She's a bitch, she's a lover, she's a child, she's a mother, she's a sinner, she's a saint, but should they feel ashamed? MRAs debate gendered insults. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
626 ups - 266 downs = 360 votes
635 comments submitted at 15:26:37 on Jan 31, 2014 by Zeke12
>I reserve the right to call people who commit multiple murders mean names, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation or anything else.
Sounds solid to me.
She threw 3 babies in a dumpster, 2 died, and this user is upset that someone calls her a bitch?
By that logic if a hispanic guy killed 2 babies you'd be cool with someone calling him a wetback, correct?
I mean, he threw 3 babies in a dumpster, you can't possibly be upset over someone calling him wetback?
Gendered slurs are bad, mkay. Especially when spoken on a supposedly "egalitarian" subreddit.
What if, being egalitarian, they're equally okay with women being called "bitches" and men being called "dickheads" here and there, like every reasonable person I've ever met?
(Not suggesting a lot of the MRAs are reasonable, of course, but what if?)
A group of men can't decide that their use of a word against women is no longer hurtful to women. That would be like a group of white people declaring that they can say "nigger" now because they now use it to mean any bad person. So stop being offended black people!
Maybe bitch will eventually be gender neutral, but it won't be because a bunch of bitter men declared it so.
> That would be like a group of white people declaring that they can say "nigger" now because they now use it to mean any bad person. So stop being offended black people!
This is literally what is happening with the word "fag". As a gay man I find it just repugnant.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were okay with both "bitch" and "dickhead", but how is that relevant? Just because it's widely considered normal to use gendered slurs, doesn't mean it's something we should be doing. In fact, I feel like the point of any gender-equality movement is to examine what's normal, and change it if it sucks.
There's a lot of things that we probably "shouldn't be doing". But we still do them because that's how life is, and the question we have to ask is, what damage is it REALLY doing? How significant is it? Is it really having a major effect on anything?
Personally, I don't see how gender-based insults themselves cause any real problems if used moderately. I use both "bitch" and "dickhead", along with many other insults, pretty equally; I don't believe either of them contribute to an institution of sexism at least on my part or my friends' and family's parts.
Long story short, I think this is another example of people taking basically inconsequential things and using them to fortify their victimhood complex.
I believe there's a relationship between the language we choose to use and the patterns of thought that we, as a culture, sanction. Language is one of the ways I can identify and purge sexist thinking - thinking which is endemic in our society. It's by no means the most important way of combating sexism, but if I want to avoid hypocrisy and be the least sexist I can be, the language I use is somewhat important.
Gender is the air we breathe, the water we drink. It molds our concept of ourselves, what we're capable of, how we react to those around us. It seeps into our brains and affects the way we judge others and the way we interpret their actions. And some of those implicit assumptions and judgments form the very backbone of sexism. That's why I consider it to be an everyday, minute process to examine the ways I'm affected by gender and the ways I affect others with my use of gendered terms.
There's a societal difference between bitch and wetback. You might hear a handful of people use the word wetback. Almost everyone will agree that it's terrible. The majority of people are fine with words like bitch and dick. They're accepted terms today. Maybe they won't be later, but for now they are.
The way you change that is by being part of the solution, rather than assuming the problem will somehow just magically change over time.
You can choose to be a better person.
I totally agree. I don't use either of these terms outside of talking about them here. I wouldn't encourage people to use either term, but I'm not going to dismiss someone completely for using the word bitch. I might if they use a word like wetback.
I think the thing is, that if you call someone a "wetback" when they do something wrong, it's putting emphasis on who they are, rather than what they did, and it makes sense that "bitch" kind of falls under that same umbrella. I can see both sides of the argument.
Sorry for my ignorance but most of the insults i know are gendered - can you give equivalent neutral examples?
monster, rabid beast, vile, vicious,...
Thou mewling clay-brained varlot! Thou froward pottle-deep minnow! villainous abominable misleader of youth!
Asshole, lowlife, brainless thug.
Republican.
Bravo...and yet...nothing with quite the same impact...
