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0 pointsZirro13y ago0 comments

Thank you for properly countering my post.

First, I'd like to address this:

"Go ahead and keep doing it if that's your thing."

This hurt me a bit. I was merely quoting and defending the words in this context. I can't recollect having used them myself either when speaking or writing before, ever. I am pretty reserved when it comes to using these kinds of words, even though I am surrounded by people using them every day.

Same thing with "But I think that's because people are mostly fine with casual sexism, as long as it's not too obvious". I am, for example, bothered at times when I hear male classmates saying "Get back in the kitchen." to female ones. It's meant as a joke, it always is, but that doesn't sit right with me.

I look at the individual, not the sex of a person. I consider "bitch" to be a word free from association to the female sex, today. One thing that may be influencing me is that nearly all of my classmates are male, which means that the times I do hear "bitch" it's used with a male... and certainly not in the way you suggest, except for the last one. Which brings me to the point I was trying to make:

It's an expression for "being a pain in the ass", something which both men and women (and all in-between) can be. Leaving the gender fully out of it is a good thing, as someone else has said, the meaning of words can change.

Finally, perhaps there are a few cultural differences. I grew up and live in Sweden, and while we borrow many words from English perhaps not all their meaning, and in particular, the history behind their usage is brought along with them. The old fashioned use of bitch may be more alive in other places, I suppose.

In short, I do not appreciate words and expressions where the downgrading of women is obvious, but I do not consider bitch being one of these words. If you do find someone using it to downgrade women, teach him (or her) a lesson. When I read "And yet, why don't we hear the people who always bitch about Google complaining about Microsoft?", I didn't get an image of "women in their right place" in my head, but one of raging nerds.

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JackC13y ago

Thanks for your reply. Apologies for making it too personal. When I first had this conversation from the other side, I think my stance was "I say 'bitch,' and I'm not sexist, so it must be fine and I just have to figure out why." So I tend to assume other people are coming from the same place, which isn't always true.

Your point about cultural differences is interesting. You said "the times I do hear 'bitch' it's used with a male... and certainly not in the way you suggest, except for the last one." Maybe the point is, if you're talking to American men or women, they will have heard all of the uses of "bitch" I quoted, many times (hopefully more on TV than in real life). So in a general web publication, it comes with that whole baggage. And since all the ways it's used are closely related, you can't really avoid the more sexist connotations.

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