Sector Speak Part 2: The history and future of the language of violence
There are reasons – good reasons – for the ubiquity of sector speak. But there are also good reasons to change it.
Earlier this week, I posted about sector speak, the linguistic routines embedded in the language we use about violence that diminish our ability to fulfil our purpose.
In summary, the three main (but not only) culprits are:
Passive voice: the idiom of the invisible, unaccountable perpetrator.
Jargon: wordy, distancing terminology designed to exclude and intimidate people unfamiliar with sector vernacular.
Semantic saturation: the process of repeating a word so often that it loses meaning.
Each of these three are dangerous enough on their own, but used in combination with each other, their effects are exponentially increased.
Together, they become sector speak, and they are as dangerous as any dehumanising language can be. The first post delved into how these three forms of language diminish our work. This post is about the history that created sector speak, the effect it has on our ability to reduce violence and how we can manage the risk of change.
The effects of sector speak
Supports myths about violence
I’ve written extensively about the harm caused by rape myths - they make rape easier to commit, more difficult to report, much easier to dismiss or ignore and more traumatic for people who have been raped. The same is true of myths about domestic violence, sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, and you can extend that circle further and further into all forms of violence and oppression.
When we use language that is repetitive, dehumanising, and meaningless, we’re failing to communicate actual ideas. There’s nothing in sector speak for our brains to process so we fill in the gaps with preexisting bias and myths, usually without even knowing that this is what we’re doing. Perfect victims, ideal survivors, and monster myths all thrive in meaningless repetitive language.
Provides tools for perpetrators
Men who perpetrate violence see the poorly understood jargon being endlessly repeated in sector communications. They know how to weaponise terms such as ‘coercive control’ and ‘trauma informed response’ and ‘misidentification of the primary aggressor’. Women who try to talk to their abusive partners about the damage they’re causing are often met with accusations of ‘gaslighting’, ‘silencing’ and ‘emotionally abusive and controlling behaviour’.
The complex dynamics of gender and power are difficult to understand and explain – although this is what the jargon is supposed to do – which means misunderstood jargon is easily twisted to fit myths about violence.
‘She’s gaslighting me’ translates to ‘she’s lying’ and fits the myth that women commonly lie about rape and domestic violence.
‘She’s emotionally abusive’ or ‘she’s so controlling’ fits the myth that men cannot control the rage that is deliberately provoked by manipulative women.
As well as weaponising sector speak against the people they’re abusing, perpetrators also use it to manipulate sympathetic responses out of counsellors, police, magistrates and juries. When it works – which it often does – perpetrators feel safe to continue or even escalate the abuse because everyone involved has learned that if a woman says a man has hurt her, he is the real victim and she’s a damned liar.
Diminishes public understanding of violence
Debunking myths about violence changes more than just attitudes and beliefs. It makes a difference to how people respond to violence. Helping people understand and reject myths is how we get everyone to move from asking ‘what did you do to provoke him?’ to ‘what do you need to be safe?’ That change cannot happen if everyone who is talking about men’s violence is using the same meaningless sector speak.
Jargon also, as it is designed to do, excludes people who doesn’t know the jargon or are afraid they’ll get it wrong if they try. When jargon is repeated in every public discussion of violence, anyone who hears it and isn’t sure what it means will know they are not meant to participate. They’ll either tune out or try to use the terms without understanding what they mean. Both options are dangerous in their own way.
Obscures genuine expertise
For most of its history, almost everyone who worked in the sector was horrendously underpaid – if they were paid at all. That started to change in 2010 with the introduction of the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award (SCHADS Award) in 2010. By 2025, senior positions in large organisations are often quite well paid. The unintended consequence of this is that those positions now attract a range of people who have no experience or expertise in the sector.