Relying on the impact of words themselves rather than properly constructing arguments is what we call ~~poetry~~ lazy writing.
Ding! And SRD is clearly the best place to discuss the finer points of issues facing our society. We will surely come to a consensus that everyone can agree on!
lol no we just like to chuckle when people's underwear (not panties because that's gendered) get all twisted up
It's an analogy, though, not a statement of equivalence. It's not "bitch = wetback". It's "bitch and wetback have something in common in this context; namely, they're both slurs that relate to a group rather than to an individual's shitty actions."
You can argue that "wetback" is more severe than "bitch", and I'd actually agree, but that's missing the point of the analogy being drawn.
So does the term "asshole" refer solely to men? Cause I find it rare to call a woman an asshole if she does something fucked up. In that, had the person been a man who had committed this heinous crime and someone in the post called him an "asshole", it wouldn't be considered by the majority as a sexist slur toward men (even though logically it could be).
Plus, I don't know what's worse:
1) bitch = female k9
2) asshole = an orifice which primary purposes consist of excreting feces and passing foul-smelling odor (I'm paraphrasing, I was too lazy to reference Webster, Oxford or UrbanDictionary...or my own asshole)
Hi, [deleted] here, back from the dead. I actually make somewhat of an effort to call women assholes whenever they're being assholes, because I think "asshole" is neutral enough that we should really quit gendering it. And you're absolutely right that it's gendered, and shouldn't be.
I can't adopt the same strategy for "bitch", though, because calling a man a bitch already has a specific connotation, and I dislike that connotation (I don't think femininity should be a bad thing in a man).
Regarding this:
>1) bitch = female k9
>2) asshole = etc
I actually see these as unrelated secondary meanings, kinda like how "orange" can mean the fruit or the color. When we call someone a bitch or an asshole, 99.9% of the time we're not thinking of dogs or rectums at ALL. Sometimes, it's true, one connotation of a word can bleed into another, but in this case I don't think it's relevant to discuss "bitch" and "asshole" in the context of their secondary meanings. It makes more sense to discuss them as we actually use them.
Isn't that what gender equality is about? Discouraging the acceptance and use of gendered slurs meant to attack someone's identity rather than focusing on how they're a fucking horrible person?
Absolutely. That has nothing to do with my comment though. Did you mean to respond to someone else?
Well the only way to change what's accepted today is to not use it and call it what it is when other people do. So while "bitch" and "dick" are more acceptable in most social circles than "wetback" it's pretty counterproductive for members of a gender equality sub to use those slurs.
You really think the word "bitch" contains anything resembling the power racial slurs does. That's hilarious, but then again, this entire thread is gold.
> this entire thread is gold.
Hard to believe a thread calling a child-killer a bitch garnered 570 comments about how much MRA's hate women.
Wow, as a Hispanic person you have no idea who insulting it is that you are comparing such a common word (bitch) to an specifically targeted insult like wetback. Do you also use faggot and niggers?
What's crazy about some people here is that your political agenda is so messed up, that you are willing to ignore a person who killed 3 babies and left them in a dumpster just to take advantage of ridiculizing a group you disagree with.
Every single day I'm convinced this site, and this sub, are nowhere near mature enough to discuss anything at all.
Possibly the point is "why are you OK with an outgroup based insult, in cases where you aren't a member of that outgroup"?
Why are any insults okay?
Am I supposed to believe calling someone a piece of shit is somehow better than calling them a bitch?
It makes no sense to be against one type of insult. The entire point of insults is to hurt someone. Drawing the distinction that you're allowed to hurt someone - but only in a very specific way is utterly ridiculous.
what's up with this ridiculous double standard? I see the word "dick" thrown around all the time yet no one throws a fit about it. Is this about appropriation? how egocentric do you have to be to feel such a commonly used word is always about attacking you? This is completely different to words like "faggot", this is just another excuse to have something to complain about.
>Gendered slurs are bad, mkay. Especially when spoken on a supposedly "egalitarian" subreddit.
Those two sentences are completely unrelated to each other.
IF someone was fine with gendered insults towards each gender... then it would still be egalitarian.
