t want your country to be great (the again part might be contentious) and didn’t think people deserve more control over their lives.
Therefore, each of these slogans has done its job of attracting attention and recognition. They have achieved buy-in. The question is what happens next.
I’m going to use the ‘Believe Women’ slogan in my dissection of both the importance of slogans and the importance of getting beyond sloganeering. I have above tried to balance both left and right slogans and issues. But I feel most comfortable directing this one as it is both a cause I agree with and one in which I am personally identifiable as a woman and feminist.
‘Believe Women’ is a slogan that has been popularised around the ‘Me too’ movement where many hundreds of thousands of women shared their experiences of sexual harassment, assault and rape. Most of which had gone unpunished, much of which unacknowledged and, before this moment of outpouring, unspoken.
What those of us calling for people to ‘Believe women’ are asking for is an overhaul of the justice system to ensure that women who bring forward rape and sexual harassment complaints are treated with more dignity and less suspicion an - on occasion - outright hostility. We are calling for an understanding in society of the endemic levels of hostility to being a woman in a public place or with a public platform and the astonishingly high frequency with which women are unwantedly sexualised just for being in public, are sexually threatened for speaking up in public (on really any topic) and are disbelieved when we point out that these are huge problems society-wide, that this is cultural, institutional and endemic and not just the fault of a few bad actors.
There’s an awful lot of public policy changes that could and should be made if we did start to believe women about this abuse. There are an awful lot of societal changes that could and should take place if we start to ensure that public spaces are just as free and unthreatening for women as men. There are an awful lot of changes to institutions and businesses and organisations large and small that could and should take place if we understand not just how to deal responsively with sexual abuse and harassment but also to create such an atmosphere as to ensure the threat of such was so negligible that women were not feeling - at some conscious or unconscious level - continually aware of it.
All of the above will take a great deal of hard work, difficult and thought-through policies, adjustment, compromise, change and a willingness to be open to change. It is and will be hard to reach anything like an end goal. It is and will be hard to reach anything like a first step. Committing to the thought behind ‘believe women’ means a lot more than committing to a hashtag.
There are, of course, always going to be those who approach a slogan like ‘Believe women’ in bad faith seeking to derail the conversation to avoid both the likelihood of action being taken but even more insidiously, the discussion of action being needed.
Take, for example, a reading of the slogan ‘believe women’ to mean ‘believe all individual women about everything ever’.
Now women, being - you know - actual human beings are just as capable of lying as men. Those who present women as *inherently* better beings than men miss the point of equality. We get to be equally human with all the flaws that entails. But this doesn’t mean that we should break ‘Believe Women’ down to individual cases.
When you’re a juror, you have to hold two quite contradictory thoughts in your mind at once. That the defendant is innocent until proven guilty and that the witnesses are, unless proven otherwise, telling the truth. The ability for ordinary people to view the world in this seemingly contradictory way is at the heart of our ability to make and pass judgements. Not just in the legal field, but in all areas of life.
Of course, our prejudices and socialisation come into play. It is this that has led to such an appallingly low conviction rate for rape and other sexual crimes. But, it is that socialisation that needs to be dealt with - not a rejection of the idea that we can’t understand how and why to hold contradictory ideas until such a time as one of them is proven to us - that matters.
All of which comes back to what matters and what works about slogans. Slogans are there to simplify entry to a complex subject. They are not the end of the discussion. if all you have to say is ‘Believe Women’, ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘Take back control’ or ‘Make America Great Again’ without a substantial understanding of the changes you are chanting in favour of, you are likely to do your cause more harm than good.
All too often, particularly in the age of social media, we see slogans as unanswerable. If you ask someone to explain what they mean (in good faith) it is too often seen not as curiosity about how to achieve change but an attack on the need for change. Campaigning can all too often slip into dismissal and silencing of alternative viewpoints rather than dialogue and persuasion. But it is only ever by persuasion that minds are changed. And those who feel they can’t ask questions won’t get the answers that might have persuaded them.
Change is hard and complicated and difficult and painful. Shouting slogans is easy and cheering and makes you feel a righteous part of the right side of history - however much doesn’t change around you.
Slogans have a great role to play in pithily opening up dialogue. As a communications person, I *love* a good slogan front and centre of a campaign. But when sloganeering becomes the end, not the start, of a conversation, it goes from being a great tool to a blunt instrument.
What I’ve been up to
TICKETS FOR NO CURE FOR LOVE ARE NOW ON SALE!
Inspired by the music of Leonard Cohen, this piece examines the truth behind love songs. Can love ever be like that? Would we want it to be? Does love age with us or do we always fall like teenagers?
Join musicians Scott and Rose backstage at the Broadstairs Folk Festival as they try to discover if there is - in fact - a cure for love.
This is a rare show about love, sex and romance between older people. We're jaded, but we still have appetites, hopes, dreams and romantic aspirations. But if we haven't found them yet - are we being realistic about what we want?
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This has been one of those weeks where my ‘quiet’ work has taken over so there are no new articles or podcasts from me this week.
I can tell you that on the 23rd June I will be chairing a fringe event for the Labour Party Women’s Conference for Labour Business. Speakers include Bridget Phillipson and Seema Malhotra. You can register to join the event here.
Reading List
People who know me, know how much I love New York. I am - as far as I am concerned - a New Yorker who just hasn’t worked out how to live there yet. It will happen. So I loved this review of two books I will be avidly seeking out about my imagined adopted hometown.
And if you enjoyed that, you might like this old piece of mine - a piece of travel writing I got a rather excellent mark for during my MA - about a wonderful day out at Coney Island.
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Dona