B*tch

Every day I hear it, more from the mouths of girls, even, than guys. One girl, angry at a contrary opinion, a rumor that has been spread, or any non-submissive behavior at her female target, calls the other the B-bomb.

Except it’s not a bomb. It’s a regular occurrence, so regular that the word, like so many curses today, seems to the speakers virtually impotent. Thus more and more speakers lace it with other invective, in vain efforts to reinvigorate it with power and anger. Targets become “f***ing” “g-d*mned” or any other foul adjective speakers can produce as they test the limits of grammar.

Its commonality makes it impotent. I believe that in the 44 years I have known her, my own mother has sworn only once.  The power of that simple “D” was astounding. When we discuss the power of words, both sacred and profane, true power comes from selected, even symbolic or ritual use. In other words, words gain power from their non-use, their selected use, their reserved use. Consider the power of the words “genocide,” “holocaust,” and even “rape.” If we began to use these words heedlessly, carelessly—commonly—we reduce the power of their “proper” use and belittle that proper meaning.

If we call every mass murder or slaughter a “holocaust” (as did reporters in describing a recent university shooting spree and a hurricane in the Caribbean) we reduce the word to a level which denies its tragic and systematic intent, its ambition for total annihilation, its success or near success at achieving them through the deaths of tens of thousands or even millions.  In attempting to hyperbolically escalate the event described (for a brief increase in ratings and emotional jolts), we undermine the history of Jews, Rwandans, and Darfurians who truly suffered.

Such may be said too, then, of the B-bomb. I’m not suggesting that we undermine a powerful history or sacred trust here, but that the word is so often and so casually used that it has little power remaining.

We’ve stopped thinking about it.

“So what’s the big deal?” one of my students said to me last year regarding his use of the word ‘gay’ as a synonym for ‘ridiculous.’ “It doesn’t mean anything.” In other words, he reasons, we shouldn’t worry about it precisely because we believe it has no power.  He, too, chose not to consider it.

Unfortunately, this is the paradox of language, of words. The absence of conspicuous power—of conscious power—does not mean that words are nothing. Hardly.  In fact, the trick to understanding language is to recognize what Jacques Lacan calls its “unconscious.” In other words, psychologically, the meaning of the word has fallen so far into our own mental schema or pattern of normality that we’ve stopped responding to it.

Let me see if I can offer an example. When Kleenex began its manufacture of tissue, it worked hard to see its brand name recognized wherever it could. Over the years, it worked.  Perhaps too well. The term “kleenex” has now become a more generic name for tissue, and the brand name identification has vanished.  I could go to the store to buy Kleenex and come home with Puffs feeling I’ve succeeded.  I’ve stopped thinking of the Kleenex name as a specific brand.

The same can be said of our metaphors. For instance, when we talk about how we “spend” our time, we are speaking in metaphor, though we’ve often forgotten it. Notice how such casual (thoughtless) use has then escalated the subconscious power of the metaphor for us. We can now “waste” time, “time is money,” and we push people to never “lose” time.  We’ve created a value metaphor for time which—make no mistake—is not shared by many cultures.

The point is, the connotations of words can become so much a “natural” part of our psychology that we change our ways of thinking without noticing it.

So what does b*tch do?  A male invention for females, we don’t have to much discuss its original intent: the term is an animal-like condemnation of assertive women, especially of women who risk opinions contrary to men. Certainly women who commit injustices may also be labeled, but mild-mannered, meek, or submissive women are almost never called “b*tch.”  If the word has ceased to have power, is it because we have a natural, unconscious expectation that women must submit to male opinion? (How many jokes and other language choices we make reinforce this idea?)

But what most concerns me is that I hear it used from one woman to another as commonly as across the sexes.  It’s as if women are teaching each other the expectation. “We all live in a world which belittles our strength,” they seem to say, “and my role is to remind other women that they should not assert themselves.”

Connotatively, part of that unconscious meaning is not merely animal-like, but more specifically a reminder that the animal is useful only for breeding. (No wonder men actively oppose the word being used against them!)

Antonio Gramsci noted once that the most effective way for oppression to work is to teach the victims to oppress themselves. (Males entertained by a “b*tch-fight” suddenly come to mind.) If we can teach a group to believe themselves inferior by feeding them language which speaks inferiority, then a new language must be uttered.

All words have power, but some is just a bit more subtle than others. Whoever said “Sticks and stones” had no idea what they were talking about.  Words create who we are.

 

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P.S.  But what if a woman truly acts unjustly?  Doesn’t she deserve the word?  No.  Find other words, ones that do not carry the power to demean the entire gender each time they are uttered!

P.P.S.  Isn’t it possible for women to turn the word around as a symbol of power?  Isn’t this what happened to “Yankee Doodle”?   Perhaps, in limited cases.  But the most common use of the word contextually is hardly about empowerment!

P.P.P.S. But see the insightful points in this provocative magazine.

P.P.P.P.S. An interesting synchronicity.