I don’t know your location, but for my whole life, wherever I’ve lived “douche bag” was never overused. I can’t remember actually hearing anyone IRL saying it. I’ve only said it myself once or twice and not TO anyone, but ABOUT someone (once was about a newspaper movie critic who spoiled “Million Dollar Baby,” for me and I don’t remember the other occasion.) For some reason, when I hear someone say it, I think it’s funny, not offensive, just because it’s so old school, like pantywaist or something.
Yes, you are right - even though I’m male, I’ve known what a “douche” was long before I started hearing it used as an insult (probably because of some early-80s daytime TV commercial).
I suppose the word is at the point where the “mild insult” meaning is a lot more widely known than the “real” meaning (which probably goes by some other term now). So yeah, most people wouldn’t consciously have any nasty intentions…
But what I find classless in general is when guys consciously pick an insult term that references women’s bodies… as if it’s not enough to insult some other guy, they also have to take a shot at women while they’re at it.
If women aren’t offended then I won’t bother to get that offended either… (and as mentioned earlier, you can sort of spin d-bag as being a female-empowering insult) but I still wouldn;t use it.
Those other “body function” words are considered harsh swear words and have the power to be real conversation killers … whereas d-bag is considered mild and heard all over the place on TV, radio and creeping into everyday conversation… I was more objecting to its casual acceptance than its use as a harsh insult.
What? Have you ever heard his show? He’s the first person I think of when I hear douche and its variants, and the first person I thought of when I saw this thread. I’m pretty confident that he’s largely responsible for the current popularity of the term.
I do not use Douchebag as an insult. I use it as a nickname for those fruit drinks that come in the foil sacks. My son was with me at the grocery store a while back, and I asked him if he wanted to get a box of them. He said “Your sister calls them Juice Bags.”
I didn’t hear him clearly, and thought that he said Douchebag. Now when we’re in the drink aisle, I ask him what he wants to drink.
“Douchebag.”
“WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!?”
You might be right. I don;t have satellite radio and have only listened to clips of him since then. But I honestly cannot remember him using the word and I do listen to his clips fairly often. On the other hand, some other DJs on the radio constantly spew the word as if they have hay fever.
I agree that it’s a little weird that a cleaning product is used as an insult which is why I only use douchebag as a descriptor. On the other hand a douchefucker is a guy who is such a loser that the closest he can get to a vagina is fucking the used douche.
Crap isn’t a conversation killer. You can call all kinds of crap crap and nobody gives a crap. Shit’s a bigger deal. I’ll never understand that one. Some curse words are harsher than others, there’s really no logic to it beyond how people feel about it.
Well, that’s because they weren’t using Lysol.
Yes, that was actually a “suggested use” of Lysol.
Please to explain this? I have never seen douches advertised on daytime TV, at least not realizing that that’s what it was; the only “female sanitary products” I can recall seeing advertised on TV are tampons and pads. And I’ve never lived with a female who has used one.
And, are you saying that 11 year olds use douches?? We can all agree that 11-year-olds use the terms “douche” and “douchebag”, but from personal experience, many if not most of them have no idea what the original, literal meaning is.
In fact, I’d say that I hear the word “douche” used as a synonym or abbreviation for “douchebag” (“he’s such a douche”) much more often than I ever hear it in reference to a sanitary product.
Maybe you didn’t realize exactly what they were advertising, but I remember those “Do you ever get that…not-so-fresh feeling?” commercials up through the 1990’s. I even remember stand-up comedians (and comediennes) making fun of them.
I was not aware, however, that the word “douchebag” was a common insult until rather recently. In my personal experience, it’s only a common insult on the internet.
It’s been part of men’s conversational slang since at least the early seventies, in my experience.
I don’t use the term b/c everytime I hear it, I think of this part of the movie …And Justice For All <got it from the IMDB, of course, though I can almost do it from memory>
[Officer Leary is on the witness stand]
Officer Leary: I told him to move on, but he continued to use profanity and he refused to leave the premises.
Judge Rayford: What sort of profanity?
Officer Leary: You know, the normal kind.
Judge Rayford: Officer Leary, we’ve all heard these words before, now for the record what did he say?
Officer Leary: [uncomfortably] He used… ”fuck" a lot.
[quiet laughter from the gallery]
Officer Leary: …”piss on you"…
[more laughter]
Officer Leary: …then said he was gonna… ”bung-hole the short order chef"… ”cream on the waitress"…
[more laughter]
Officer Leary: …stuff like that, Your Honor.
Dapper Defendant: There’s a very good reason for all of that, Your Honor.
Judge Rayford: Oh? What is that?
Dapper Defendant: I’m a diabetic.
[loud laughter from the gallery]
Judge Rayford: I fail to see the connection. I’ve never heard of diabetes causing foul language!
Dapper Defendant: That’s because you’re a douchebag.
[entire courtroom erupts into laughter, including Officer Leary before he catches himself and forces a poker face]
Just calling someone a douche doesn’t make me think of it, but ‘douchebag’ always does and it always makes me giggle.