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My favorite feminism site, Feministing, has gotten their panties all in a bunch again. They’re whining because Alex Castellanos, a (often controversial) GOP consultant, said on CNN that sometimes it’s accurate to call a woman a bitch. This was during a discussion about Hillary Clinton’s whining about sexism.
Here’s the video:
So according to GOP consultant Alex Castellanos, Clinton shouldn’t bring up in sexism in the election coverage because sometimes women really are bitches. Huh. Good one, asshole.
Where to begin.
First of all, I think it’s incredibly childish to call Hillary Clinton a “white bitch”, which someone — not Alex Castellanos — apparently did. The point Castellanos seemed to be making was that she can come across as, well, a bitch sometimes, and that the problem with her campaign wasn’t sexism, it was Hillary. Which is true.
Of course, this opinion of Castellanos’ makes it perfectly acceptable for Jessica at Feministing to call him an asshole.
What’s interesting to me is how it’s OK to call a man an asshole, but it’s not OK to call a woman a bitch. Why is that? I remember having this conversation with a female friend of mine. She swore, very seriously and very passionately, that it was never OK to call a woman a bitch. I asked her why. “Because,” she said, “That’s a word you just don’t use. It’s just wrong.” I asked, “Even if she’s acting like a bitch?” Jackie responded, “Yeah. It doesn’t matter how bitchy she may be. You don’t call a woman a bitch. You just don’t do it.” My response was to ask her if was acceptable to call a man an asshole. “Yeah!” she replied. “It has a completely different meaning.”
Um… what?!
So, it’s OK to call a guy an asshole, which has pretty much the same meaning as bitch, but calling a woman the B-word is off-limits?
News flash to the feminazis out there who think its misogyny to call a woman anything negative, regardless of the reasons: sometimes it is accurate to call a woman a bitch. Women often act in ways that make them come across as one. I know I have, and a lot of women I know have. It doesn’t make them or me horrible, bad people. Sometimes you’re having a bad day and your temper is short, and so you’re being a bitch. Sometimes, your head hurts, everything’s going wrong for you that day, you’re tired, and you just snap. Sometimes, it’s a certain time of the month, and you’re apt to be more emotional and hormonal, which leads to… well… bitchiness.
The thing is, when someone is getting a shitty attitude with you, it isn’t always a bad idea to call them on it. My female friends and I will. I’ll tell you right now that if I were to be a bitch to one of my close friends, she’d probably stop me short right there and say, “Cassy, you’re being a bitch right now, and you need to cut it out. Like, NOW.” Hearing that usually makes you take a step back, because you usually don’t realize how it is that you’re coming across. If a woman is indeed acting like a bitch, calling her on it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Now, this doesn’t mean that people should run around calling women bitches all the time, because that is demeaning and wrong. No one should be putting women down or insulting them as a means of intimidation or harassment. I’m simply saying that it isn’t exactly rocket science to understand that yes, sometimes women can be bitchy. WOW.
And as for Hillary, hell yeah, she comes across like a bitch! Is she actually one? I can’t really say, I don’t know the woman personally. But her personality, her mannerisms, the things she says and does, the way she treats people — these all certainly make her look like one. We should certainly aim to be above that kind of name-calling though. And dislike her politics or not, Hillary is a United States Senator, so I’m going to give her some degree of respect, simply because of the office she’s occupying. It’s just the right thing to do, in my opinion. I didn’t run around making personal insults against Bill Clinton when he was President. Let’s be adults here, hmm?
Anyways, back to whether or not it’s OK to call a woman a bitch.
If someone was calling me a bitch, I wouldn’t get all offended and huffy, and fight against the “sexism” of that statement. I’d try to find out what I’d been doing to make me come across that way, because it’s usually not my — or anyone’s — intention.
Of course, accepting that a woman can — gasp!! — be wrong, bitchy, not good at something, less intelligent, less athletic, etc. is not exactly feminism’s strong suit, unless of course, that woman is a conservative. Then you can insult her until the sun falls out of the sky.
