Joun_Lord wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:Now now, let's not start slinging misogynist insults.
She's a babbling cretin when it comes to technical issues, but there's nothing gender-specific about being a babbling-cretin.
[Sorry, I just find it a bad habit that we always circle back to insults like 'bitch' when talking about a female who strikes us as unworthy in any of a wide variety of sometimes contradictory ways]
I can kinda see whats wrong about about using a gendered insult but at the same time, and mind you this is coming from my very un-PC opinion, I also see where its not so bad. Someone calling someone a bad word is in itself bad of course but we are still going to do it and will tailor it to fit the person being insulted. A guy will be a dick, a woman a bitch and far worse things depending on skin color.
Thing is, in... civilized but foul-mouthed company, we
don't use the skin color insults. Racial slurs passed outside the domain of what you can say in any but the crudest (and most racist) company quite a while ago. And while we certainly use 'dick' and other insults related to the male genitalia, we don't use them
all the time, whereas a disliked woman gets called a 'bitch' more often than not. So I don't think the counter-argument you present is as true as it may appear at first glance.
On top of that, most of our other gendered insults mean a
specific thing. For example, "dick" generally refers to obnoxious behavior, particularly that of someone who is aggressively indifferent to how other people feel about the behavior.
Whereas a woman can get called a "bitch" for being too competent, not competent enough, too smart, not smart enough, too pushy or cruel- though men get called it for being not pushy enough- you get the idea.
An outside observer of our culture might well conclude that 'bitch' is just a synonym for 'woman' that people (mostly men) use when they're in a bad mood. Sort of like 'asshole' serves as a synonym for 'person' that we use when in a bad mood.
Whereas the same observer would
not conclude that 'dick' is a synonym for 'man' that we use when we're in a bad mood, because we only use it to refer to specific subtypes of men, and almost never call a man a 'dick' for anything
other than those particular disliked behaviors.
That's what bugs me, the idea that 'bitch' is a word that can be used to describe
any woman regardless of what they do or don't do, and is in effect just a less-polite synonym for 'woman.'
But beyond that the insult of dick or bitch is not just about gender. Dianne Feinstein is not considered a bitch because she has a vagina, they are not insulting her womanhood or femininity when they call her as such. She is considered a bitch because she is a difficult or unpleasant person or because she incessantly whines, the very definition of a bitch as defined by modern insult vernacular. Just the same someone like Donald Trump or Martin Shkreli would be considered dicks because they are rude, abrasive, inconsiderate, or otherwise contemptible people, they are dicks.
See, if we
only called a woman a 'bitch' for being abrasive, or for being inconsiderate, if it really was a precise parallel to the use of 'dick' to describe a male, I wouldn't have such a problem.
But it's not. A large minority of males use 'bitch' as a diminutive directed against (potentially) any female, including ones who are not abrasive or inconsiderate. For that matter, they'll use 'bitch' to describe women who have the
exact opposite problem and show signs of being fragile, withdrawn, and prone to subordinating themselves.
Given how we use 'dick,' we might call Donald Trump a 'dick...' but a mugger wishing to express dominance over their victim would never think of addressing the victim as 'dick.' A rapper would never think of referring to inferior males as 'dicks.' The word is used almost exclusively to describe social equals and superiors who happen to be obnoxious.
There is NO curse word for males that implies what 'bitch' does for females... because there is no word that implicitly demotes males to the status of social inferiors. Except, well, 'bitch.' Or 'pussy.' '
Gee, notice a pattern there?
It's that pattern that bothers me, that we have this favorite go-to insult that we use whenever a woman irritates us, and which
just happens to imply that this person is inferior to us, in a way that is somehow tied up enough with femininity to use a feminine-specific insult.
People dislike Feinstein because of her actions, because she acts like a "bitch" and will express themselves as crudely as possible at her expense as well she deserves for being such a cunt....emptable person. Now again, I understand why some might see its bad and I'd think its bad if someone is insulting her solely for her having a vagoo but insulting her for being a terribly terrible, empty headed, moronic loon who should have had a restraining order put on her so she can't go under 200 feet near any sort of bills or legalization and should be forced alongside Carolyn "shoulder thing that goes up" McCarthy to take some gun class to educate their dumb asses with insults that reference the fact she has a vagina I don't see as too bad.
Thing is, I don't mind people insulting Feinstein as such. She's got a persistent pattern of trying to pass bad laws banning things in technical subjects she apparently doesn't understand. For showing that pattern, she deserves derision. Not sure about other subjects but that's just because I know almost nothing of her record.
My problem isn't with people cussing out Feinstein. It's with people using the word 'bitch,' which I think has a lot of the same problems as some of the racial slurs we just don't say anymore in civilized company. Even
rude civilized company, which is the typical standard on this board.
