I wrote a version of this on my livejournal, which is read by the (male) friend I refer to.
"Last night, a friend said of me: 'A strong woman who knows what she wants and is only a bitch part of the time? Rare.'
My first reaction was honestly to be a little hurt. I do occasionally refer to myself as a bitch, but I don't really take kindly to being called one by other people.
I think part of it is the fact that the word doesn't necessarily have a clear definition. What I mean when I refer to myself as a bitch may not be what you mean when you call me or any other woman a bitch. Some women use the word to reclaim it (and I'm going to talk more about that in a minute); some people, both male and female, use it as an insult.
When I use the word bitch, it's not in the sense of reclaiming it. 'Bitch' is, to me, an insult. And the thing is, I'm more likely to say 'that was a bitchy thing to say/do' than I am to say that a woman is a bitch. In fact, there's only one person I regularly call a bitch, and that's because I have yet to see any redeeming qualities in her. To say someone is saying or doing something bitchy could easily be fair criticism. To call someone a bitch is, in my mind, to reduce her to her negative qualities. I'm more than my tendency to speak unkind truths and my lack of patience.
If I don't know exactly what you mean when you're calling me a bitch or if I can't tell that you're kidding, then don't say it and expect me not to take it amiss. It's one thing to tell me that something I just said was bitchy, because honestly, it probably was and I don't mind being called out on that. However, it is another thing entirely to outright call me a bitch. Please don't do that.
Okay! With that out of the way, I'd like to talk about the rest of that statement. Why equate strong women with bitches? I see this all the time . In fact, it's so pervasive that it is exactly why women have tried to reclaim the word. It makes me wonder about the definition of a strong woman and the definition of a bitch. I'd call pretty much all of my female friends strong women. I wouldn't call any of them bitches. As a group, my female friends are brilliant, independent, self-sufficient, ambitious women (in addition to all of their other wonderful qualities!). I don't think we all know exactly what we want all of the time and I don't think we've all gotten to where we want to be yet, but I think we're all living our lives looking to do and be as much as we can and still be happy. And I don't think any of us are hurting other people in order to get what we want.
So seriously, what is a bitch? Is it a woman who isn't quiet and sweet 100% the time? Is it a woman who doesn't "know her place" and is as ambitious and driven as any man? A woman who doesn't act flattered when she's being sexually harassed? A woman who speaks her mind even when her opinion is unpopular? A woman who cares for her loved ones but still puts herself first sometimes because no one else is going to put her first? Because those women get called bitches all the time, and I honestly don't blame them for taking pride in the label even though I don't do it myself.
To the person who made that statement and to anyone else who equates strong women with bitches: I don't know your reasoning and maybe you didn't mean to come across as sexist, but it does come across as sexist. Whether you meant it that way or not, that statement says that women can't be strong, smart, independent, self-sufficient, and ambitious without being insulted. Those qualities are all prized in men; why make it sound like they're bad in women? And if you're trying to say that women who have those qualities are frequently ill-behaved while attempting to get ahead, then maybe you ought to think about how much harder we have to fight to be taken seriously in the workplace. If you really think that women have some kind of an advantage or that sexist attitudes don't prevail, then you haven't been looking hard enough. I could give you a dozen different examples of sexism in my workplace alone. No, that doesn't excuse bad behaviour, exactly, but it goes a long way towards explaining it."
Do you use the word "bitch"? If you do, what do you mean by it? Do you think reclaiming it is helpful? Thoughts?
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I don't use the word "bitch" unless it is in the context of being with women who identify as such and are trying to reclaim the word.
"Bitch" is defined as a "female dog," thus using it as an insult is an attack of femaleness. If you want to insult someone on their lack of humanity, why use "bitch" instead of "dog" (and I won't delve into speciesism here, but it's there).
