It’s Time to Take Back Gossip

Once on a night out, I was passionately venting to a friend about something messed up that another girl did to me earlier that evening. As I laid out my frustrations and condemned her behavior, another girl walked past, asserting, “You know, you really shouldn’t talk badly about other girls. It’s so easy to just be nice!” For a moment, I was really embarrassed — maybe she was right. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut instead of talking down on someone else’s name. But that shame quickly turned into resentment, frustration, and disappointment.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the age-old adage: If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say it! But what about when someone hurts you or doesn’t treat you correctly? Should you still remain complaisant, subservient, quiet, silenced? In a society that urges women to “lift one another up,” we are often trapped in a toxic cycle of false positivity that silences honest feelings and constructive criticism. So, what does it mean to truly support one another if we can’t face or acknowledge the messy, uncomfortable moments in our relationships? To answer these questions, we must trace gossip’s history.

In her collection of essays, Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women, Silvia Federici writes that the term “gossip” was derived from Old English and combines God and sibb (meaning akin) to describe a godparent. It was used to indicate companions of childbirth and to describe female friendships which were strong and important to society in the pre-1500s. During this time, women were a cohesive and powerful unit — sewing, cooking, cleaning, and even giving birth together, constantly surrounded by one another. A woman’s “gossip” was a trusted friend, which was highly valued during this era.

However, the rise of a patriarchal order unfolded (related to the emergence of capitalism, itself driven by the Church and feudal elites), causing women’s previous power to crumble. From the 1500s onwards, the meaning of the word “gossip” took a dramatic turn. As women’s influence declined, so did their independence in speech — and men started becoming threatened by female friendships. Federici writes that in this new era of England, “[w]omen were [...] brought to court and fined for ‘scolding,’” and a proclamation was even issued in 1547, “‘forbidding women to meet together to babble and talk.’”

Today, the term “gossip” has become a misogynistic strategy to proliferate female oppression and vilify women. In Federici’s words, there is an idea that the women who gossip “presumably hav[e] nothing better to do and hav[e] less access to real knowledge and information and a structural inability to construct factually based, rational discourses.” Gossip’s modern connotations are damaging because they invalidate and minimize the female experience as a waste of time. This notion inflicts guilt onto the perpetrator for speaking up or against an idea, ultimately leading to silence and reinforcing the idea that a woman’s speech is meaningless.

Women have been conditioned to always be likable — to strive to be the quintessential “good girl.” This mode of thinking has pathologized women’s natural responses to conflict, convincing them to avoid confrontation and sticking up for themselves to maintain a likable persona. This further complicates already intensely complicated female friendships. Today’s definition of gossip generalizes the experience of being a woman and oversimplifies talking badly about someone/something simply as backbiting talk that seeks to tear down and offend. When women are clouded by this fear of being labeled a bad friend or an inadequate feminist for speaking out, the quality of their friendships suffers as a result. Instead of facing problems head-on and having uncomfortable conversations with friends, women ironically fulfill today’s definition of “gossip” by bottling these feelings and problems up and talking badly about their friends behind their backs. So, what’s the solution?

To denounce the negativity surrounding “gossip” today is to remember its original meaning; to create and maintain strong bonds which can only be achieved when women start openly speaking to one another and saying something when they have an issue. And women would feel a lot more comfortable speaking up, being confrontational, and acting assertively if they weren’t plagued by the fear of being labeled “fake” or “two-faced.” In my view, if Woman A does something shady to Woman B, Woman B should be free to speak about it without being dismissed as a “gossip.” Silencing these conversations under the guise of “women should always support women” not only invalidates female experiences but also creates a fabricated sense of unity that unfairly imposes guilt on those who challenge it.

So, I urge you to approach what you label as “gossip” with more thoughtfulness and less judgment. It is only once we reevaluate the topics encompassed by this label can we finally begin to reclaim the term.