“Bitch” used to be my favorite word.
My reasoning was that it meant exactly what it sounded like, nearly to the point of being onomatopoeic. It appealed to the linguistic aficionado in me. It’s like a gunshot or the crack of a whip, and like those things it comes in two distinct parts–the harsh, plosive “[b]” taking the short route of the “[ɪ]” to that decisive, affricate “[tʃ].”
Here’s what the waveform of the word looks like.
Isn’t it pretty? To me it kinda looks like a de-thorned rose. That big, bulbous head is the “b,” and the thicker part of the stem is the “tch” sound. The shallow area in the middle is the vowel, which is kind of interesting because it’s the quietest part, and vowels tend to be louder. That might even be where the word derives so much of its acoustic (and maybe even semantic) power: its aggressive consonants make its tiny vowel nearly irrelevant.
But is the metaphor of the rose really apt? Have we removed the thorns from the rose, or do they continue to prick us every time we throw that beautifully ugly word out into the world?
When I was in college, I was at a party and someone started playing “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. I really don’t dislike a lot of songs. I fucking hate that song. It’s shamelessly derivative, the rap is just so cheesy and self-aggrandizing, and Vanilla Ice…. ugh. It’s hard for me to describe my disdain for him precisely because of this moment. The song started playing, my hair stood on end, and I shouted “Turn it off!”
A guy said, “Why? Why don’t you like Vanilla Ice?”
I rounded on him and said, “Because Vanilla Ice is a fucking bitch.”
In a flash, a friend of mine at the party was upon me. She was extremely intelligent and one of the first real progressives I’d actually met at that point in my life. She turned to me and shouted, “Holy shit, could we please not use gendered insults for just one second?”
A year before that, I would’ve rolled my eyes, but instead I grew very quiet, because it got me thinking. And it got me thinking really, really hard. She probably doesn’t even remember the whole debacle, but her comment profoundly affected me.
That waveform up there is a visual representation of the first word spoken in this video.
It’s a fun little free-association experiment to see what women (the most popular target of the word) think of it. The results may not surprise you: most of the women in the video associate it with some kind of negativity, either holding an aversion to it or being amused by the sort of people it describes. Some of them say it’s pretty good at describing themselves; others are quick to tell us that they are most certainly not bitches. Either way, they all seem to indicate that something about it isn’t quite great.
And they’re not wrong. Efforts to reclaim the word are well-documented, as many of this generation’s feminists freely throw it about as a way of empowering themselves. It’s hard to say whether that empowerment comes from diminishing the word’s effect on themselves or from wearing it, and all its connotations, with pride. I tend to think it varies from person to person, but at the end of the day there’s a distinct intentionality about it that feels pretty well-placed.
Other feminists take exception to this practice, as they believe that the feeling of empowerment comes from none other than internalized oppression faced by women. This analysis of the word suggests that it may be beyond reclamation, that its function of perpetuating misogyny makes it incompatible with feminism. It calls the empowerment experienced by its conscientious users “false power.”
Maybe that’s a little harsh. It’s certainly a tool of patriarchal power, but is it only a tool that functions in that particular direction? To determine this, I think we need to examine how the word is used, which is to say, what it means in different contexts.
Consider the archetypal “bitch” woman: headstrong, assertive, perhaps manipulative or domineering. Acting too much in her own self-interests. Often accompanied by such adjectives as “frigid,” “cold-hearted,” or “stupid.” Keep these associated traits in mind; they’ll inform our insight later on.
Now consider the archetypal “bitch” man: fearful, timid, indecisive, whiny. Often comes after “little” or, as I’ve started hearing more recently, “punk-ass.”
There’s one other word which I’ve intentionally withheld for dramatic effect because I like that sort of thing: effeminate. A man who is a bitch is a man who is acting as a woman is expected to act. He is not assertive. He is emotional. He does not stand by his decisions, nor does he take control of his own path. He’s often dragged around by the ear by none other than a woman who is a bitch. He’s weak. He’s less than a man. He’s…
Wait a second–he’s a man who’s acting too much like a woman. “Bitch” is used to undermine his masculinity. Well, if that’s the case, then the implication is clear: he’s less than a man because he’s more like a woman, so being a woman must be worse. There we go, then. Case closed, right? The effect of calling a man a bitch is evidence of unidirectional patriarchy.
Well, hold on. It feels like men aren’t called bitches as often as women. Sometimes women will be referred to as bitches without reference to their individual traits, which is obviously incredibly dehumanizing and consistent with our previous findings. But what about the cases where the term is used to denote personality traits? What drives someone to call a woman a bitch in that disdainful way we’ve all heard a million times before?
