Look…
If you’re a writer, and you write an article, and in it, you use comparisons – say, to…oh, I don’t know, slavery, or abuse survivors – you really can’t argue “hey, you’re not hearing what I meant to say because you’re all busy whining about these word-things that don’t mean what you thought they meant.”
okay?
In person, I say things wrong. All. The. Time. I don’t have a backspace key.
In writing? I have time to check things over, make sure that what comes out is as close to what I meant as possible.
And I still screw it up sometimes.
And then you know what? Hopefully, someone calls me on it, and I go “oh, shit!” and I say “Hey, I’m really sorry that’s how it came out, because that’s not what I meant at all!” and sometimes I have to say “Damn, I’m a white chick who grew up pretty-much middle-class, so sometimes, I really just don’t have a handle on the reality of things like slavery, and so shit, I’m sorry to have totally screwed the pooch on that one.”
And not once, ever, do I get to say that words don’t have meaning or power.
Not once do I get to say that I just chose them, and everyone’s being so mean by misconstruing them.
Because you know what? If there’s one thing in this world that is magic*, it’s words. The way we can twist them, and turn them. The way we can use them as a salve, or as a weapon. To create and to destroy.
As a writer, believing anything else says, to me, that ur doin it rong.
*And children. Children are absolutely, completely magic. But that’s another topic.
