By Isabel Reilly, Second Year, Philosophy
Gossip has always been a woman’s economy. Despite being an important part of community and society, gossip has been painted over with a patriarchal apathy. It is idle chat about others; it's rumours, conspiracies, and sometimes the people who participate. If you gossip, you are a gossip and both are bad.
"Gossip" comes from the original Old English word “Godsibb” which roughly translates to what we would now call a god-parent. In Middle English (circa 1500), it had come to denote a specific, spiritual, female relationship, one that has since been totally forgotten. Godsibb was a religiously revered, culturally acknowledged role, something like a god-sister, but more closely a “companion in childbirth”, a lifelong friend who would act as a midwife and beyond. That history is important. The word is not just grounded in the feminine, but in the ethereal mother nature– the co-operative, birth-giving spirit. Gossip, now, implies a lack of substance. It is measly and insignificant.
By entering the female sphere, the art of social conversation and collaboration has lost its worth. We need it back.
By entering the female sphere, the art of social conversation and collaboration has lost its worth. We need it back. Throughout history, a driving force of social innovation and community-building has always been the needs and co-operation of birth-givers. Of course, the exchange of practical information and services, but also of emotional insights: sharing stories of external or internal conflict, the resolution, the consequence. Conversations about one’s inner world like psychoanalysing their ex-partner or their reaction to so-and-so’s behaviour are not just features of meaningless small talk; these are the foundations of genuine connection and effective community. Talk between people about people is not just inevitable, it’s a part of what community is: a shared network of ideas and support systems, built on and sustained through connection and conversation.
The ever-continuous policing of female behaviour has trained us to demonise idle chat and the sharing of social information, to morally charge us with being “catty”, “bitchy”, “a gossip”. Of course, sharing a malicious rumour or lying should carry some negative moral weight, but we have spread out and diluted down the concept of gossip so greatly that it now includes small talk about celebrity rumours, or admitting to your friend that your other friend made you upset. By smuggling these important parts of connection and community under the same bracket as malicious rumour making, we are tricked out of a vital community practise. ‘Gossip’ allows us to charge standard, female-coded behaviours with a moral weight akin to lying.
Sofia Athena Roberts
Everyone gossips, every video that talks about the latest controversy around some interview or movie or Tourette’s tic, they are all gossip. Every fill-in-the-blanks talk between a trainee worker and her new manager about who has slept with who, every debrief of the night out to the flatmate who couldn’t make it. Gossip is the currency of social information. Its worth has been dampened, devalued, wrongly conflated and morally shamed, but it persists. An inevitable and beautiful part of community, indeed gossip is a woman’s economy, and it’s about time we invest in the market.
Featured image: Epigram / Lindsay Shimizu
What are your thoughts on the benefits of gossip?
