For Those Whose Political Vocabulary Is Filled With DOUCHEBAGS

[omega minimo]

Yes it IS a sexual slur that insults women.
No, it doesn’t matter how much it’s been watered down.
It STILL is an an welcome sexual slur on DU.
Here is some background:
  
..."douche bag", used against patriarchists and male supremacists, is an insult, not because we now realize regular douching is bad, or because douching is per se bad, but because the term hearkens to the reasons for which douche bags were invented, namely, to clean what men believed to be women's foul-smelling, diseased genitalia.  When we use the word, the patriarchists we intend to insult are insulted, not because douche bags are bad things, but because of the revulsion over women's bodies which the term "douche bags" evokes and which inspired their invention.  A douche bag is a neutral object with some valid reasons for existing.  It is only revolting or disgusting when it is connected with sexist views of women's vaginas and bodies.  And for this reason, using words like "douchebag" as an insult is, I believe, sexist. 

Following is the etymology of the word "bag," from Etymology Online:

bag

c. 1230, bagge, from O.N. baggi or a similar Scand. source, perhaps ultimately of Celtic origin.  Disparaging slang for "woman" dates from 1924.  Meaning "person's area of interest or expertise" is 1964 from Black Eng. slang, from jazz sense of "category," probably via notion of putting something in a bag.  Baggy "puffed out, hanging loosely" is 1834.  Many fig. senses are from the notion of the game bag (1486) into which the product of the hunt was placed; e.g., the verb meaning "to kill game" (1814) and its colloquial extension to "catch, seize, steal" (1818)

Also according to Etymology Online, "windbag" as an insult preceded "old bag", or "bag" as a derogatory word for women:

windbag

1470, "bellows for an organ," from wind (n.) + bag. Fig. sense of "person who talks too much" is attested from 1827. 

Based on the complete etymological definition of the word "windbag" (which you can read if you click on the link), it seems to have been gendered male, at least originally.  "Bag" became a sexist slur in 1924.  I think this has to do with events which occurred in the 1920s, which linked the pejorative implications of "bag" in "windbag" with certain sexist ideologies and patriarchal oppression, resulting in woman-hating epithets like "old bag," (a derivation of "windbag," this time gendered female) and ultimately "douche bag."  Over time words like "scumbag" and "cobag" were invented, but, again, these came later on.  I don't think their existence would erase the sexist implications of "douche bag"; instead, I think their invention invokes a revulsion that is rooted in sexism and which can be used in the service of new and additional revulsions.

I think what happened in the 20s which resulted in "bag" divorced from "windbag" and  being gendered female might have been the 19th Amendment.  I think Alice Paul, the League of Women Voters, the National Women's Suffrage Movement, movement in the direction of equality for women happened in the 20s.  And it makes sense to me that a word was invented to slam and denounce these women who so offended patriarchal, male supremacist sensibilities.  "Windbag," didn't work because it was gendered male and probably hearkened to male politicians and preachers.  "Old bag," I think, became the sexist slur of choice.  What good is a woman if she is old?  And especially if she is loud, strident, a windbag, like a man? 

It's at this same time, interestingly, that the media began to vigorously promote and advertise douching, both douche bags and douche solutions.    According to the Museum of Menstruation  products like  the "Mon Docteur" ("My Doctor") vaginal douche apparatus cured all sorts of ills, beautified the user, would ensure her husband wouldn't leave her, and could even protect her from dying.  Consider this endorsement of a book published during the '30s about douching:

Consider this ad for Lysol (yes, that Lysol) as a douche, published in McCall's Magazine, 1928:



"Sterizol" promised not only to sterilize the vagina; it could also be used to clean floors and toilet seats. 

This ad, also from the 20s, for married folks only.  Douching was a family value.



Given what I know about the suffragists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Paul, and so many others — women who usually rejected men, rejected marriage, spent their entire lives serving women and urged other women to do the same; women who could not have cared less about saving their marriages or their relationships with men – I think these women were the original "bags" and "old bags" and eventually "douche bags," after which all future "-bags" were modeled under male supremacy in the U.S.  I think "bags" used pejoratively against women in the '20s, together with the onslaught of propaganda about women's dirty bodies at the same time in history, were part and parcel of a backlash, a backlash against women's rights and women leaders, an attempt to put all these emerging, uppity women in their place, to bring them low, to take them out.

So to me, to use words like "douche bag" and "godbag" as insults – to use sexist slurs at all, really, but right now I'm talking about these slurs – is to participate, however unwittingly or unintentionally, in the ongoing anti-woman agenda of male supremacy.  It is to invoke the intense woman-hating which followed women's first steps in the direction of freedom and autonomy.  I guess I just see no reason to use such words.  I think there are better ways to express our contempt, as feminist women, for our oppressors.


womensspace.wordpress.com/
http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/04/26/godbags-douche-bags-and-old-bags-and-why-it-matters/
Godbags, Douche Bags and Old Bags and Why It Matters
Heart/Cheryl
(All graphics from the Museum of Menstruation site)