Strong women are associated with bitchiness because strong women often won't put up with the sexist bullshit patriarchy men so often spout. This causes discomfort as it's a challenge to the patriarchal norms (privilege) men have. So, because our society has been socialized to think of womanhood as a negative, it's easy for men to just put her off as a "bitch" because she won't listen to what he says BASED ON THE SOLE PREMISE HE IS A MAN.
Your friend's statement is sexist, plain and simple. Sexist men will attack strong women because they are a threat, pure and simple. I don't know your friend, but I would call him out and explain that even if he is not sexist, what he wrote was.
No, I don't use the word "bitch."
I don't use the word "slut."
I dont' use "whore."
I don't use "douchebag."
I don't use "prick" or "dick" to refer to human beings.
I don't use "retard."
I don't use "cow" or "fat-ass."
I don't use "pussy" to refer to human beings.
I don't refer to a lack of courage as a lack of "balls."
I don't use "dyke" unless a lebsian I'm in a conversation with uses it to describe herself.
I don't refer to myself with any of the racial slurs other groups have come up with to describe my ethnic group.
My reasoning is the same for all: If I feel that someone, through their hurtful or aggressive behavior to me, merits an insult, it will NOT be an insult that goes beyond the person in front of me to insult an entire category of people.
Further, to call myself any of things above is unthinkable to me. I'm not being "bitchy" if I speak up, complain, act stubborn, act harsh, act vindictive. We have an excellent language formed from the confluence of several other languages; I have a wide, diverse vocabulary that does not need to resort to offensive shorthand.
"I'm such a complainer" or "Damn, I was vicious back then" is well enough for me; I don't need to place all powerful women in that vategory by saying I've been "bitchy."
The only insult that I feel okay about using is "asshole." Gender neutral, ethnicity-netural,intelligence-netural, sexual identity netural, ability-neutral, age-netural, size-neutral.
But I don't use this that often---only when someone has directly attacked me. I despise insults--whether on the receiving or the giving end!
By the way, I enjoyed reading your post and hearing your perspective. What would bother me more about the man is if he felt he was progressive and sensitive to gender, ethnciity, etc. and STILL used that term.
I hope you can post his response; I 'd really like to hear his rationale.
Nice, Okra. I feel the same way about all the insults above, and try to get creative with mine.
"Shit-brained," and "sewage-head" come to mind.
Bitch is definitely a gendered insult, but the flipside of this comment, 'A strong man who knows what he wants and is only an asshole part of the time? Rare.' still makes sense, and is still a compliment.
My interpretation of his comment is that it's hard to thread the needle of being assertive but not being a jerk about it, and you do it well, which is rare.
That being said, I never use the word bitch except under very controlled circumstances, with people I love who will know that I am completely kidding. In practice, that basically means I only use it when I'm playing video games against my wife, and you should hear what she calls me!
I agree that bitch can mean a lot of different things, depending on who's using it and the context. And for this reason we have to be careful about how we use it.
But I also think that reclaiming words can be useful for this reason. It's historically true that the group that controls the terms of the debate is the more powerful group. Words carry a lot of connotations and implicit content that can be very powerful because they are so hidden or subtle. So part of gaining power in a public dialogue is to get some control over the vocabulary. Here's an example of what I mean by implicit content: in my department on campus we've been discussing the use of the word "coed" to refer to female students. Most people think I'm overreacting when I object to this, but think about what it implies? If females are coeds, then who are the "real" students? What's the default assumed to be here? Using the word "coed" implies that the male students are the legitimate or default students, and the females have just sort of been added in alongside them. My claim is that if "coed" described both men and women (since they're all being co-educated, right?) then it would be fine, although unecessary.
So I think that the impulse behind reclaiming words is good because it attempts to take back the control of which words are used and what they mean. I think that most women who are trying to reclaim "bitch" are pointing out that when it's used to accuse a woman of acting in ways that are viewed positively when it's a man, it's not an insult. Being assertive and strong and willing to stand up for yourself are characteristics that shouldn't be associated with either gender.