Let’s look at the list of associated words again. Okay, we’ve got headstrong, assertive, cold-hearted… Huh. That’s weird. It’s all the stuff that the “bitch” man wasn’t. It’s almost like when we say “She’s a bitch,” we’re really saying “She’s acting like a man is supposed to act.”
A woman who is a bitch is a woman who’s being too masculine. The sexism built into the word isn’t unidirectional. That’s not to say it doesn’t elevate masculinity far above femininity–it totally does–but it’s not used to describe a set of characteristics linked to a single gender. It’s a way of linking all characteristics to gender. It’s not just a gendered insult. It’s a gendering insult. A bitch is a person who doesn’t act like their gender ought to. And that’s where we get into the nitty-gritty of sexism.
A few years ago, Nicki Minaj was sitting in her dressing room and put it very succinctly: “When I am assertive, I’m a bitch. When a man is assertive, he’s a boss.” It’s not particularly groundbreaking on its own–any rational person who really stops to consider the word could observe that much–but it’s one half of an interesting coin. The other half is, “When a woman acts subordinate and complacent, she’s a good woman. When a man acts subordinate and complacent, he’s a bitch.” The contradiction is palpable, isn’t it?
Pump the brakes for a second. If the word “bitch” is used to describe someone who works out of gender norms, then its function must be, primarily, to enforce those same gender norms, right? No one wants to be called a bitch because it undermines gender-linked traits that we’re supposed to hold dear. But with feminists severely divided by the issue, aren’t the ones who’ve reclaimed it essentially saying that they’re proud of their refusal to adhere to gender norms? Isn’t that the more feminist sentiment?
Or does the history of the word necessarily bind it to those fucked-up traditions? The black community is no a stranger to this paradox, but, while I would certainly argue that their analog is loaded with considerably more gravity, it also isn’t something they can call a white person and expect it to have much effect beyond confusion. With “bitch,” a person’s gender identity is placed on trial regardless of the gender of the accuser or the accused (assuming they fit into the traditional gender binary).
Of course, the academia of sexual politics has already developed some good rules of thumb for solving this issue. Sexism isn’t reversible; men don’t suffer systemic grievances for being men; attacks on individual masculinity exist to inoculate it, thereby reinforcing the patriarchy. In other words, the fact that a man can be called a “bitch” and suffer from it does not mean that the word “bitch” isn’t rife with sexism. It just means that the mechanism operates a little differently depending on the bitch in question.
That works great in some cases, but this one’s a little weird. It smacks of confirmation bias: what leads us to conclude that the mechanism changes across genders, apart from the fact that, knowing what we do about patriarchy, it just kinda seems like it should?
Well, because gender norms are inherently skewed. “Bitch” is used to remind us to return to gender equilibrium, to align ourselves neatly with the norms we’ve been taught whenever we start to color outside the lines. Whether we’re at risk of becoming men who are less than big and tough, or of becoming women who are more than household items, the word “bitch” has the power to set us back on track. And one of those tracks happens to offer its constituents higher incomes, more equitable health options, greater respect among peers… yeah, you get the idea.
(It might be worth noting that no MRA asshats are sitting around trying to reclaim “Bitch for Men.” There’s no false power to be found in being more feminine, because of what the power differential clearly prefers. Assertiveness and tenacity are traditionally masculine traits because they’re usually good traits to have.)
Alright, so if “bitch” is inherently a tool for normalization, can it be reclaimed? That’s the real question. The only answer I have is that I think so. It doesn’t strike me as false empowerment. It might indicate a slight misunderstanding of the dynamics in play that underlie the linguistic processes we’re looking at, but it’s accomplishing empowerment despite that misunderstanding. Perhaps this is even one of those few (and I mean FEW) cases where men should work to make it a little bit about ourselves. When it comes to dismantling what we know about gender, men and women might benefit from going halfsies on it. Maybe men should start to wear the bitch badge with pride. Why do we have to have to be assertive all the time? Isn’t that the kind of thinking that breeds horrible stuff like rape culture? Why can’t a man act the way a woman is “supposed” to? He should have role models of all genders and personalities, not just… I dunno, John Cena? Guys, I can’t even think of any positive male role models anymore, it’s that bad.
So that’s why “bitch” isn’t really my favorite word anymore. I use it sparingly, and even try to find ways to aid in its reclamation by the oppressed class. I guess it’s not because I think it’s any less powerful–on the contrary, it’s taken on a power I never anticipated–but because its power isn’t as noble as I once thought. It’s controversial, and it can be hurtful to those who aren’t making a conscious effort to reduce its power. It’s the banner of a system I have a lot of problems with. And yet, it’s kind of beautiful in that way–a testament to the power of language, and proof that that power can be adjusted to empower the people who need it. This rose hasn’t quite lost all of its thorns, but then who says a rose needs to?
On Insanity 