I wonder sometimes why we don't talk more about the words we use or acknowledge their power. We use words to draw things and people closer. Wife, husband, girlfriend, daughter, son, pet. We personify things with names. Sable, Daisy, Zooey, Luna. We grant individuality with names, also, establishing someone's right to be separate from us at the moment they're born.
We also use words to draw a line between ourselves and people/things. Primitive, weird, different, odd. We create a hierarchy with words. Human, animal, meat. We reduce things to their smallest component or a facet of identity with words. Gay, straight, bisexual, hippie, nerd, yuppie. I think leg, wing and thigh fit in that category, as well.
It seems to me that, in both positive and negative ways, we use words to structure our reality, our ethics, our worlds. Why are so many of us so frightened or uncomfortable to examine them or to reconsider the way we use them or to acknowledge just *how* much power they have for us?
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