The other day, I was holding the door open for a guy friend of mine. Since he enjoys trolling me (I do the same for him, it’s a decent relationship), as he walked out, he said, “Thanks, bitch.”
I immediately went into a fit, and began my usual feminist lecture about why it is not nice to call people, especially women, bitches.
When I told this story to my girl friend, she laughed and said, “You shouldn’t criticize him for using the word bitch, since you use it all the time. You just called me a bitch before you told me this story.”
I’m going to disclaim, when I say the word “bitch.” I use it as a loving term. A usual conversation with my best friend will include the phrase, “Bitch, I love you.” It also seems that with the rise in Feminism, many women use the word as an empowering term. I know many girls who will use the term to mean a female who is not afraid to take charge, or someone who is not afraid to speak their minds.
However, I began to question, if I used the word all the time, and girl friends I knew used it, why is it that when a man said it to me as a joke, I felt offended?
My first thought was because of the domestic abuse connotation that comes with a man saying it. According to YouTube star Laci Green, when she became a domestic violence crisis counselor, her opinion of the word changed, because “every report she drew up” included an abused woman being called “a bitch.” I thought maybe the usual feelings the word could bring up were the reason why I felt tense.
However, when I thought about it even more, I realized that the other people I heard saying the word “bitch” besides my girl friends were my gay guy friends. One of my gay best friends uses the word constantly. Writer Will Livingston remarks that gay guys use the word “way too often” and “way too freely”. Even Azealia Banks asked why it was okay for gay men to say the word “bitch,” but yet she wasn’t allowed to say “faggot.”
So, what I’m asking is, why it appears to be socially acceptable for women and gay men to use the word, but when straight men say it, things get weird?
I originally thought the power of the word "bitch" was determined by the context of a situation. However, maybe the context isn’t the situation, but the person. It seems that the people who are allowed to say it, are the ones who don’t appear as a threat when they say it. In other words, women and gay men are not forces to be reckoned with, so the words they say have less power. This makes me angry, since it undermines the force that women and gay men are, and suggests that their words are not to be taken seriously
With this in mind, I’m still not sure who should be allowed to say it. Some argue that the meaning of the word has changed, others argue that it remains the same. In a way, I’m happy that we’re having this debate, because it is a sign that we are becoming much more socially aware, and we are becoming aware of what can potentially be offensive.