Can I get a list of non-gendered/non-raced insults? Very few come to mind. Asshat, maybe?
edit: Shithead and fucker have also come to mind. I now realize I've been thinking of insults for too long.
shithead is offensive to people who's heads are made of feces, and fucker is offensive to people who have sex. Check your non-feces-head virgin privilege
http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1wndtb/shesabitchshesalovershesachildshesa/cf3msmr
Insulting someone with the word "wetback" is insulting someone for being Hispanic.
The same can't be said for the word "bitch".
It's a word mainly used against women, but it isn't insulting them for being a women specifically.
What, specifically, is it suggesting then?
"Bitch" literally means "female dog". It is most commonly used against women, and when it's used against a man the idea is to compare him to a woman.
That's about as gendered as it gets.
Are we really going to pretend we dont know bitch refers to mean or spiteful behavior? Seriously?
Calling a man a "bitch" isn't accusing him of being mean or spiteful; it's accusing him of being like a woman, while at the same time asserting that being like a woman is worse than being like a man.
Calling a woman a "bitch" is a fairly generic insult that usually means you think she's mean or spiteful compared to other women.
In every case, gender is central to the meaning, and the meaning is in part an insult to women, thus "gendered insult".
Seriously.
I guess I see what you mean now. I'll agree that its definitely a gender-slur when its used against men, as it almost always refers to them being woman like or acting like a woman.
But in regards to women it usually references one that engages in mean, spiteful, or otherwise horrible behavior.
I guess this is a more tricky issue than I originally made it out to be.
Taking bitch to literally mean "female dog" would make it insulting to woman because you're comparing them to dogs.
Yet when used against men they find the female part the more offensive issue here.
Doesn't this mean that the real issue here isn't the word or its meaning, but men's overall view of feminine qualities?
I still don't feel comparing it to wetback or nigger like people seem to be doing is a good analogy though, since most people use those as insults to a race rather than insults to someone of a race.
I disagree entirely with your assertions.
Calling a guy a bitch usually implies he's being weak or cowardly, not womanly.
And no I dont see how anything you asserted means it's a gendered insult other than the fact that it's used against both genders.
unless it's used against a man. If you call a man a bitch, you're saying he is like a woman, which is bad.
>By that logic if a hispanic guy killed 2 babies you'd be cool with someone calling him a wetback, correct?
Uh no, because a wetback is just a derisive term for being a Hispanic.
A bitch is a derisive term for someone who did something shitty and in this context is a woman.
Ignoring that key difference is a pretty big oversight.
I think the point is that it's supposed to be a sub for fighting sexism, right? So why would you lower yourself and the sub to using what many consider to be sexist insults meaning to offend someone? It doesn't add up, and is toxic to the very nature of the community itself, especially when so many people like to play the egalitarian card. It's supposed to be a anti-sexism sub, not justiceporn or something. I'm sure there a plenty of other insults and things you could say about a child murderer that would be more appropriate than a low bar bitch comment.
Edit: Every time I see your flair I think of this gif
I generally agree. That being said, if someone is discussing a rapist and calls him a dick in a feminist space I doubt anyone is going to argue that we shouldn't call men dicks. Someone might, but they'll be shouted down pretty quickly.
Sounds like you haven't been to many feminist spaces. That's pretty much exactly what they'd do. There might be some drama about it, but it would happen. For instance, I bet a some of the big blogs -- Shakesville for instance (infamous for starting the Penny Arcade dickwolves bullshit) -- would probably ban you.
All the feminist spaces I've been in ban you for using any gendered slurs. "Dick" and "man-up" included.
I agree, but on the other hand wanting /r/MensRights to meet a good standard of not resorting to sexist insults, is not that a bad thing.
I like what /u/punxpunx54 is trying to do, unfortunately it's not going to work and the whole debate is pointless. The whole post has become about how unfair the sentences were in another case, and not about how inhuman it is to put babies in a dumpster.
That said, she deserved way more.
That's a good point. The best strategy would be to just label the person crying sexism at the word bitch a throwing-babies-in-dumpsters apologist.