Flowers, Female Artists, and Other Terms

Last Saturday, I went to the artist talk of Tanda Seru! Exhibition at Uma Seminyak. With wonderful artwork, the exhibition presents 8 female artists, telling us about their experience of "the reality they face in the society with the form of pressure and stigma attached to the female body."

The artists told the story behind their artwork. One of my favorite is from Aria Gita Indira with "And The Flower Speaks". Her work inspired from the "norm" of the journalistic field that usually use "flower" as a term to referring to the survivors. It's so simple yet so deep because I never think of how this term would give some impact to our perception of the survivors and to the word itself. 

Speaking about words, at the end of the talk one of the artists, Putu Sridiniari, asked Arahmaiani, the key speaker at the talk, about terms. The question that she asked was:

Istilah apa yang harus digunakan: seniman, seniwati,
perempuan seniman, atau pekerja seni?

Which one should we use: artist, "artistress", female artists, or art worker?

First of all, I would like to address that it is more about term and not word. A term is a word or group of words used in a particular field and situation. Now further to the discussion.

A similar question and/or situation (like the question above) has been discussed for quite long time: "Is language sexist?" 

In English, the word men means "a male adult". It also means "human beings of either sex". This is ambiguous and it could (or it does) affect our way of thinking. For example, a word fireman creates an impression that's only man can occured in those occupation (Meyerhoff, 2006: 61), whereas firefighter could include women and men. 

Those prove Ehrlich and King's (1994) statement that language codifies an androcentric worldview and therefore it is reflected in the structure of lexicon (in Omrcen, 145). With this situation, no wonder woman feel invisible and unrepresented.

Another fact is sometimes feminine words derived from masculine words (Burlacu, 2011: 82) such as princess and goddess. It also happened in Bahasa, such as karyawati and mahasiswi. Think about it:

Why would we need such words if it's not because 

the basis of the word is (has) masculine (meaning)?

For some words (or in this case, term) that is the real real female term, usually tend to have a derogatory meaning or negative connotation or linked to "sexual activity with the negative attitudes," (Meyerhoff, 2006: 57). For example, a governess in English or pelakor in Bahasa. 

Speaking of sexual activity with a negative connotation, some time ago the term pelakor was famous in Indonesia. And it was (is) problematic because the use of pelakor put the shame only on the woman (please read this article for better explanation). A while ago, I also found that in Bahasa, the sexual-with-negative-connotation terms about women is greater in number than men.

I think, such question about "Which terms should we use: seniman, seniwati, or, perempuan seniman?" appears because we (women) live in a male-dominated world and also we always placed in the second level. So that makes us need some kind of affirmation to be involved and represented. 

Bahasa Indonesia does not have a feminine/masculine structure and only use a generic pronoun(dia refers to both he/she). But it doesn't mean it would make "sexist" term never exist. In fact, social construction also influences how a word being formed and used (Ehlrich, 2004: 307). 

What conclusion should I tell here is: 

Start treating people equally no matter what, 

then surely the language would have fair words.