In Defence of Gossip

Today, the word ‘gossip’ has negative connotations. It is often thought of as idle talk, usually at someone’s expense. But the word did not always have this meaning. As Silvia Federici outlines in Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women, the word used to be a ‘term for women friends, with no necessary derogatory connotations’.

Etymologically, the word is derived from the Old English god-sibb, meaning ‘godfather, godmother, or baptismal sponsor’. In the early modern period, the word referred to ‘companions in childbirth not limited to the midwife’, and eventually, it became a term for a close companion. One’s ‘gossip’ was one’s confidant. Usually, the work that women would do would be done collectively and in collaboration. These early gossip groups were basically guilds, full of independent women with ‘acquired knowledges and wisdoms’.

In the cancelled preface to her book Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia writes that:

Compared to women, [men] are poor at the rapid absorption of verbal data. Narration of complex social incidents is hopelessly impeded by male auditors, who require backtracking, repetition, and endless clarification. Women, on the other hand, can communicate even by sentence fragments: “Did he know that she saw that he — ?” “Yes, absolutely!” “Oh, no! And did they — ?” “Yes, right then!” This giddy telegraphy is the daily demotic of female intuition, another myth I happily defend. Women finish each other’s sentences in the same way that nuns, roommates, and sorority sisters end up menstruating together (Paglia)

According to Federici, the term ‘gossip’ was denigrated as part of a concerted effort to undermine these women’s groups:

as the seventeenth century progressed the word’s negative connotation became the prevalent one this transformation went hand in hand with the strengthening patriarchal authority in the family and women’s exclusion from the crafts and guilds. With the consolidation of the family and male authority within it, representing the power of the state with regard to wives and children, and with the loss of access to former means of livelihood both women’s power and female friendships were undermined (Federici)

Personally, I don’t think Federici went far enough in her defence of gossip. The idle talk aspect should not be dismissed as a caricature. Not only is it accurate, it also performs an indispensable social function; particularly in regard to the great social regulator: shame.

Shame, like gossip, gets a bad rap, but without it, anything goes. Many of the ills that plague us today can be traced back to a lack of shaming. The denigration of gossip undermined this function. I say bring shame back. Go gossip more.