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.
@grumpycat If you want to skip through the incredibly posh bloke’s intro, Mary Bear starts at about 6:40.
@kittesherf – In the post and it was discussed here earlier on, I disagree with Sandberg’s elitist brand of feminism, or her implication that if women are hitting glass ceilings it’s because they’re not “leaning in “enough.
But another blogger today posted this story which suggests, no, it may be institutionalized sexism after all: http://jezebel.com/female-professor-loses-job-offer-when-she-tries-to-nego-1543018097#
I felt that the act of calling for a ban on bossy was in itself “bossy”. Yes, I’m sure I’ve said why I don’t like Sandberg’s work, but there you have it again.
FRom what I’ve seen, MRA’s seem primarily interested in their own free speech and no one else’s. They seem more than happy to advocate violence against the feminists and other people they disagree with. But no matter, I’ve never heard the term “freeze peach” until now, I’m not “internet cool”. Whetever.
Jennydevildoll is losing her grasp on punctuation. Not a good sign.
Jesus H Christ. What part of “diva is widely used as a gendered insult” is so fucking hard to understand?
Talk about deja vu. Every time a gendered slur is mentioned, jennydevildoll protests that she doesn’t use it that way, that her nice friends don’t use it that way, that she’s seldom/never seen it used that way. Somehow this seems to lead to the notion that the people pointing it out (Sandberg, commenters here) are the people using it that way.
Who was it said above that the confirmation bias is strong in this one? Never was truer word written.
Well, except that MRAs are douchecanoes.
And that kitties are teh cute.
@hellkell – email from lurkers? Not particularly. But I’m not really looking to base what I do or think on how many people are for it or against it.
@katz – I’m on an old computer, sometimes it gets slow or sticks, and I can’t afford a new one at the moment. What is it not a good sign of?
jennydevildoll, you seem to be dismissing the whole point about this one matter because you don’t like Sandberg’s brand of feminism. Fine, you don’t have to; I neither know nor care anything about her. This is about one word.
For them as knows their Latin: does this qualify as an ad hominem argument? “I don’t like Sandberg’s brand of feminism, ergo her comments about ‘bossy’ fail.”
kittehserf – No, I feel any type of crusading for bans on speech is bossy.
I am a little confused here….
jennydevildoll: May I ask something? It seems like a lot of your objection to the whole “ban bossy” thing is that 1. You don’t like Sandberg’s elitism and 2. In your experience, “bossy” is not a gendered term and 3. You see it as more effective to address the underlying sexism than the term itself.
Is this correct? Am I misinterpreting anything?
Sure. Sandberg’s brand of feminism may have influenced her comments about “bossy,” but the comments stand on their own.
@sparky- yes, well, primarily 3, then 2. Point 1 was more about why I dislike Sandberg in general, for those who were asking.
Banning bossy is more of an opt in kind of thing, and it’s more of a call to think of how the word is used. This is not a ban on free speech, nor will any one be “persecuted”” for using it. Not really a crusade.
Where did I see that before? Oh yeah, privileged dudebros in every discussion about hurtful slurs EVER.
Tee hee – too true, Vaiyt!
I was in NYC several years ago when it had it’s biggest earthquake in decades, which was a 3.9. Having lived in Southern CA and grown rather blasé about minor quakes, I was kind of amusing watching people freak out like it was a Mayan prophecy of world doom coming true.
@trans_commie Great to hear you found a good therapist, I’ve found mine to be invaluable.
O.o That’s some apocalyptic shit right there.
I remember my first earthquake clearly: I was in Vermont checking out what was soon to be my university, it was like 3 in the morning, and I actually thought about getting under a doorframe before I fell back asleep (a+ disaster training, Californians – even New England teens know what to do in a quake!). Until then I didn’t even know they got quakes in Vermont, let alone 5-pointers!
There was also one in Massachusetts last year, which I actually did think was just someone driving my with the bass turned up, until I left the dressing room and everyone was talking about a quake.
Welp, I know what my next nightmare will be about.
jennydevildoll:
OK. Well, I would agree that challenging sexism and sexist assumptions is a very important thing to do and will ultimately be the most effective way of ending sexism and misogyny.
