I follow a lot of truly terrible people on Twitter — Manosphere bloggers, white supremacists, Fidelbogen — so it took me a moment to realize that this dopey, backwards tweet didn’t come from some obscure reactionary bigot but from none other than antifeminist celebrity academic Christina Hoff Sommers, inventor of “equity feminism” and the author of the bestselling The War Against Boys.
If "bossy" has to go because it is sexist, then shouldn't we stop using male-vilifying terms like "mansplaining" & "rape culture"? @banbossy
— Christina Hoff Sommers (@CHSommers) March 12, 2014
Oy.
Also, I think she meant to end that with #BanBossy, not @BanBossy.
Interesting that she doesn’t seem to understand hashtags any more than she understands rape culture.
LOL. OK, what’s a non-perjorative use of “bitch?”
I don’t think it’s more nebulous, it’s usually aimed at woman who isn’t doing what or behaving how you want them to.
I’m vaguely curious about what Sandberg did to piss off Jenny, but not curious enough that having the “she’s so bossy!” part of this conversation come to an end wouldn’t be a better option.
(Look at me, trying to be polite. It’s not going to last much longer.)
Katz – You haven’t said anything thus far in a “nice way”, so that’s hardly news. I am following the conversation, it’s just that I don’t share your opinions, and am not going to say what you want just to placate you.
HellKell – I’ve already talked about women who embrace the word in a non perjorative way. But what you said about it being aimed at a woman not doing what someone wants, that’s why I’ve called it a nebulous term. There’s no concrete definition of what makes a woman a bitch beyond it displeases someone somewhere.
The same could be said of “slut”. It’s commonly understood as “promiscuous” right? But then where is the bar for “promiscuous” (presuming one even thinks that’s a bad thing…)? How many people does someone have to sleep with to be a “slut”? Truthfully, I don’t believe anybody is a “slut”, people just have different sexualities that work for them.
And then there’s the fact that I’ve also heard I was a “slut” for not sleeping with someone or worse (gasp!) choosing to sleep with someone I prefer to them. And then of course there are the people who seem to believe that any Latina woman, or tattooed woman or whatever other othering category they can put me in, are all automatically “slutty”. It’s all ridiculous.
You know what? There is no way that “bitch” is anything but a slur, and if some women wanna pretend that they can reclaim it, good for them, but I think they’re foolish. The rest of the world won’t let you reclaim it.
Honestly, you’ve talked about a lot of shit. At this point you are sound and fury.
Oh, and this?
Is actually a rock solid concrete damn definition.
Bullshit. You are playing the condescending intellectual, ignoring or deliberately misinterpreting any comments at odds with your opinions and handwaving away our experiences as irrelevant where they do not correspond to your own
Shame that she’s scoring a series of own goals.
OT but I’m listening to Mary Beard’s lecture
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03ycql8/Oh_Do_Shut_Up_Dear!_Mary_Beard_on_the_Public_Voice_of_Women/
I so recommend it. Brilliant stuff.
@hellkell – it’s certainly the only definition I can see of it, but never one those who use it perjoratively will admit to. Which is why I can take them, or “bitch” seriously as an insult.
@titianblue – Actually, Katz was the one who tried to bring things being “irrelevant” into it, during the discussion comparing bossy and bitchy. Your experiences are likely not mine, or they may be similar but you have a different take on them, I don’t know. But you are certainly able to speak of your own experiences, they aren’t irrelevant if you’ve lived them. I could also say any number of people have tried to dismiss my experiences because they haven’t shared in them.(i.e. knowing musicians or actresses who use the word “diva” in it’s more traditional sense,but because there are other people out there who have decided to use it perjoratively, saying any proper use of it is null & void.)
titianblue, it doesn’t appear that those of us outside the UK can access the Mary Beard lecture right now. 🙁 Maybe you can summarize some of what she says for us if you’re up for it.
Protip: If you’re not following a conversation, you don’t necessarily realize you’re not following it.