While the sector benefits from new ideas and definitely needs new people, it’s important to maintain a balance of experience and inexperience. Sector speak masks imbalance to the point that in one large domestic violence crisis response organisation I know of, there is no one a senior position who has ever worked in domestic violence. The CEO, the entire board of directors, and everyone in senior management came from corporate, healthcare, child services or police backgrounds. These might be useful skills to add to expertise in domestic violence, but they cannot replace that expertise. The absence of expertise is doing terrible damage to front line staff and the people who depend on the organisation for support, but this is rendered invisible because sector speak means all those senior managers and board members can speak authoritatively on ‘inclusive provision of service for all victim-survivors’ and ‘the vital important of including the voices of lived experience in everything we do’ and ‘providing all victim survivors with evidence-based best-practice trauma informed care’. None of them have a genuine understanding of what these terms mean, nor do they have any comprehension of the service they are meant to provide, but sector speak is the perfect disguise for ignorance – especially when it’s the mainstay of policy, governance, and reporting.
Why did sector speak become so ubiquitous?
Despite my frustration with sector speak, I understand why it exists. The explanation is buried in the history of our sector.
Last year was the 50th anniversary of Elsie, the women’s refuge founded by feminists who squatted in a vacant property in Glebe in Western Sydney. The Sydney Rape Crisis Centre, now known as Full Stop, also turned 50 last year. Other crisis response services around the country will reach the same milestone over the next few years because most of them were started by second wave feminists. There was no sector and no jargon in the seventies and eighties. They talked about ‘battered wives’ and rapists and were frequently accused of being hysterical feminists, man haters, and bra-burning lesbians (a supposed insult that could only be hurled by someone who has never spent all day locked inside an underwire bra). Women at the time were considered too emotional and sensitive to sit on juries or participate in making or enforcing laws.
‘when imagining the obligations of citizenship, rather than the rights, women’s primary duty was to the home, not the law’ Alecia Simmonds, A Jury of her Peers, 2024
In response to this, and in a genuine effort to better understand how to help women who were being abused by men, activists turned to academia. Research, evidence and calm, unemotional language countered the myth that hysterical feminists were shrieking and wailing over a few undeserving unfortunates. The formal, unemotional approach helped transform a private problem that only needed a personal reaction into a public issue that demanded a structural response. The language had to transform too but it wasn’t like medical or legal jargon where there was a long history and dead languages to lean on. New terminology was required and researchers had to invent it along the way. Collective action, which was still very much part of the feminist ethos, required united use of terminology and the sector quickly became accustomed to falling in behind whatever terms were deemed to be accurate and appropriate.
Over the last decade or so, the sector has also confronted its short but disturbing history of concentrating on able-bodied, English-speaking white women as the only deserving victims. Aboriginal women, migrant and refugee women, LGBTQIA+ people, children, and women with disabilities were ruthlessly excluded from the early years of feminist activism against men’s violence.
We have stumbled, imperfectly and erratically, towards an understanding that this failure cannot be absolved by demanding forgiveness, it requires recompense. And so, our impersonal and technical language has been carefully altered to ensure it includes all the people we once refused to see and we are, as we should be, hypersensitive to any language that harks back to our pallid past.
Unwinding sector speak does not mean we should have less care for that history or the people still injured by history’s modern manifestations. In fact it means we have more care. We need to work harder, take risks in our language rather than rely on safe but jargon that hides human dignity under lazy repetition. We build more trust by speaking with meaning, even if it’s imperfect, than by trotting out tired cliches. Words give form to thought and the imperfections of language are far more effective at displaying intent than smoothly practised phrases.
Technical language and jargon
I’m experiencing acute cephalalgia unalleviated by oral administration of acetylsalicylic acid.
If I worked anywhere but the healthcare sector and said this sentence to my colleagues there’s a good chance they’d have no clue what I was talking about or how to respond, no matter how many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy they’d seen.
If, however, I said ‘I’ve got a terrible headache and taking painkillers didn’t make it any better’, not only are they going to be able to help me, it’s likely that someone with basic first aid training will know to do a FAST test (check for Facial drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty and know that if I have any of these symptoms, Time is critical). If my headache is due to a stroke, that person’s knowledge of this simple test means they will call an ambulance and probably save my life or my ability to live independently for the next twenty years. But all of that depends on our shared understanding of plain language and their knowledge of when to call for expert help.
