‘Underage Women’. Before I tell you, think about why this phrase is so problematic and consider the negative implications it can have on the life of a girl and the justice she deserves - and the disgusting positive implications it can have on a few.
The word ‘woman’ connotes maturity; it is word for word defined as ‘an adult human female’. AN ADULT. So how can the word underage, which clearly implies that they are a child, be shoved next to that word ‘woman’? An underage woman and does not exist. The word the media are looking for is a child; a child who cannot consent, who is NOT an adult.
This ridiculous phrase is an oxymoron which, when Jeffrey Epstein was indicted for sex trafficking, started popping up everywhere. Over 4 days radio announcers and TV news anchors had called Epstein’s victims ‘underage women’ over 90 times. It is a strange and pointless euphemism; the more you think about it, the stranger it seems that anyone feels the need to use it at all. So, why do we repeatedly insist on describing these girls, these victims, as women?
Is it perhaps because calling these victims ‘girls’, is too blunt? Too unpleasant to think about? But consider if it’s ‘unpleasant’ for people to comprehend these victims as girls, imagine how unpleasant it must be to see yourself described as a woman, someone who should ‘have known better’. It perpetuates a perverse undercurrent that they somehow should or could have prevented their assault at the hand of a fully grown man.
By employing the word ‘women’ to refer to Epstein’s victims, we are met with the insidious suggestion that these acts were somehow less violent, less disgraceful, less his fault than they actually were. It is like when you describe a sexual act with a minor as ‘sex’. No, they cannot consent so, it is rape. Assault. We must change the language we use because:
‘words shape the way we view the world, and create expectations and norms, even if we don’t always realise it.’
Zahra Peermohamed
Commenti