I think it helps us both. I have no issue imagining a situation where a woman lets herself be pushed around by others, and a friend offers casual advice, “you need to stop being such a bitch and stand up for yourself, for once”.
Or perhaps from the parent to the daughter who is too shy to greet relatives, “quit being a bitch and say hi to your uncle”, or even “bitch, get out from under there and go talk to your uncle”. I would be offput by the decision to direct such language at one’s daughter, but not by the usage in reference to a shy girl.
To me, nothing seems unnatural about the above sentences. Perhaps these particular usages seem unnatural to you. If that is the case, I believe we can chalk this up to regional or maybe even age differences.
Babale asked, why are we using these terms to insult people in the first place? He answered by claiming that the insult is ultimately a chastisement for straying from traditional sexist stereotypes. My position is that it is not necessarily so, that the word has evolved beyond that. Hence the above and below counterexamples where the word “bitch” is used as an insult even though the referrant adheres to traditional sexist stereotypes.
Don’t you see how difficult it is to distinguish between mean-or-aggressive and difficult-to-deal-with? Nevertheless it seems natural for me to read sentences like “He’s an inconsiderate/insensitive bitch” or even just “He’s a bitch”, where context suggests that the subject is being insulted for being mean.
I don’t think the insult is gendered in every case, and even if it were I wouldn’t assume that the insult is one of gender as opposed to some other factor. My opinion, of course.
We can assume for the sake of this discussion that people intend to cause offense when they pick insults. That’s not the issue. When people use a word such as “cocksucker” as a generic insult, my theory of semantics says that the word’s meaning becomes that of a generic insult. Meaning follows usage. I’m not particularly interested in debating this theory at length (in this thread), and I don’t expect to convince you by just stating it. Nevertheless, what this means is that meaning is not necessarily shared between conversants. The insensitive blockhead who calls someone a cocksucker is not ignorant of the meaning of the word, and neither does he intend to offend everybody who literally sucks cocks. He simply uses the word in another sense, as a generic derogatory term, and doesn’t care that you might misinterpret him as insulting all people who suck cocks. That is not the same as intending to insult all people who suck cocks. Eventually, you will see dictionaries add a new entry (American Heritage): “cocksucker n. Vulgar Slang 1. One who performs an act of fellatio. 2. A mean or despicable person.”
I’m not sure if there’s anything I can address here which hasn’t been addressed above or in the response you quoted. Be careful that you don’t mix up misogyny and misogynist hate speech, because if your position was merely that certain words are misogynist and therefore worthy of censure, and not necessarily hate speech, we would be having a totally different debate. Or… at least a slightly different debate.
No, racism is not perfectly acceptible in the Pit because I don’t think the Pit is made for racism. I will differentiate between pointless insult-slinging and racism. At the same time, I agree that if we are restricting some kind of language as unacceptable, as too toxic, then it is indeed acceptible (in my opinion) to evaluate what types of language fit that criteria.
Great, it’s actually a premise as far as the main argument goes. Can we agree to disagree or do you feel like there is something I don’t understand about your argument? Or something you don’t understand about mine?
To be crystal clear, this is NOT my actual opinion, only an example of what I would personally consider misogynist language that is not hate speech:
“Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.”
The epitome of misogyny is found in Aristotle’s Politics, Part V. Namely, it is not necessarily hate speech to explicitly argue that a protected class is inferior.
But for the fact that the mayor is a woman, he would almost certainly have used some other word. Everybody knows that “cunt” is an extremely offensive word for a woman, which is probably why this particular word was used. You could even say that calling a woman a “cunt” implies that you hate that woman. That all sounds reasonable to me.
But this does not imply hatred of women (plural). It does not imply hatred of the one woman because she is a woman. Neither does a callous indifference to the feelings of however many women might be offended (disgusted?) when they read that word in context. In my opinion (and BigT seems to disagree with me on this point) there is a difference between indifference and hatred. I have already pointed out the possibility that the word was used because he wanted to insult the mayor who he hated for her decisions made as mayor.
~Max