UPDATE: Allah at Hot Air chimes in:
I went back and forth with a friend last night about where “bitch” ranks in the hierarchy of slurs, since some would never be used in polite company towards a candidate whereas this one occasionally gets deployed, even on air, towards Hillary. The closest male analog is “prick”: Both mean roughly the same thing and each applies (traditionally) only to one gender, but the threshold for the P-bomb seems higher than it is for the B-list. A “prick” is usually guilty of some sort of bad behavior apart from his aggressiveness, like a boss who screams at you in front of the entire office; a “bitch,” it seems to me, can end up getting tagged through aggressiveness alone, like a boss who screams at you behind closed doors. Given that lower threshold, I can understand women being angry/jittery at seeing one of their own slapped with the label while she tries for the ultimate alpha male job. Even so, Castellanos’s larger point that not every insult aimed at Clinton is aimed at the Eternal Feminine (even when it references other women, as Obama’s Annie Oakley dig did) is well taken. It’s not the crime of Being Aggressive While Female that got her this ugly little label; it happened long before this, like when she sneered at stay-at-home moms for baking cookies or started trying to destroy her political opponents. Dare I say it, that sort of behavior in a man would warrant the ceremonial dropping of the P-bomb. I’d like to think that’s what Castellanos meant, but by defining the term explicitly in terms of her aggressiveness he added rather more nuance than he should have. (Or, rather, rather less.) Bottom line: Don’t use it.
I agree that Castellanos shouldn’t have called her a bitch — let’s be adults here! — but just because you shouldn’t say it on national television to describe a presidential candidate, that doesn’t mean it’s never applicable.
If I called Ann Coulter a bitch, Feministing‘s reaction to this would be that their nipples would stick straight out like pencil erasers. Anyone there who would deny it for a millisecond is a lying bitch.
Stephen J. says: Much as I agree with your post in spirit, Cassy, I do feel – and I hope this is not me being brainwashed by my Sensitive New Age Guy past – that there is something of a difference.
Calling one man an asshole usually doesn’t mean the speaker thinks all men are assholes; indeed, it usually indicates the opposite, in that the reason this particular man seems like such an asshole is by the harshness of his contrast. Because there is no tradition of treating men gently because they are men, unpleasant males tend to be judged on an individual basis, and the general assumption is that if a man’s being called an asshole he’s earned it. Moreover, the insult is often connected directly to specific behaviour rather than to the man’s character as a whole — “He was a real asshole the other night,” or “You’re being an asshole, you know that?”
Calling a woman a bitch, on the other hand, has a long tradition in practice of being associated with people who are comfortable calling a woman a bitch because they are willing to believe most women are bitches – and it is almost always used as a general putdown of a woman’s entire character and personality, rather than a criticism of a particular behaviour; “She’s a total bitch” is a much more common complaint than “She was being a real bitch today”. It is much more evocative of a genuine current of generalized misogyny, in other words, than the counterpart insult to men is of generalized misandry.
We can point out with perfect accuracy the double standard of this all we like, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. An old college friend of mine who happened to be a girl had a favourite joke about this: “A bitch is what a man calls a woman when he knows she’s right.” Like all jokes, this isn’t completely true; but like all good jokes it has more truth than we’d like to admit.
For myself, being at heart a subscriber to old-fashioned chivalry, “bitch” is up there with the c-word and the f-word on the list of Words You Do Not Use No Matter What. There are better ways to interact with women who choose unpleasantness as an approach to their life – and listening to their valid points is often one of them. Most zealots of any stripe are aggressive and unpleasant, but they’re seldom entirely wrong.
WayneB says: “Calling a woman a bitch, on the other hand, has a long tradition in practice of being associated with people who are comfortable calling a woman a bitch because they are willing to believe most women are bitches…”
You actually know people who do this? I don’t. The only times that I’ve heard someone use the term for more than a description of an individual behavior is when that person’s whole personality fit the description – the type who never has a nice word for anyone, because she thinks everyone is out to demean her, or take her place.