But I also think that the above is a big thing to do. It seems like it needs to be broken down in to smaller, concrete steps, and it seems like questioning the use of the word “bossy” is one way to go about questioning society’s views of women in leadership roles.
My experience with “bossy” is different than yours. I have only ever heard bossy used against girls. It was sort of the playground equivalent of “b*tchy.” So, does that make your experience or my experience invalid? No. It means we have different experiences if the word. There’s no way to get around that but to try to listen to each other. And I think, that if women are saying that they’ve experienced the word “bossy” as a gendered slur then that needs to be taken seriously.
You say this:
Maybe that’s part of the disagreement? “Bossy” the word does not specifically refer to women and girls (like a word like “b*tch” refers pretty directly to) but “can be” gender neutral. However, it is used more often as a perjorative for girls. So, to me, that would make the term very problematic, not because of the definition of the term but the way it is most often used.
Again, I think you’re right that we need to be challenging the stereotypes that boys are assertive leaders and girls are little miss bossy-pants. But I think challenging those assumptions by challenging a specific is an effective strategy. One strategy, but not the only one.
I think that’s what people have been trying to say all along. That “bossy” is a word that shouldn’t be used, not that people are going to get persecuted for using it.
Well, this is a concrete example of misunderstanding what was said.
You claimed that you didn’t realise it was an insult. I said it was sometimes used as an insult, and the fact that it has a ‘correct’ dictionary meaning doesn’t make it less of a gendered slur when it is used with the slang meaning. I never claimed that it was impossible to use respectfully, just that often it is used as a gendered slur.
RE: Brooked
Having lived in Southern CA and grown rather blasé about minor quakes, I was kind of amusing watching people freak out like it was a Mayan prophecy of world doom coming true.
This is pretty much how folks in Texas reacted to snow. It was like, “WHITE SHIT IS COMING FROM THE SKYYYYY THE END DAYS ARE UPON US AAAAAAH”
And then I moved to Boston, where snow was the White Nuisance.
@jenniferdevildoll
You might listen to Mary Beard’s lecture and reflect her comments on the use of words to negatively describe women’s speech and so trivialise women’s opinions. And then you might reflect on how words like “bossy” are used to negatively describe women’s positive behaviour and so trivialise the women.
“Bossy” is such a minor piffling word, a mere pinprick compared with “bitch” and “slut” and “cunt”. Compared to “princess” and “cupcake”. Or “ugly”, “frigid”, “spinster”. Myself, I was surprised at the campaign. But then I listened to what other women were saying & I realised that it is exactly the words like “bossy” which do so much harm with their minor piffling pin pricks so small that you might not even remember them, so small that it is difficult to argue against them because you then seem like you’re making a big fuss about nothing, so small that you don’t realise the poisonous cumulative effect that has already told you that you, a girl,cannot be a natural leader, should not be assertive, will not be listened to.
So you can carry on calling other women “bossy” and denying there is any gendered link. Or you can try using better clearer language instead (why do you think the “bossy” person has overstepped their authority? why are they wrong?) and question its use by others.
I know which path I’ve chosen.
Isn’t SPINSTER meant to be in all caps?
Well said titianblue.
I would add that just because some women develop a thick enough skin to not feel the pin pricks (like jennydevildoll’s immunity to being called a bitch) that doesn’t mean other women can, or should have to.
Except you missed the last bit “and that makes her a horrible person and not a proper woman”
@ emilygoddess
Those tunnels are full of rats. Rats that will be scared and confused, while you’re trying to step over/through them in the dark without stepping on them as you attempt to walk out of the tunnel alongside lots of other confused, scared, clumsy people.
This nightmare brought to you courtesy of the stuff that I think about when the train stops in the tunnel under the Bay for other, non-earthquake-related reasons.
@ titianblue
It’s the death by a thousand cuts, isn’t it? Extra frustrating when it’s people who claim to be on your side who’re making some of those cuts, which is part of why so many people are getting annoyed with Jenny in this thread.
It has to be in order for it to be successfully used as utterly devastating condemnation of unmarried women over 30.
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH