Reply #72: A response

[kiahzero]

There are some male members who say that the word "bitch" is not sexist because it can be applied to both genders. That assumption is wrong because the origin of the word "bitch" is a female dog, one who breeds to have puppies. There we have the initial suggestion that breeding is the only good thing a female is for. The term "bitch" became popular in England, and was used by men to insult a woman on her gender, that she was reduced to nothing more than the sum of her parts, breasts and a vagina.

Then, by your logic, bastard is a sexist word towards men. The entymology of the word is a fatherless son - obviously insinuating that a man is only worth anything if he has a good bloodline. Men are reduced to merely the blood they carry in their veins.

The word "bitchslap" meant the act of a man using violence against a woman, thus subduing her. Whenever a man says that a man "bitchslapped" another person, he is celebrating the indirect subordination of the woman by the thought of emasculating a man or subordinating a woman through this phrase. That is why even when men use "bitchslap" casually, they are perpetuating sexism because they are the dominant gender. Those of you who refuse to see this, are doing so on purpose to defend the continued usage of it to put down women based on their gender, not their behavior.

Actually, you're wrong. The word "bitchslap" refers to a supposedly submissive woman smacking a supposedly dominant man - the downtrodden rising up and attacking their oppressor. The thread using the word "bitchslap" referred to a supposedly submissive liberal rising up and slapping the supposedly dominant Bush Administration. Hence, it was an accurate term.

When men ask why women can use the word, "bitch," the answer is simple. Women are coopting the word "bitch" to lessen the damage behind it. This is precisely what African-Americans have done with the word "n*gger." They cooptd that word and made it positive. Hispanic-Americans and other minorities have done the same with racial and homophobic epithets. So when a woman refers to herself as a "bitch," she is saying that she is proud of being independent, assertive, or for speaking back. She has imbued a positive context into this word. When a man complains he can't use the word "bitch" to insult a woman based on her gender, should he also have the right to insult a black person by using the word "n*gger" based on his race? The answer is no. That word is meant to hurt and dehumanize black people, and that is precisely what men are doing by using the word "bitch."

That effort to redefine the word is meaningless, since you aren't redefining it for everyone. When some Neopagans sought to reclaim the word "witch," they did not seek to bar all non-witches from using it. They sought to redefine the word for everyone.

Before you think of responding to me and defending the use of sexist terms, I want you to go out and look a five year old girl in the face and call her a "bitch" or "whore." If you don't want to do that, think about the message she gets from hearing other people use gender-specific insults. The message she'll get is that it's bad to be a woman, to be independent, assertive, and speak up for herself will mean getting called "bitch." That is the message men send to women of all ages when men continue to use gender-specific insults like "bitch," "whore," or "slut." Be an ADULT, be a REAL Democrat who cares about others, and be all that by not using gender-specific insults. After all, one of the definitions of a "liberal" or "progressive" is the capacity to empathize with others.

Sorry, but the two aren't comparable - attacking a girl with an insulting definition of a word, and redefining the word as something else and using it against someone else.