Besides, the feminazis DO use “asshole” the same way. They see all men as assholes, but women can’t possibly be bitches.
Jarrod says: Not to make myself sound like a total asshole, but I can’t disagree with Stephen more.
Chivalry is an ancient code of a bygone era. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be pleasant to people, but chivalry worked because it was a two way street built on respect. Knights were manly men who did their courtly love thing and the Ladies acted like, well, ladies…ALL THE TIME.
There was no, “oh well she’s just on her period so she gets a pass this week,” and there was no…well, I can’t think of the male equivalent but men always had to behave towards the women a certain way as well. Because everyone participated all the time, chivalry as a means for ruling how people behaved towards one another (at least to their faces anyhow) worked.
800 years later, for better or for worse, it’s just not like that. Chivalry is dead not because we as a society have moved beyond treating each other well, but because it was based on that mutual outward respect being automatic and that’s just not the way things are these days. Chivalry never meant that the dude has to sit there and take it up the butt whenever she’s having a bad day.
I say the “f-word” sometimes and I say “bitch” sometimes…occasionally paired up one right after the other and almost always following, “Why are you being such a?”
There are a lot of bitches in the world. There are a lot of assholes in this world, too. If a woman is being a bitch or a dude is being an asshole they aren’t going to respect other people with their bad attitudes they aren’t worth the extra effort beyond cordiality and deserve to be called on it. Just make sure they aren’t holding anything that can stab or shoot when you do it. That all isn’t so say that a feisty woman isn’t freakin’ awesome but feisty does not equal bitchy.
I kind of define “bitch” kinda like the way the Supreme Court defines pornography: I can’t describe it to you, but I know it when I see it. I don’t like it, and refuse to waste my time on it.
Jarrod says: And for the record, I always open doors. On dates, I even open the passenger side door despite my automatic locks, and I always pay. I’m polite and kind and I am always watching myself to make sure I treat people well. I only demand the exact same in return (except for the doors and the paying…I still got those). Anything less than that and someone is setting themselves up for a potential earful because if I’m going to put forth the effort to treat people well then I deserve it right back. And now in the era of equal opportunity, neither sex gets to treat me poorly without being called on it. Life is too short to take unnecessary garbage.
Stephen J. says: “That all isn’t so say that a feisty woman isn’t freakin’ awesome but feisty does not equal bitchy.”
I agree with you 100% on this. But yes, in my experience a lot of people who use the word “bitch” entirely too freely don’t seem to make, or even perceive, much of a distinction. “Bitch” from all too many men (and from a distressingly high number of women!) is a word used simply for a woman who dares to argue or contest their viewpoint.
And while I’ll grant that certain aggressively unpleasant feminists do have a low opinion of men in general, ironically (again, in my experience only) it’s precisely this generalized low opinion that makes them less likely to use specific insults, at least when talking about men in general. The whole point of the generalized bad attitude is that to simply say “Men!” with that particular tone of disgust or loathing says all you need to say.
“Chivalry never meant that the dude has to sit there and take it up the butt whenever she’s having a bad day.”
And this also I agree with 100%. I simply argue that you don’t need to call someone a bitch in order to firmly but courteously call them on their bitchy behaviour.
“Bitch” is just plain and simple a rude and demeaning term for women – its fundamental definition is a female dog, after all, a less-than-human creature – and I don’t think it’s ever really necessary. There are other and better words to use to someone’s face if you have to call them on their bad attitudes or behaviour. I’ll note at the same time that I have never called someone an “asshole” to their face, and only very rarely described someone’s behaviour this way either. “Douchebag,” “c–t,” “f—-t”, and other such terms are also off-limits.
You’re right that “chivalry” is probably the wrong word; let’s just fall back on “good manners” as a catchall.
There’s a grain of truth in what Stephen says. It’s the basis of Thing I Know #58, which defines a double-standard in which insults for men are directed toward individual men, but insults toward female things are glowered-upon — without logical justification — as derogatory invectives covering all human female things, all non-human female things, all dead human-and-non-human female things.
