Breaking into the Vancouver music scene was when I really began to grasp the gravity of another woman’s word.
I’ve spent hours in bars playing shows, usually waiting for the perfect moment to sneak away to the bathroom for a few moments of silence. As I sit there, I take the time to look over the notes scrawled in Sharpie all over the plastic toilet paper dispensers and stall doors, most of them consisting of names and warnings to avoid those individuals at all costs.
My bandmate sends a screenshot to our group chat. It’s an Instagram story with a photo of a guy who had worked at one of our shows, and paragraphs upon paragraphs of text detailing his various alleged crimes against women in the music community. We choose to believe this stranger and vow to ourselves to never work with the man again, knowing what we do now.
We need to have this trust, even though the stories may never actually be proven. Because when you’re a woman, it’s almost always a man’s word over yours — and believing in gossip is often the only way to protect yourself.
Dr. Alexis McGee is an assistant professor of research in the School of Journalism, Writing and Media and the author of From Blues to Beyoncé: A Century of Black Women’s Generational Sonic Rhetorics, which explores how women — specifically Black women — have mobilized voice.
“Through songs, through writing a voice in newspapers or pamphlets or public speaking, autobiographies — the ways in which a voice permeates the world around us and helps us facilitate and communicate knowledge … sometimes get overlooked … especially in a patriarchal, heteronormative, white, European framework of society and culture,” McGee said in an interview with The Ubyssey.
Another example is gossip, which, according to her, was first introduced as a feminist practice around the 14th century, when “salon networks [were] used to mobilize information, to go against, resist [or] share information about society and the constructions that are placed upon women’s bodies,” McGee said.
Some conversations — whether positive or negative — revolving around another person without their knowledge fall into the category of gossip.
But for most women throughout history, it has primarily served as a form of resistance since it’s a covert way of organizing movements and planning strategies to stand up to injustice without alerting the oppressor.
“We often see gossip being mobilized to sort of make inroads or push against those boundaries that have meant to exclude women from everyday society,” she said. “As a practice, we see [it] during that time as a really effective way to get information, to get us into different social standings, to get us out of particular positions.”
When fifth-year cognitive systems student Georgia Lamb was a teenager, she loved the movie Mean Girls and magazines like Tiger Beat, with splashes of pink, cutouts of celebrities and personality quizzes.
She noticed how media geared toward younger women usually talked about navigating friendship issues and bullying — a guide, of sorts, to the psychological battleground that is being a girl. And gossip was the constant: an ever-present phenomenon that drove stories forward, and usually in a negative way.
“There are all these different types of shows that mobilize gossip and to some extent, for better or for worse, normalize the gendered idea of what gossip is. It’s always women trading in secrets behind the scenes to make sure something gets done or [not],” McGee said.
“It shows the power differentials in those ways, but it often doesn’t examine why that’s happening, or the implications of what it means in the social [and] cultural [or] historical context for women to be able to do that sort of work, and what does that mean for larger feminist populations.”
The ways gossip was presented were often oversimplified, Lamb said, since it almost always seemed to be used “for the sense of ridicule.”
While the media she consumed wasn’t quite able to capture the nuances of gossip — how it can help a situation, not just hinder it — when Lamb got older and entered university, talking about people with other girls became a common way to encourage safety and solidarity.
“I’ve seen more of the utility of trying to protect other people … trying to look out for each other — that is where it gets a little bit more difficult to discuss, a little bit more difficult to navigate.”
“You’ll have the usual gossip like, ‘Stay away from this person because this, this and this,’” Lamb said. “There’s both a lot of potential for good and a lot of potential for harm, because that is what tends to spread a little bit more easily and cause some sort of impact, whether for better or for worse. From what I’ve seen, it’s mostly been for better.”
An unspoken rule of girlhood is keeping other women safe, regardless of whether you know them or not. There’s an expectation that women warn each other of potential danger — but we rarely see positive impacts from publicly speaking out, since our stories are shut down or denied by a patriarchal society.
By writing a note on a bathroom door or spinning the incident into a bite-sized piece of gossip — there are ways to get the message across to the people who need to hear it.
“One thing that I noticed I used it for was when discussing matters that were more personal or harmful to me with people who I wasn’t super comfortable sharing an entire story or an entire difficult instance [with],” Lamb said. “Something that I found to be quite powerful was to state opinions about a person in that kind of gossipy tone.”
There’s power in subtle or secret communication, which is exactly why women are discouraged from doing it, particularly by those who feel most threatened by it.
“I think that’s why I think people might want to categorize [gossip] as dangerous or negative or bad. But we often focus on that, and not the life-giving trends or tools or capabilities that [are] built within those systems,” said McGee.
“It’s a method to help us move out of really oppressive or violent terrains.”
But how do you decide whether or not the things you hear are true? According to Lamb, she usually does believe people, but is more likely to trust someone she’s already close to, which can pose some problems.
“There’s definitely a psychological explanation, like you are more likely to trust those within the circle, and that is another element of harm,” Lamb said.
“Whether or not that spreads, whether or not you are believed, can depend a lot on where you kind of stand in that social sphere … It [is] separate from a larger hierarchy or a larger social structure, [but] it can also be an entirely new social structure.”
The intricacies of gossip among women become even more complex when looking at how they’re influenced by the intersections of identity, like race, sexuality and class. According to McGee, racialized women are believed even less, causing them to face more barriers than white women.
“The use of gossip is intensified because of the intersectional ways in which Black women’s bodies have been precluded from conversations, and we’re not offered the same level of negotiation of power than other more heteronormative bodies are,” said McGee.
“We have to be more strategic in the ways that we gossip, or the ways that we apply gossip, to our need to survive. It’s not just about being able to get into the room. Often, it’s about being able to make sure we change the policy so everybody can get into the room.”
Lamb is aware that as someone who does not identify as a person of colour, she needs to be mindful of how her positionality influences which ideas she believes — and for her, this involves keeping an open mind and taking the time to hear people out.
“[You need] a strong inclination and a strong willingness to believe and listen, because of [the] understanding that the structures in power will try and speak louder than whatever this other person is saying,” Lamb said. “I need to adjust that bias accordingly, because I know that it’s very easy to prioritize that existing structure.”
Within this intersection, negative connotations around gossiping can become even harsher due to the way marginalized communities are seen. For example, Black women are pushed to the side of social justice movements, despite the unique ideas and experiences they bring to the table, because of their race.
“It’s going to be hard to disconnect the negative connotation of gossip,” McGee said. “Because it has so much power to change or sway wherever the decision making is happening or to discredit somebody.”
But even through the criticism around it, gossip remains vital in many social circles, especially marginalized groups, as a network of knowledge. There’s a reason it’s lasted since long before our time — no matter how hard people try to prevent it, it’s simply human nature to share stories with each other.
“I think because of the way that society — historically, socially and culturally — has conscripted the female body or conscripted feminist practices and rhetorics, to something that’s not deemed ‘important’ or ‘worthy of’ or ‘capable of,’” said McGee.
“Gossip has been the effective outlet to say that we are capable in these ways, and here’s how we’ve got to impact change.”
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