"It's only Words"

They can come from a fascinating verse in a song, or even the whole chorus. They can be a line out of a poem or in a movie that makes your heart melt, and sends a tingly feeling over your body. They can even be more influential with a beat in the background that makes your blood pump rapidly, and makes you want to jump up & down or throw your hands in the air. Sometimes, they even come from the person sitting beside you, and create chills that crawl down your arms, make your hairs stand up on the back of your neck, or even bring a tear to your eye.
A lot of people would say, they don't affect us though.

Whether coming from an everyday conversation, a book, magazine, TV, or the radio - words & lyrics are constantly being projected into our ears, and minds. The messages that are most common, or the most normalized are also the ones we tend filter into our subconscious and leave them to stagnate, or resurface only to make relative to a present conversation. This is something that we're aware of when brought to our attention, but how often do we actually acknowledge them? Many of us let these messages sit in our filters too long and acclimate to become a part of our traditional mind-set. When is the last time you cleaned out your filter, and started over fresh?

Words are extremely powerful, and I can't stress the importance of that enough. Kids and even adults hear messages through lyrics on a daily basis. Given the majority of this era's life function is based around music - at work, home, in the car, or even out in the backyard on a nice day. Now days, kids even bring their I-Pods & MP3 players too school! We all have that one song we could listen to a million times over, but have you ever actually analyzed it further than from the meaning only incorporated to your own personal? But, again - they're only words, right? That is what I hear a lot, and yes they are only words. It's only words in the Bible that a Pastor preaches to us weekly as well and look how much of an impact scripture has had on people's lives for generations. Words are a crucial component in the developement of our beliefs. It's only words that were said to the 13 yr old boy in North Texas, that led him to feel so self-worthless he would take his own life. If "it's only words" - then how are they doing so much damage, how can they have so much force and power, if "it's only words"? Just to note, I'm not claiming that one line of a song, book, or a scene in a movie is going lead to an immediate simulation or cause of any single form of violence, but they do perpetuate it.

As the messages portrayed by words are reinforced to us daily by whatever apparent resource - (parents, teachers, coaches, music, media, TV, etc.) we become numb too them or in reverse they can completely take over our mentality. They become accepted as norms and facilitate our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors towards whatever message is being relayed. It's like we're immune to the negative affects of our own language when being sent in form of lyrics, videos, TV, movies, media, and even people. In music we hear men mostly talking about women in sexual and objectifying ways! The XM top 20 on 20, includes "Sexy B****, by David Guetta ft. Akon" "How Low Can You Go, by Ludacris" "Good Girls Go Bad, by Cobra Starship" just to name a few of the many contemporary songs available. (Not denouncing older music sends the same sort of messages) Find the lyrics to any of these songs and you'll see how men have completely devalued & dehumanized women into sexual objects with words. It’s become so prevelant that some women are conditioned to fall into this ploy that their sexuality is what they're defined by. Lets just hope you haven't had to endure the viewing of any these videos, because they display objectification & sexism that coincides with the lyrics to extremes, and aids hindering ones thought process by normalization. Every time we hear a negative or degrading statement about or to a women (or anything) it becomes more "normal" to us. The problem with it becoming normal is we become desensitized to it & therefore it has no meaning. Often we don't realize that the belittling, repetitious words still have the same effects on our perceptions towards Women in our society! Also, we must realize that if consciously or even unconsciously we make a degrading, derogatory, or dehumanizing statement too or about a women, it gives the message to other's that it's acceptable - even if it's in a joking manner! When we humorize these notions, it minimizes the severity of the problem and how our perceptions reflects our attitudes & behaviors.

The children growing up in our society are taught that this kind of behavior is what it means to "be a man" or "be a woman". Typically blame is placed somewhere else, and responsibility is not accepted by an individual for occurrences that take place, but has no correlation with their own lives. Reality is, if we allow other's to act with misogynistic or violent outburst in our presence and do not intervene - then we're complicit in the negative effects of that behavior, no matter what form it's in.