is it anti-feminist to call people “bitch”?
– orkinson
words behind words
December 17, 2008 by dontgetrats
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "bitch", gendered insults | 11 Comments
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i think so.
yo my snacking friend, if you wanna tell me more about your thoughts regarding this, please do! im interested. (i first typed “im interesting” which is also true)
idk not right now. i think whether it’s specifically undermining to say it depends a lot on who you’re talking to, but in general that gendered insults are really bad and something that we should phase out. especially “bitch,” cause genitals as insults kind of lose their gendered sting (not that they are any more ok).
reclaiming words is mega complicated for me. I’m still sort of trying to figure out how I feel about it.
I’m having a lot of trouble with that word lately. I’ve been trying to erase it from my vocabulary for the following reasons:
(a) Whenever I hear used applied to a woman, it’s when she’s behaving in a way that, were she a man, it would not an issue. For example, it was used all through Hillary Clinton’s campaign to insult her for doing exactly what all the male candidates were doing: speaking their mind. With women, it seems to be a punishment for being independent and strong.
(b) When applied to men, it seems to be another term that equates femaleness with “the worst”. Like girl, pussy, vagina, all of which I’ve heard my brothers use.
(c) I think it contributes a liberal feminist desire to create animosity between women vying for power or just equality.
So, yeah, I think the word should go away because even if I want to “re-claim” it, most people will just see my usage as encouragement to continue using it in the old sexist ways.
i think i agree with you, irene. thank you for your thoughts, they helped greatly to clarify mine.
That’s what we’re here for, right? =)
Agh, that’s exactly how I feel about re-claiming! Also, I want to stop being mean… or at least be more articulate in why I dislike or feel uncomfortable around a person. I feel like we use swear words when we can’t think of anything more descriptive to say. Maybe instead of calling someone a “bitch”, we could talk about why this person makes us want to say that word. I think that would be more productive.
“Maybe instead of calling someone a “bitch”, we could talk about why this person makes us want to say that word.” i’ve been trying to do this, and it works!
Interesting….just to add on to this, I was talking with my dad the other day about him possibly dating someone (ugh, so many things connected to that…) and he told me about the women with whom he’s had chances. He passed one up as a ‘bitch.’
“…To use the feminist term, right?” I scoffed.
“No,” he replied. (He’d never call me or my mother or sister a bitch; he respects my feminist ideas, though he contests them, and he’s always told me I can do whatever I want to do. However…….sometimes he can be stubborn.)
“I don’t care what you say, some people just have an attitude that can only be described as ‘bitchy.’ It’s a character trait.”
I read something today in Adrienne Rich’s ‘Of Woman Born’ that gave me pause: “Like other dominated people, we (women) have learned to manipulate and seduce, or to internalize men’s will and make it ours, and men have sometimes characterized this as “power” in us; but it is nothing more than the child’s or courtesan’s “power” to wheedle and the dependant’s “power” to disguise her feelings–even from herself–in order to obtain favors, or even to survive.”
Hearing this, he’d probably argue that ‘bitchy women do anything BUT disguise their feelings’ and sure, they can be quite loud about them…but the quote still struck me.
You have the women who, having no other power, simply talk to reassure themselves that they still have a voice…then they start to nag, because nobody listens, and they get called bitches. ‘Bitch, bitch, bitch’–nag, nag, nag, or complain to anyone in hearing range. My dad’s definition.
And then, what Adrienne Rich shows us: ‘Cockteases,’ ‘bitches,’ powerful women who ‘take advantage’ of men…may not really be powerful in their own right, but merely trying to protect themselves by milking the system and those in power for whatever they can get from it. You’ve got those women who seduce men, sirens, golddiggers, blah blah only to leave the man alone, poor, and complaining bitterly about the ‘bitch who screwed me over,’ etc etc etc….
and then the woman who is an ‘uptight bitch’ is usually one who denies sex, right? Or refuses to smile at a man who whistles at her on the street.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. And I’m generalizing, of course. And this is an old post. Oh well. Thoughts?
“‘Cockteases,’ ‘bitches,’ powerful women who ‘take advantage’ of men…may not really be powerful in their own right, but merely trying to protect themselves by milking the system and those in power for whatever they can get from it.”
that sounds like a shrewd assessment of the situation.