Thing I Know #58. To insult a man says nothing about other men, but for some reason, anything said against one woman is perceived to be said against everything female who ever lived.
It is by no means confined to the word “bitch” (or “asshole”). Not by a damn sight. “That woman who passed me on the freeway, she’s a total ditz.” “What a stupid woman.” There is no need for me to say “They need to get all those damned women off the road”…it is assumed this is what I mean. That does not hold true, in any way, if a man does something I find unacceptable and I say “what a jackass.”
Like Stephen says, that is an individual critique.
But it seems to me we’re all just talking around the real issue. Women benefit from the double-standard. Feminists stumbled across it as a relic from the Age of Chivalry, and as is the case with double standards that benefit women, they decided they liked it just fine and let it stand while they went to work on the equal-pay issue and other double-standards that benefit men. They’ve shown this stencilized selectivity about double standards clear back to Day One.
One other thing that I think is being left unmentioned: It’s not exactly difficult to come across feminists throwing around the word “bitch” — especially as ironic, shock-value compliments hurled around within their own ranks. In the video clip, I see the b-word is being compared to the n-word.
Don’t you see what’s happening here? If you have the right color of skin, such that someone else could call you an n-word, it’s okay for you to throw around the n-word but if someone white uses the n-word that’s “just not done.” The double-standard with the b-word isn’t scathing enough for our b-word folks, so they want the b-word to be jacked up to the dizzying height of the n-word so that they too can enjoy the ultimate double-standard: We can use it all we want, if you use it, it’s the end of your career.
It all boils down to, some folks wouldn’t know what real “equality” was, if it ran right up and kicked ’em square in the ass.
Looks like Meredith Brooks’ attempt to reclaim the word for bitches everywhere has been in vain.
Oh, but didn’t all the bitches think that song was cute and empowering back in the day!
TomJW says: Politically dumb for a Repub to do that. The Dems are fighting, it’s winding down, do not provide them a target to unite on.
Of course we conservatives in the wilderness know how dumb the Repubs are.
Politaically dumb for a Dem or other political figure to say too. Right or wrong, you don’t give your opponent ammunition to shoot at you.
I don’t think of Clinton as a bitch for aggressiveness in this campaign. I’m surprised she could draw on such reserves of stamina and chutzpa to continue while fighting against Obama and the MSM without craking up. I still wouldn’t want to be on the list of people who turned on her though.
Sean says: Nice that you will give her SOME respect, since she is a U.S. Senator. Difficult for me. Her, her Party, her ilk, and enablers are slowly strangling this countrys’ freedom, ability to create wealth, families, intelligence, and greatness, to death. I find it difficult to respect anyone who is malevolently destroying everything worth having in front of my eyes. So go ahead, respect away. From the wrong side of the barbed wire, it may present difficulties. Oh, well, there’s always a shower to look forward to.
Mike Koenecke says: The individuals at Feministing would find nothing remotely amusing about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU
Stephen J. says: Some more musings that occur to me.
It seems to me that generally, in order to earn the epithet “bitch”, a woman has to fall into one of two behaviour pattern types: (a) the aggressive woman who dominates a group via confrontation, or (b) the exploitative woman who controls a group via dishonesty and manipulation. (And it is certainly possible to fall into both patterns depending on context.)
What both behaviour patterns have in common is that unlike most traditional conceptions of “feminine” behaviour, they are (or appear to be) unrepentantly selfish; i.e. they put the individual woman’s goals, desires and choices as the top priority in any situation, disdaining — either openly or covertly — the stereotypical “feminine” traits of empathy, cooperation and compromise. A woman who genuinely doesn’t care what other people think or want, or who only appears to care about those things insofar as she can use them to get what she wants, is the most likely type of woman to be called a “bitch” in my experience.
A useful habit to develop, I think, would be distinguishing behaviour that is genuinely malicious from behaviour that is merely noncooperative. Strong leadership that brooks no dissent need not be a bad thing, depending on the honesty and competence of the leader and the worth of the leader’s goals. It would also help if a corresponding distinction was made on the part of those receiving criticism: if Hillary Clinton, to pick the most obvious example, was capable of acknowledging critiques of her politics without implying that any critique of her politics was an insult to her as a woman, the political process might be more fruitful.
