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.
I’ll add that some slurs simply can’t be reclaimed. “Tr*nny” and “shemale”, for instance, aren’t reclaimed by the vast majority of trans women because they are extremely harmful, insulting words that in a sense enable the whole spectrum of violence and hatred against us. I’ve tried to reclaim “tr*nny” for myself but it hurts so much to hear that word that it only feels like a form of self-hatred, not a meaningful attempt to take away its oppressive power.
Honestly, I don’t see how anyone can see Slutwalks as anything other than a misguided train wreck, but that’s just me.
“Slut” is in the unreclaimable box for me. Also, what Brooked said. Watching that whole phenomenon play out made me feel like I’d really chosen my nym wisely.
[Content note: self-hatred]
It’s difficult for me to reclaim any slur used against me, really, mainly because of my self-loathing. I already tend to depreciate myself with harsh words like “disgusting” – it’s even worse when those words are also oppressive and attack me for existing.
I’ll just go ahead and third this.
The word I hear on RPDR that puts the flames on the side of my face is “fishy.” Oh, HELL no.
“Slut” isn’t just a slur, it’s a threat, because of the idea that “sluts” can’t be raped because they’ll fuck anyone. Read the transcripts of a rape trial some time and it should be pretty clear why so many women’s reaction to the idea of reclaiming that word was “oh hell no”.
I think you’re right. It does carry the implicit threat that you described. And on that note, I’m sure that many survivors of abuse are uncomfortable with reclaiming that word because it’s been used against them. It’s wrong to assume that all survivors are okay with reclaiming that word.
But then you wouldn’t, would you? Because they’d be silenced and so no longer commenting.
And even if noone has been silenced, your lack of success at something does not prove that you didn’t try to do it in the first place.
This is a blog that mocks misogyny. As a consequence, regular commenters have seen pretty much every silencing technique in the book and are unlikely to be silenced.
It’s worth noting here, for anyone reading along who may not have had that word aimed at them, that at least in my case the only times I’ve ever been called that have been when I’ve refused to have sex with someone who was getting pushy/aggressive.
Also, in my experience “slut” sometimes simply means “has big boobs”, even when the person who has the big boobs is 10.
I’ve been called a slut by other women more often than by a dude I’ve turned down. If that’s not some fucked-up internalized misogyny, I don’t know what is.
I’d assumed “slut” just meant “woman/girl who isn’t immediately doing exactly what I want her to” including “does not respond to street-harrassment correctly”, “does not respond to my chat-up line/insult/groping correctly” and once “does not give me money when I am begging” but hey, it might have been my big boobs all along.
That makes me feel sick to my stomach.
@kittehs, He’s also unfazed by slurs used against gay men, and uses those as terms of endearment. He’s … a work in progress, but I have hope for him.
I knew “slut” was bad news the first time I heard it used, in 7th or 8th grade against a girl who developed early. It is sick-making.
p.s. We just had an earthquake! Not a huge one, but a big, rolling one that lasted a while. Hope all the LA-area boobzers are fine.
Are you OK? Cats freaking out?
I’m fine, and cats are definitely freaked out. They looked at me like I caused it.
It wasn’t that big, actually (4.4), but centered fairly near to where I live.
Hope everybody’s okay!
It didn’t even set off car alarms. I mean, I’m way too blasé about earthquakes since I’ve lived with them my whole life, but you just can’t be too concerned if the car alarms aren’t going off.
I’m glad it wasn’t very serious! Forgive my ignorance; I’ve never experienced an earthquake, so I wasn’t sure if 4 was a couple of broken vases minor, or “did someone just drive by with the bass turned way up?” minor.
It’s somewhere between those two things. Nothing fell over at home, but a little rubber monster on my bookcase at work hit the deck. My orchids didn’t fall over though, so phew!
This is a comparison, so naturally I’m using the terms in comparable ways, both as pejorative gendered terms. Reclamation is irrelevant to this conversation. You’re not reclaiming “bossy;” you’re using it in its standard meaning, as a negative descriptor for women who behave in ways you don’t like. So pretend someone is using “bitchy” exactly as you use “bossy,” like so:
Alice: People shouldn’t call women “bitchy.” Insults shouldn’t be based on gender.
Bob: Yeah, umm, you’re trying to police what people are and aren’t allowed to say, based on your tastes and comfort level. Could people possibly think you’re “bitchy” for reasons other than your womanhood?
Would you be okay with that?
Wait- since “bitchy” was brought into the conversation, why is reclamation “irrelevant”? This is a word I’ve seen people embrace, so if you want to talk about to talk about “bitch” it would be negligible to try and ignore that it’s a word some have reclaimed, just because that doesn’t steer the conversation where you need it to go. Likewise, as I saw in the Feministing thread I linked to, some women have suggested embracing the term “bossy”, though you’re right, I don’t agree it’s quite the same. But remember, I wasn’t the one who began asking questions about comparing bossy to bitchy in the first place.
As for Alice and Bob here, again it goes back to my view that bossy is not necessarily gendered, though it tends to be more unfairly used against girls simply for being assertive, headstrong, or confident, and that should be reexamined.Also, Alice expressed a thought that people shouldn’t do it, she didn’t say to ban it. She’s free to that opinion, just not to try and persecute people for it. And anyone else is free to disagree with her, with the same conditions. As for Bob, have people specifically been calling Alice “bitchy”? Sheryl Sandberg related an anecdote about a teacher calling her bossy, without a whole lot of backstory about what context this was in or what else was going on at the time, leading me to wonder.( Though I do think it was wrong of the teacher to try and dictate who the students did or didn’t form friendships with. Whether that teacher was a man or a woman…I might say that also is…bossy!)
Wow, was that a bit of ‘Murricansplaining, or what?
Believe it or not, I do know what free speech means, and more to the point, what it means in its US context, and – what you seem to have missed – that the whole point of mocking the FREEZE PEACH mob is that they don’t have a fucking clue what it means. Save your ‘splaining for them.
You’re right, I did seem to miss that you seemed to have any concept of what it meant, and weren’t just being quick to mock the whole concept of it with this “freeze peach” stuff. And yes, I’ve explained it countless times to people who seem to think it means anything from “no one is allowed to argue with what I say” to “a privately run network canceling a show is censorship.”
Ok, I was going to give @jennydevil the benefit of the doubt until the last two comments.
@jennydevildoll You wilfully misunderstand other people’s arguments in order to be able to claim you won.
I’m bored with you now. Please go away.
Diva has more than one meaning. Are you seriously aware of only one of them?
Yes, I’m aware that there are people, presumably not in music or performing spheres, who use it in a negative way. (For that matter within the musician spheres I’ve heard all the “lead singer” jokes as well, which seem to all be variations on the idea that s/he has a big ego.)
But just because some misogynists are using it wrong isn’t going to change the fact that the original meaning, which you also printed, has still remained very much in use in creative communities, and we will continue to use it as a performer to be respected and admired, and as something inspirational. Why, if a word like that is being used in two different contexts, and the perjorative one came later, does it instantly negate the more positive meaning?