If my headache was a stroke and I need surgery, however, I do not want my surgical team talking about headaches and painkillers. It is crucially important that they know I took acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) not acetaminophen (panadol). Aspirin is a blood thinner and their exact understanding of what medicine I’ve taken and whether my stroke is ischemic (a clot in the brain) or haemorrhagic (bleeding in the brain) will determine my entire future. Technical language will save my life. (My apologies to anyone who does speak neurological medicalise - as you can tell, I am not fluent. I am using language I barely understand to make a point and misuse of terms probably only emphasises the point.)
The FAST test was developed in the 1990s to help paramedics ensure stroke patients get immediate treatment. It proved highly effective and its simplicity means it’s now included in most basic first aid training.
The lessons here are obvious. We don’t need everyone to become experts in the technical complexities of violence and abuse any more than we need train the entire world to be neurologists. But we save lives when we give people basic skills, simple language and widely understood triggers to call for expert help. (Of course, we then need to have in place all the sector equivalents of paramedics, ER doctors, neurologists, neurosurgeons, theatre nurses, ICU clinical care specialists, pathologists, radiologists, physiotherapists, occupational and speech therapists, and mental health counsellors, but that’s a topic for another time.)
The language of violence and the future
Risk averse, depersonalised language based on collective agreement and too many inexperienced speakers has led us too far from our purpose. We want structural solutions to gender based violence and for that we need strong public support because government rarely initiate change, but they will almost always follow it.
Widespread steadfast support means lots of people need understand the basics concepts of power and gender that underpin men’s violence. Which means we need to dispel myths and build empathy. We need all the variations of violence to become familiar and understandable. We cannot do those things with repetitive, passive jargon. Sector speak, that calm professional language that once helped us, is now getting in our way and it’s time for another course correction.
We need to commit to taking risks in what we say and who we allow to speak. Give a megaphone to people who are imperfect and not shame them for their imperfections. That includes people who don’t use acceptable, appropriate language but have stories to tell. People, most of them women and children, who don’t understand or accept progressive ideals also suffer abuse by violent men. They need services, support, compassion, and acceptance. We need to believe those people and include them, even when we don’t agree with them.
In a sector that is trained to be hyperaware of appropriateness, we need to get much better at understanding appropriate use of language. We don’t apply the same language to an annual report, a technical policy document, an academic paper, a personal story and a social media post. They each serve a very different purpose for a very different audience. And all of them deserve more effort than sector speak can give them.
The Sector Speak posts have a wider application than just rape and sexual assault, which is why I’ve not listed them in the Rape is a Theoretical Crime series. They are, however, highly relevant to the series and the reason I wanted to post them this week is so I can refer to them in later instalments of the rape series.
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Podcast
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Helplines
In an emergency, where you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call police on 000
If you want to ask for anonymous advice for yourself or someone you know, call one of the helplines listed below or talk to a trusted GP or nurse practitioner at your local medical centre.
1800RESPECT
24/7 support for people impacted by sexual assault, domestic and family violence and abuse.
Ph: 1800 737 732
www.1800respect.org.au
Sexual Assault Crisis Line
24/7 Support for victims of sexual assault
Ph: 1800 806 292
www.sacl.com.au
Full Stop Australia
24/7 National violence and abuse trauma counselling and recovery service
Ph: 1800 385 578
www.fullstop.org.au
Men’s Referral Service
24/7 Support for men who use violence and abuse.
Ph: 1300 766 491
www.ntv.org.au/get-help/
Blue Knot Foundation
Phone counselling for adult survivors of childhood trauma, their friends, family and the health care professionals who support them. Available between 9am and 5pm, every day.
Ph: 1300 657 380
www.blueknot.org.au
Lifeline
24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention services.
Ph: 13 11 14
www.lifeline.org.au
Suicide Call Back Service
24/7 suicide prevention support
Ph: 1300 659 467
www.suicidecallbackservice.org.au
I think about this often. The words in the brochures and courses targeted at potential perpetrators do not match at-home language at all. Imagine if we met people where they were. Imagine if we used the language that is used behind closed doors. Imagine if the penalty for being a *fucking rapist* was harsher than someone hearing those words. Revolutionary.