The B-Word and the BB Blues
Hey, do you recall a time when Friendster’s bulletin boards were
filled to the brim with funny, sensible and insightful people? Feels
like an era past, doesn’t it? Nowadays all I ever see are people
selling bags, surveys from people with the IQ of Paris Hilton (not you,
Chester. Hahaha), ANNOYING RED-HERRING CHAIN MAILS ABOUT GETTING
MARRIED, dalagas complaining about how awful their yearbooks are, or whiners who post multiple messages whining about people spamming the bulletin board (see the irony there?).
But a particularly retch-worthy one, sadly, came from one of my
closer real-life friends. Her bulletin post’s title read "My
Personalized Licensed Plate Number Says ‘BITCH’".
Why are so many girls tagging themselves with that word lately? I
suspect that they don’t know what bitch means and that they’re just
using it because Tata Young (with her song "Sexy Naughty Bitchy Me")
and her contemporaries - i.e. pop icons with no brains or sensibilities
whatsoever - made it trendy. It just reminds me of Sean Krapston
trivializing the word "suicide" (don’t get me started on this!). Upon
reading my friend’s bulletin post, my reaction was, "Great, just
another in the long line of girls who think bitch is a word of
female-empowerment."
If she actually bothered to read the dictionary (and try etymology) before using that word indiscriminately, this is what she’ll find:
bitch
–noun
1. a female dog.
2. a female of canines generally.
3. Slang.
a. a malicious, unpleasant, selfish person, esp. a woman.
b. a lewd woman.
4. Slang.
a. a complaint.
b. anything difficult or unpleasant: The test was a bitch.
c. anything memorable, esp. something exceptionally good: That last big party he threw was a real bitch. –verb (used without object)
5. Slang. to complain; gripe: They bitched about the service, then about the bill. –verb (used with object)
6. Slang. to spoil; bungle (sometimes fol. by up): He bitched the job completely. You really bitched up this math problem.
I know that bitch has recently become a slang denoting a woman who, according to Urban Dictionary,
don’t give a flying f*ck anymore and that can and will be cruel to man.
And hey, it’s cool if a woman wants verbally slam the male sex - even
if males are conceived and parented by females (see the irony again?) -
and instead of bad parenting she blames males’ shortcomings to hiphop
videos and Sly Stallone movies. What do I know, right? That still does
not justify using of the b-word. She can use "dominator" or
"dominatrix" or "menefreghista" or "misandrist" or "bad girl"
for all I care. Why does she have call herself bitch - a word so
thoroughly reviled, that people may interpret it as whores? Would she also want to be called puta? Or should we, like always, favor the anglicized (harrrrr)?
Girls, if you advocate equal rights, you owe your gender more
dignity than to call yourselves bitches. Otherwise, please do not react
when you hear Isiah Thomas’s moronic remarks.
In case you didn’t know, he said "It’s acceptable for a black man to call a black woman a bitch."
Life’s a bitch, innit?