But that’s the pitfall of our modern toxic combination of identity politics and Freudian psychology: when it is verboten to attack a group, it becomes impossible to criticize any member of that group, because no matter how valid the criticism, the target can merely dismiss it as being “really” motivated by bigotry against the group (an accusation which is completely unfalsifiable), and thus ignoreable.
The word “bitch” is defined as follows:
Etymology: Middle English bicche, from Old English bicce
Date: before 12th century
1: the female of the dog or some other carnivorous mammals
2 a: a lewd or immoral woman b: a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman —sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse
3: something that is extremely difficult, objectionable, or unpleasant
It also means to complain!
Therefore, calling a woman a bitch is hardly an insult and these pinheads at Feministing need to grow up and develop a sense of humor while they’re at it.
Dear merciful heavens, don’t we have enough IMPORTANT things to worry about in this world without this nonsense! I’m a female. I don’t object to being called a bitch because my mother always told me that it took TALENT to be a bitch. I’m very talented.
Now if you want to bitch about my usage of the word bitch – have at it. I don’t really give a rat’s eardrum if you do!
Can a woman be a bitch? At times.
Is a Lady a bitch? Never.
Mrs. Clinton is no lady. If Mrs. Clinton wants some respect, she ought to demonstrate some.
CaptDMO says: Wow, When a person finds an apparently valuable resource they can’t possibly use, and yet make it their reason for living to ensure that “Well if I can’t have it, then NOBODY can!”, this syndrome is known as “The Dog In The Manger.”
It’s been recognized as a trait of disgruntled folk long enough to have become a truism worthy of casting as a teaching fable for children.(Apparently lost to the ages, look it up!)
Whenever a female of the species acts like a common dog I’ll rightfully call them a bitch. I have no use for those that will chide in a vainglorious attempt to reserve the usage for their own exclusive use, no matter HOW much they may APPEAR to trot out their manginas for display.
As far as the strong, independent, intelligent girls at Fem*****, when the level of integrity consistantly embraced there, and similar “award winning” sites, is desperately snuggled well after late puberty, then I have a DIFFERENT word I reserve for for such individuals.
In fairness, maybe they’ve matured in the last couple of years. I wouldn’t know. The founder(s) and past contributers shot their wad so long ago I’ve had no viable reason to revisit the mere noisemakers.
Cassie:
Tend to agree with your position in the “bitch” article except for the troubling comment about respecting her for the office she holds. The constitution specifically forbids titles of nobility. That seems where the US is going with those who feed at the public trough (elected or otherwise). Respect is an earned thing not a position thing. I can only respect those individuals who take seriously their oath of office and act accordingly. Your page quotes John Mill. I quote John Harrington, 1561-1612: “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it does, none dare call it treason.” Politicians just because they are politicians do not necessarily deserve respect. They must earn that respect with their conduct.
Gonna have to agree with stan on that one.
The most respectful things we can do for the offices these people occupy, is call out the possibility that exists at any given time that the officer so occupying is substandard. That we are quickly losing our ability to do that, is demonstrated by Barack Obama being the most likely Commander in Chief for the next term, simply because he speaks more clearly than liberal democrats think black people should be able to speak, and he can stage fainting women at his rock concerts.
I just think when you get sworn in to these offices of public service, the criticism should be just starting — definitely not coming to stop because of some vainglorious notion of “respect.”
I beg to differ, Alex Castellanos did not quite call Mrs. Clinton a bitch. He inplied it. Peggy Noonan notes when the Soviet tried to pin the term Iran Pants on Lady Tatcher as a term of derision, she adopted it as a hadge of honor. A very male trick, which we respect.
In fact, Ms Noonan has great column profiling three female leaders, Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Ghandi. All the ladies were tough, but none of them mean. Whereas Mrs. Clinton is mean but not tough.
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