A Gift to All Women: Stop Calling yourself or other Women “Bitches!”

A young woman was crossing the street in front of my house, when another young woman  driving by sitting in the back seat of a SUV yelled out: “Bitch get the F#ck out of the road”. This annoyed me Big time, and I started writing my thoughts down about why I hate the word.  

I hate this word. I just really hate the word “bitch.” I was raised in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s when it was still considered a “bad word.” I was raised in a religious family, mainly a religious mother, so lots of words were considered “bad words,” but this one was on the really her bad list. And being on the really bad list made sense to me then, and it still makes sense to me now. Let me explain. I’m not unaware that in 2019 this word has been 100% normalized. I just don’t understand why????. As men, and as women who love women, why are we ok with the normalization of this word? The original use leads us back to the fifteenth century. It was a vulgar term that “suggested high sexual desire in a woman, comparable to a dog in heat.” So, let’s just start there. The word began as a way to demean women who displayed sexual desires. Women who actually want to have sex were comparable to dogs. Animals. The lowest on the societal hierarchy. This is a battle women have been fighting from the beginning of human history. Fighting for the right to want to have sex, to enjoy having sex, and to subsequently not be castigated for this desire. For this reason alone, we should be pushing back, and pushing back hard, against the usage of the word. My annoyance with the word  got even worse when Trump called NFL black players “Sons of Bitches” interestingly, when we want to demean men, we call them a “son of a bitch.” Think hard about this one. One of the worst things a man could be is the son of a woman who enjoyed being part of his creation process. I know, I know, in the heat of anger, when a man has really rub a woman the wrong way and she hollers the insult, “you son of a bitch,” his way, these women aren’t even thinking about what that really means. Women are just thinking that they’re mad. hmmm….”You’re the guy I’m mad at.” This one will hurt. But if women take a millisecond to think about what they are really saying when they send those words flying across space they might  “<pause>” Women are proclaiming the worst thing they can say to a man is that he is a problem because of his mother? Really? Let us not forget we still have “asshole” in our lexicon. It sends the message without bringing his mother into the argument.“Bitch” has been used for so long as a way to put women in their place, a place of subjugation, that the feminist movement finally decided, “Hey, why don’t we just own it.” They began to protest the pejorative use of the word. “Bitch” began to be used in the feminist context to show strength, perseverance, assertiveness, drive. The feminist attorney Jo Freeman wrote “The Bitch Manifesto,” declaring war on the negative use of the term. I hear many young women now referring to their best friends as “my bitches.” Hip-hop and Rap music is replete with the use of the word, both as compliment and degradation. A common new idiom is, “You call me bitch like it’s a bad thing.” I understand the drive behind this appropriation movement, and I applaud it. I suppose I just live with a hope that there will come a day when we wholeheartedly reject the word outright. To me, even when attempting to use it as a positive, it’s pejorative past is still always lurking in the shadows.    Despite the feminist work to change its negative connotation to a positive one, the word still carries power to deride. During the 2016 campaign, Trump supporters began making t-shirts that said “Trump that Bitch.” Instead of intelligently explaining why they preferred Trump to Clinton, supporters knew calling her a “bitch” would, in one fell swoop, explain their stance and put a woman who dared run for the highest American office in her place.” “Bitch slap,” “prison bitch,” and the poker term “bitch end” all allude to weakness, vulnerability, and subordination. Bitch continues to carry power to squelch the ambitions of women. Now, I could start a Utopian argument about why we should just stop name-calling altogether, but I’m not sure we are ready to give up our venom just yet. Baby steps. Let’s just try to think about the women we honor, love, and respect next time the “B” word enters our mouths, just swallow and don't let it leave your lips.

Final Thoughts                                                                                                                                       It is generally accepted, although there are still bigots who refuse basic decency, that a white person should not use the N-word. Similarly, a straight person should not use the term “f*g,” and “tranny” is a horribly outdated way to refer to a person who is transgender. These words are not banned under any law, but they are considered crude and insulting, and therefore socially unacceptable. This is not for no reason; language has meaning, and the larger social and historical context around these slurs means that they are a lot more than synonyms for “Black,” “gay,” or “trans.” If a celebrity uses a slur, it often draws justified backlash from the  civilized community, as can be seen in the case of Bill Maher calling himself a “house n***er” on live television. Slurs are derogatory terms applied to groups of people, and generally, they are frowned upon, as they should be. Why, then, is it still considered okay for men and some women to call women "bitches?" I personally prefer insulting a woman by calling her "a Lady..." and have her think to herself but "I'm not acting like, or behaving like  a lady right now."  That's just My BAD mind game, I prefer to play.