Christina Hoff Sommers: “If ‘bossy’ has to go because it is sexist, then shouldn’t we stop using male-vilifying terms like ‘mansplaining’ & ‘rape culture’?”

@Katz – Oh, you “let” something slide. How graciousssss of you. You’re no more in a position of telling me what position I’m in than Sandberg is of telling me what I can or can’t say, LOL.)
Contrary to your sorry speculation of my motives (and here I thought Woodhull would be the worst outpatient I’d ever come across)I do give a shit about what I’m saying. If I’m reiterating the same points, it’s because they are my actual views on the subject. Do you somehow believe that they aren’t, that it’s just something I’m saying to annoy you personally?
If the things I’m doing have the effect of silencing, then how come no one here has been silenced? (Nor should they be.) Is that your own goal perhaps? To cease any view that dissents with yours and Sandberg’s?
By the same token, I’m calling Sandberg bossy because I actually find her actions to be bossy. Or controlling, if you prefer.A person saying a feminist is ugly because that feminist is saying not to generalize all feminists as ugly? The person might find the speaker ugly and be using it to validate their view of all feminists as ugly, but I did not say all women were bossy. On the other hand, the person may not find the speaker ugly, but may lie and call her that anyway to be hurtful. Physical attractiveness is subjective to the onlooker’s tastes, but to draw a correlation between what people believe and what they look like doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Wow, an entire paragraph of this comment was spent not complaining about how people respond to you. Well done. It would have been overoptimistic to expect you not to spend any of your comment complaining about how people responded to you. Baby steps.

You’re right that there’s a difference between judging someone based on appearance and judging based on actions, but you’re missing the key similarity and the whole reason I brought it up in the first place: You’re attributing a gendered term to Sandberg based on her objection to that gendered term. Her having an objection to the word “bossy” was sufficient reason for you to find her bossy, thereby precluding the possibility of actually having a conversation about the word. (And it’s an ad hom, since whether or not you find her bossy is irrelevant.)

Perhaps you’d prefer this comparison: What would you think if someone objected to the word “bitchy” and someone else said that she was being bitchy, and then defended zirself by saying that zie didn’t think all women were bitchy, just her?

Well, ten points to everyone who said that the term ‘ban’ is problematic because people can’t differentiate between asking for people in positions of influence over women and girls to agree not to use a word and Beyonce showing up at your front door and arresting you if you utter the word ‘bossy.’

Jennydevildoll – you’re taking the whole “ban” line very literally. The whole point is to get people thinking about what a gendered word bossy is, and how it’s used against girls in a way it isn’t against boys.

As trans commie pointed out, people can make the same claims about how they don’t use bitch as a gendered slur, or to mean female = bad, oh no. But it remains a gendered slur and no more acceptable than racist slurs. (I’m referring to using it against other people, not about oneself; I’m dubious about the possibilities of reclaiming words like that, but that’s another matter.)

And just as trans commie said, there are other, non-gendered words to use. It’s not like English is lacking, so why cling to a word that’s got that baggage?

FREEZE PEACH is a general internet term for free speech. It’s mocking the racists, misogynists and general pieces of shit who squeal that not being allowed to use slurs is censorship, or having anyone criticise them is censorship, or being kicked off privately run blogs is censorship, and so on.

katz, exactly. The terms/slurs get their weight because they’re used to put down an entire group.

Hey, so along the lines of “bossy,” I realized there’s an unflattering gendered term that I still use a lot: “diva.” Anyone have a good nongendered alternative to that one?

Doesn’t it say something that diva has become a put-down? It means divine and now it’s just the bossiness/pushiness ideas that go with it, same as happened with prima donna. That it was about outstanding talent has been conveniently lost along the way. Or rather, the idea that a woman of outstanding talent might be demanding is not acceptable, whereas with a man, it’s more or less shrugged off, or treated as an acceptable foible because he’s the Great Artist.

Hm. Usually, I use diva to refer to somebody who wants attention and drama, usually at the sacrifice of productivity. I used to use it interchangeably with princess, but I’m not sure that I would now. Princess has connotations of materialism that diva doesn’t, necessarily.

Supah-star? Drama-llama? Thespian? Drama junkie?

I do love drama llama, but I’m thinking of something less about creating drama and more about making everything about yourself. Like I call our cat Bobbie a diva because she always wants to be the center of attention and this is her food dish and her litter box and nobody else is allowed to use them.

@Kitteh

It’s ok, kitties don’t care about silly human words like “diva”, “no”, and “don’t”. They only like the serious words like “tuna”.

It’s ok, kitties don’t care about silly human words like “diva”, “no”, and “don’t”. They only like the serious words like “tuna”.

Hee – Mum had that conversation with Fribs today. She said “No,” Fribs ignored it, I pointed out that word isn’t in her vocabulary.

@Katz – Well, just as I see a difference between “bossy” and “assertive”, I also see a difference between “disagreeing” and “complaining” (though I also don’t think complaining has to be a bad thing. It can be defining a problem.) I could just as easily view your “silencing” accusation as a “complaint”, especially since I don’t think disagreeing with someone is silencing them, and I see no evidence that anyone here is silenced.

Now this other comparison of yours, like I mentioned to trans_commie, I do know people in feminist/womanist, and for that matter, also LGBTQ communities, who have embraced or reclaimed the word bitch. (Which incidentally, I’ve been called plenty of times, both by people using it in a positive OR negative ways.) My question would be, is the user trying to say it in a Bitches With Problems/7 Year Bitch/Yoko Ono-“yes I’m a witch I’m a bitch” kind of way? Or are they trying to make it sound like a bad thing? 🙂

@kittehserf – While I don’t think Beyonce is going to arrest people, as someone suggested, are you trying to tell me that she’s calling it a ban but not trying to have schools forbid the use of the term, as was suggested by the report? If so, maybe Sandberg needs to be examining the meaning of “ban” as much as she’s fixated on the word bossy.

Free Speech never guaranteed anyone freedom from criticism or argument. It’s a two way street-we all have the right to express our opinions, but others have the right to express oppositional opinions. It means that Sandberg can criticize words, I can criticize her, you can criticize me, and no one ought to be jailed or surpressed by the State in any way for doing it, or face physical retaliation. (something MRAs advocate a lot for women they disagree with). Privately run institutions, be they blogs or publishing houses or what have you, are in no way obligated to have to run anything at odds with their views. However I’d still rather see discussions than bans. If a teacher caught kids using the word bossy at a girl simply for being outspoken, or confident, they could talk about why that’s not the same as bossing people around, and maybe ask questions about why they feel it’s different for a boy than a girl. Or if a student of any gender is being bossy, as in, ordering other kids around with no regard for anyone else, teach that kid that it’s not all about them.

“are you trying to tell me that she’s calling it a ban” -by “she I meant Sheryl Sandberg, not Beyonce.