I was recently part of a discussion in which some guy described an incident in his household. His wife and 18 y/o daughter were embroiled in an argument which culminated in Daughter saying, “You can’t tell me what to do, you BITCH!” and storming off to her room.
In a blind rage, Dad followed, broke the door down (literally), grabbed Daughter, twisted her arm behind her back and “spanked her ass until my hand was red with broken blood vessels in my palm.” Allegedly, Daughter has not defied authority since.
Well. Whew. Wow. Way to keep your cool, Dad. Now, first and foremost, I want to establish that I think anyone calling their mom a “bitch” is something to be merely shrugged off. But I’m not quite convinced that it warranted this reaction.
Someone asked, “Would you have reacted the same way if this was your 18 y/o son?” He responded that he would have, but admitted that “an 18 y/o son might have made me regret my actions.”
But what I’m getting at here is that I don’t think a daughter calling her mother a bitch is analagous to a son doing the same.
Women settle their differences with words. That’s how it is. They get their frustrations out, relieve tension, and then they’re able to come to an agreement. Daughter calling Mom a bitch was disrespectful, certainly, but OTOH, Mom might have been doing some namecalling of her own.
In fact, I think in a way, women are actually better at reining themselves in than men are. When men start to get emotional, they’re liable to just keep going until someone bigger and stronger, or someone with a badge or gun, makes them stop. Whereas when women get into a dispute, they’re more likely to recognize the point of no return, and back off from it. So when Mom and Daughter are going at it, it might be better for Dad to simply take cover and come back when the smoke has cleared.
But if a son calls his mother a bitch, that’s a different matter. See, the thing is, kids relate one way to their same-sex parent, and another way to their opposite-sex parent. There was a thread years ago in which a male poster described a dispute he’d had with his late-teenage son, during which the son decided he was going to take it to a physical level. Someone responded, “Well, he’s at the age where he’s trying to establish himself as an alpha male. Not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you make it clear to him that you are still the alpha male in your house.”
And it’s often the same thing with mothers and daughters. Late-teen girls want to be the queen bee, while mom says, “Waitaminut…I’m still the queen bee around here!” In both cases, it’s important to establish that the daughter or son still has to defer to the same-sex parent, or else move out. But I don’t think that has to be done at the price of breaking their spirit entirely.
So, getting back to a son calling his mother a bitch. I know it’s a double standard, but I really think that’s unacceptable in a way that a daugher doing the same thing is not. Again, an SDMB reference, to a thread in which someone was describling their brother’s(?) rebellious stage, around age 13. He was apparently verbally abusive to Mom…for a little while, until Dad lowered the boom, telling him, “You don’t talk to your mother that way. You don’t talk to any woman that way. And most importantly, nobody talks to my wife that way.”
What I’m trying to say here is that mother-son and father-daughter are unequal relationships. Not that mother-daughter and father-son are equal, of course, but in those cases, they have similar mindsets. So if Daughter calls Mom a bitch, that’s more like she’s saying, “I’m my own woman, not a carbon copy of you!” She may be opposed to Mom for all the wrong reasons, but Mom probably understands at some level how she feels. Whereas Son calling Mom a bitch* is unlikely to be inspired by anything except a lack of respect for women. He might feel that Dad is a threat to his individuality, but there’s no reason why Mom would be.
So am I right or wrong? Is it possible, or even desirable, for someone to get through adolescence without ever clashing with their same-sex parent? And is “bitch” really the Deplorable Word from a daughter to a mother?
*And anyway, if he’s calling his mother a bitch, what’s he saying about himself?
