EXCERPTS FROM THE ARTICLE
I once read a science-fiction story in which astronauts voyaging
to a distant star were waxing homesick: "Just to think that it's
springtime back on Earth!" You may not immediately see what's
wrong with that, so ingrained is our unconscious northern
hemisphere chauvinism. "Unconscious" is exactly right. That is
where consciousness-raising comes in.
I suspect it is for a deeper reason than gimmicky fun that, in
Australia and New Zealand, you can buy maps of the world with
the south pole on top. Now, wouldn't that be an excellent thing
to pin to our class- room walls? What a splendid
consciousness-raiser. Day after day, the children would be
reminded that north has no monopoly on up. The map would
intrigue them as well as raise their consciousness. They'd go
home and tell their parents.
The feminists taught us about consciousness-raising. I used to
laugh at "him or her", and at "chairperson", and I still try to avoid
them on aesthetic grounds. But I recognise the power and
importance of consciousness-raising. I now flinch at "one man
one vote". My consciousness has been raised. Probably yours
has too, and it matters.
"But it's only words," I would expostulate.
"Why get so worked up about mere words, when there's so
much else to object to?" Now I'm having second thoughts.
Words are not trivial. They matter because they raise
consciousness.
My favourite consciousness-raising effort is one I have
mentioned many times before (and I make no apology, for
consciousness-raising is all about repetition). A phrase like
"Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should clang furious bells of
protest in the mind, just as we flinch when we hear "one man
one vote". Children are too young to know their religious
opinions. Just as you can't vote until you are 18, you should be
free to choose your own cosmology and ethics without society's
impertinent presumption that you will automatically inherit your
parents'. We'd be aghast to be told of a Leninist child or a
neo-conservative child or a Hayekian monetarist child. So isn't it
a kind of child abuse to speak of a Catholic child or a Protestant
child? Especially in Northern Ireland and Glasgow where such
labels, handed down over generations, have divided
neighbourhoods for centuries and can even amount to a death
warrant?
Catholic child? Flinch. Protestant child? Squirm. Muslim child?
Shudder. Everybody's consciousness should be raised to this
level. Occasionally a euphemism is needed, and I suggest
"Child of Jewish (etc) parents". When you come down to it,
that's all we are really talking about anyway. Just as the
upside-down (northern hemisphere chauvinism again: flinch!)
map from New Zealand raises consciousness about a
geographical truth, children should hear themselves described
not as "Christian children" but as "children of Christian parents".
This in itself would raise their consciousness, empower them to
make up their own minds and choose which religion, if any, they
favour, rather than just assume that religion means "same
beliefs as parents".
Please go out and work at raising people's consciousness over
the words they use to describe children. At a dinner party, say,
if ever you hear a person speak of a school for Islamic children,
or Catholic children (you can read such phrases daily in
newspapers), pounce: "How dare you? You would never speak
of a Tory child or a New Labour child, so how could you describe
a child as Catholic (Islamic, Protestant etc)?" With luck,
everybody at the dinner party, next time they hear one of those
offensive phrases, will flinch, or at least notice and the meme
will spread.
A triumph of consciousness-raising has been the homosexual
hijacking of the word "gay". I used to mourn the loss of gay in
(what I still think of as) its true sense. Where homosexual, queer,
and faggot are "'down words" and insults; Gay is succinct, uplifting,
and positive........an "up" word...............................