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To be a Womanist, means that I don’t get to sidestep the dog doo in the middle of the sidewalk. Today’s big steamy pile is a word. The B-word. A word every bit as ugly, devastating, and horrid as the N-word. The word bitch and nigger joust for first place in my mind in terms of the amount of damage they do. Neither one wins. They both tear at my soul. I’ve learned to cope with the racial slur in ways that allow me to breath. Bitch…not so much.
Let’s begin with the etymology of the word:
O.E. bicce, probably from O.N. bikkjuna "female of the dog" (also fox, wolf, and occasionally other beasts), of unknown origin. Grimm derives the O.N. word from Lapp pittja, but OED notes that "the converse is equally possible." As a term of contempt applied to women, it dates from c.1400; of a man, c.1500, playfully, in the sense of "dog." In modern (1990s, originally black English) slang, its use with ref. to a man is sexually contemptuous, from the "woman" insult.
"BITCH. A she dog, or doggess; the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore." ["Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1811]
The verb meaning "to complain" is at least from 1930, perhaps from the sense in bitchy, perhaps influenced by the verb meaning "to bungle, spoil," which is recorded from 1823. But bitched in this sense seems to echo M.E. bicched "cursed, bad," a general term of opprobrium (e.g. Chaucer's bicched bones "unlucky dice"), which despite the hesitation of OED, seems to be a derivative of bitch. And cf. the mid-19th century U.S. blackface minstrel song verse about women's rights movement:
When woman's rights is stirred a bit
De first reform she bitches on
Is how she can wid least delay
Just draw a pair ob britches on. From Etymonline
This single syllable word from its first usage had no purpose other than to name females in a derogatory way. Indeed, some breeders consider female dogs more difficult to deal with in the breeding process because they are only receptive during estrus, while male dogs are ready to copulate anytime. There are arguments that the first use of the term bitch to describe women came as a slang reference to female dogs in heat. Hence, any woman who was perceived as outwardly sexual, or sensual was called a bitch. The connection between the difficulty of breeding female dogs, i.e. the perception that female = bad can be made as well. More often bitch is used to describe a woman who is treacherous, mean, spiteful, shrewish, and obstinate. Women who speak loudly are bitches. Women who are opinionated are bitches. Women who disdain traditional gender roles are bitches. Women who do not conform are bitches.
Any behavior that is negative in a woman is attributed to this catch-all term. If a woman is, in fact, conniving, petty, dishonest, and heartless, the fact that those same attributes are found in men has little meaning. Men who display these traits are just men who are that way.
To those who attribute bitchiness to men as well, I reply that it is the inherent femaleness of the term bitch that makes it an insult to men. When men are called bitches, it is an insult to their maleness, as though being female is not only abhorrent, but it is a punishment. Sissy, pussy, wuss, wimp, all denote a lack of maleness, especially pussy, which is a slang term used to describe a woman’s vagina. Call a man a bitch, and you have called him a woman. Call him a woman, and you have called him powerless and worthless.
In this day of Third Wave Feminism, bitch is a word that keeps us standing still in the shadows of oppression. In the blogosphere women like Kristin King find no redemption in the reclaiming of this word:
You can talk to me about reclaiming words until you’re blue in the face and I still don’t buy it. The swastika used to be a good luck symbol and a religious image until Hitler used it to represent the Nazi party. Should I wear clothes with swastikas on them and just assure horrified passersby that I’m reclaiming it? Should I start calling black people “niggas” because I’m reclaiming “nigger”? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
How about teaching people respect instead? How about not demeaning your fellow women by using offensive terms “to empower them”?
