Who Gossips Big?

      Anecdotal evidence suggests that a man buying meat at a butcher’s shop found a piece of flesh lying there, chattering away incessantly. The man asked the butcher, “What is this piece of flesh and who is the owner of this remarkably functioning organ?” The butcher replied, “This piece of flesh is a human tongue whose owner has gone missing, but the excellent working condition confirms that it belongs to a woman!”

         This anecdote by Jonathan Swift affirms the dominance of the fairer sex over their counterparts when it comes to “wagging their tongues”! Before embarking on this demonstration of dominance over the non- fairer sex in terms of gossiping, let us notice the etymology of the word “gossip”. The word gossip is derived from the Anglo- Saxon word “godsibbe”, meaning “relative”. In later centuries, its meaning shifted to “friend”, and then to “a person who gossips”, and finally to “idle talk”. Today, this last meaning of the word is prevalent in association with gossip. Due to this fluidity of meaning writer and essayist Francine Prose suggests that gossip is inherently only an activity which can be used either beneficially or adversely.

         Now that the etymology is delineated, let us examine whether men gossip more than women or women talk more than men. It is commonly believed that talking is second nature to a woman because she is good with words. In a neurolinguistics study, researchers conducted scans of men’s and women’s brains and found out that during language processing males only use the left hemisphere of their brain which is responsible for reasoning, whereas women use both the right and left hemispheres responsible for creativity and reasoning. This research alone accounts for two facts: women do speak more numerically and women’s use of language is more creative and artful!

The creativity and artfulness of a woman’s speech baffles the rationally- oriented men so much that they label anything women say as “insignificant” or “gossip”. (No wonder some husbands long to have a mute wife!) If a woman talks more she is condemned to the appallingly familiar label of a “chatter- box”, squandering her energies in bossing around, or back- biting, or conniving. This perception of males is reflected in many literary pieces like Moliere’s play “The Misanthrope” and Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”. Although negative, these portraits of women assert that women do tend to talk more than men.

         At this point any objective and fair- minded person would ask the question: Do women only talk about trivialities like clothes and cosmetics? Do women only gossip about frivolities like domestic and workplace issues? Do women only gossip about the vagaries of relationships and life? Prevalent beliefs in society exhibit women indulging in evil gossip, but there is also another side to this gossip. The beneficial use of women’s gossip is visible in situations where women have made leaps and strides in civic movements, where women have broken ceilings in male- dominated organizations and have gone further than any male in securing social prosperity for all by virtue of their “gift of the gab”.

         Countless women have used their eloquence to achieve remarkable goals. It was a woman Wilhelmina Drucker who secured the political right to vote for all females during the first wave of feminism through her rhetoric. The “mother of civil rights movement”, Rosa Park, who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, triggered the abolishment of unconstitutional segregation laws for blacks; she also used her vocal powers to beat the odds. Another profitable use of speech by a woman was to create the hashtag “me too” which empowered victims of abuse to regain their voice and seek justice. Another interesting case is that of the first female American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who ran a successful caucus with seven other female diplomats to convince the patriarchal UNO into passing a resolution declaring rape as a weapon of war. There are also women like Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres who talk to leave lasting and influential impressions of wit, kindness, power and change on the audience. Undoubtedly, these examples are a testament that women not only talk more, they also get fruitful things done.

         There are also illustrious women whose words have painted the tenor of our national fabric in a positive light. One intrepid and outspoken soul, lawyer and human rights activist Asma Jahangir heralded a change in the fortunes of the oppressed and voiceless by dint of her mettle and speech. Another brave daughter of our country, Malala Yusufzai, who lashed back verbally at the men holding a gun to her head, earned Pakistan its second Nobel prize. There is also the woman who ‘talked’ through her artistic expressions to earn Pakistan its first ever Oscars: Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy. Besides, there is Maleeha Lodhi, former representative of Pakistan in the UNO, who was our voice at the international forum. These sterling examples prove that gossiping and talking can be useful activities and women are adept at forging relations, negotiating hard topics and issuing orders to execute important tasks swiftly and purposefully.

The need of the hour is that we see women’s ‘talk’ or ‘gossip’ as constructive, creative and purposeful. It is high time we recognize women as communicators, empathizers, and emotional connectors, not merely as negative gossipers. In the end, it must be remembered that men and women both should use this power of speech responsibly.