Another protip: trying to undermine someone’s sense of their own experiences or reality, such as whether or not they’ve followed a conversation they’ve been in on, is gaslighting.
Telling you that you hold a coherent argument like a sieve holds water is not gaslighting.
Except the argument is not incoherent, it’s just one you disagree with. Not the same thing.
Yep, @katz, she’s clearly not following it.
Nope. @katz was demonstrating, by comparing “bitchy” and “bossy”, the problems with your argument. It was a clear and relevant comparison.
Nope. You tried to argue that “diva” was not a gendered slur because musicians etc use it correctly when referring to an opera diva. You even implied that you had never heard it used as an insult.
Now that it has been pointed out to you the clear and common use of “diva” as a gendered slur, you are getting defensive and trying to put us in the wrong. Noone has said you can’t talk about a lead soprano as a diva.
Again, we can scroll back up to the rest of the conversation, you know.
Nor is it gaslighting to tell someone that they don’t understand something that they clearly don’t understand. If a student bombs a test but insists that zie understands the material, the teacher is not gaslighting by saying “No, you don’t.”
(There I go again, dragging irrelevant things into the conversation!)
Except that if everyone else is telling you that your argument is incoherent, maybe you should take a moment to wonder whether your argument might actually be incoherent. Rather than just unpopular.
I have no idea what’s going on, and perhaps that’s for the best.
RE: Kittehs
it’s pretty stable here, not like the Shaky Isles aka NZ.
The one earthquake I experienced, it was while living there. And then it was so minor I actually thought it was my ear acting up again. (I have damage in one ear that means I used to get dizzy spells and feel like the world was doing a dance step six inches to the right. Thankfully, I don’t really have those anymore.)
Transcript of Mary Beard’s lecture. Just sorry the non-UK residents can’t hear her deliver it.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women
titianblue, actually the audio link on that site works for me. Thanks! The first one just said something like “BBC TV programmes are only for the UK” (obviously I’m paraphrasing).
Wonderful news, Ally! ::cheers:: ::whistles::
Funny, I seem to remember you waving away sexist use of bossy because you hadn’t experienced it that way … right there in your blog.
As for “the term I’m so fond of,” the point is not that I use it much, but that it’s widely used, widely known, and because you have somehow managed to miss it, you took the opportunity to do that condescending little lecture about how you know what free speech is and how often you’ve had to explain it – totally ignoring my point about the misogynists who claim being told not to use slurs is an infringement of their free speech.
For someone who likes to ‘splain so much, you’re doing a great job of reading comprehension fail. Which could be related, of course.
All your blather here seems to boil down to “I don’t like Sandberg (though I’m not going to say why) and I think she’s bossy and I’ll use the word if I want to, so there!”
And you wonder why MRA-talk has been mentioned.
@titianblue – so everybody else (i.e. the 5 or 6 people who are continuing with this, and to whom I’ll continue to respond as long as they keep it up) says I’m incoherent to. Yay, you have a little mob going on.Doesn’t make me wrong, or mean I can’t follow the conversation. I can scroll too. Maybe I’m lucky to know people who prefer to use “diva” in it’s proper context, and in an admiring way, rather than people who use it as a put down. Doesn’t mean I have to suddenly take it as a gendered slur EVERY time it’s spoken, especially when it’s not given in the context of an insult.
@katz – I understand the opposing point of view. But I still disagree with it.
Oh, the lurkers are supporting you in email, I guess. What’s the magic number that makes your argument a bad one?
@jennydevildoll, Yep, that’s right, we’re just the nasty mob.
And maybe you can try for that reading comprehension again and maybe you can actually try to follow the conversation. Oooh, look here’s what I said:
So again: No one has said you can’t talk about a lead soprano as a diva. No one has you “have to suddenly take it as a gendered slur EVERY time it’s spoken”.
What we have said (and what you are trying to deflect the argument away from) is that whenever “diva” is used as an insult, it is a gendered a slur.