A Gift to All Women: Stop Calling Women "Bitches"
by DANNIELLE LARKIN
I hate this word. I just really hate the word “bitch.” I was raised in the 70’s and 80’s when it was still considered a “bad word.” I was raised in a religious family, so lots of words were considered “bad words,” but this one was on the really bad list. And being on the really bad list made sense to me then, and it makes sense to me now. Let me explain.
I’m not unaware that in 2018 this word has been 100% normalized. I just don’t understand why. As women, and as men 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 desire. Women who actually want to have sex are 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 our 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.
Then, 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 some man has really rubbed us the wrong way and we holler the insult, “you son of a bitch,” his way, we aren’t even thinking about what that really means. We are just thinking that we’re mad. You're the guy I’m mad at. This one will hurt. But if we take a millisecond to think about what we are really saying when we send those words flying across space we might give pause. We’re proclaiming the worst thing we 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 whole-heartedly 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.