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Introduction
Frantz Fanon begins one of his most influential works, Black Skins, White Masks, in saying, "We attach a fundamental importance to the phenomenon of language and consequently consider the study of language essential for providing one element in understanding the...[social] dimension of being-for-others...."* 1 This phenomenon, which integrates words, syntax, and terminology to define and categorize the world around us, is important to our most fundamental being. We use language to navigate through the societal environment into which we are thrown as social creatures; yet, from time to time this language navigates society towards oppressive environments, such as acts of genocide. The term genocide was officially coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin from the Greek root "génos" which denotes birth, race, stock, or kind and the Latin root "cidium" which signifies cutting, killing. Article Two of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide further defines it as the "intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," and has subsequently included additional groups such as gender within the definition.2 In other words, genocide takes place when one group strategically targets for destruction some "other" fundamentally because their identity has been classified as the "Other." This process, from classifying to destroying, is what underlies the exploration within these subsequent pages.
Relying upon social theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Simone de Beauvoir and Iris Marion Young, this paper seeks to delve into the role that language has played in propagating psychological and physical violence against women. In an effort to come to an understanding of the continuum of the detrimental effects rhetoric can have on society, particularly when it is employed in the service of targeting half of any given population as "Other," this study will be a cross-cultural comparison examining the consequences of rhetoric. The paper will use two examples to explore the way gendering language has been used in political contexts: the Rwandan genocide and the U.S. political climate. First, this study will explore the anti-Tutsi rhetoric that targeted gender during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. In exploring the ways that an insistence upon the "Otherness" of women was used to instigate violence against an entire ethnicity, this article will lead...