Words Matter

Note:  There are several coarse or vulgar words repeated throughout this blog.  If you are easily offended, please join me another day. 

In the past two weeks I seem to have lost two friends.  I don’t lament the losses, but I want to tell you about them.  Both of them are male.  I lost (although “got rid of” seems more appropriate) both of them for the same reason:  I called them on the carpet for using the word “bitches” instead of “women.” 

Quick time out #1:  let me be fair:  I don’t particularly like it when grown women are referred to or call themselves girls.  If you are over a certain age – let’s say 18 – you are a woman.  At the same time, I like men to be called men not boys or guys after a certain age. To add even more fairness into the mix, I get all kinds of guff from friends and acquaintances when I use the phrase, “When I was a girl…” when I talk about my childhood.  And, my sister will be happy to note that I employ unusual vocabulary choices regularly. So, I will take the hit as a linguistic and diction snob. 

Back to the story.  Both of the males with whom I was talking used the word bitches nonchalantly.  I don’t care.  I have been known to curse like a sailor, and my sister will tell you that I’m the crude one.  It was the fact that these men used the word “bitches” as a perfectly acceptable synonym for “women.”  Wait, what? 

With one of the men, I stopped him by asking to whom he was referring and were they really bitches?  He looked at me quizzically.  “No, no, you know…I mean bitches, you know hos – women.”  No, no, I did not know.  This is a grown man – not a teen still figuring out how to zip his fly. This is a college-educated man.  Well, I let it rip.  I asked him why on earth he thought that it was acceptable to call women, as a group, bitches; I certainly did not call all men dicks or assholes.  Of course, there are those amongst the male population, just as there are bitches in the female population, but that did not mean that these words are acceptable terms of reference for the entire populations of either gender.  He mumbled something, changed the subject, and then made his getaway. 

Quick time out #2: I did my research after that first encounter.  Perhaps I was being overly sensitive?  Perhaps this is the new linguistic norm?  I questioned a few friends and then opened the dictionary.  Bitch is a term for a female dog in the first two entries of the definition in the dictionary I used.  The next entry is noted as slang for a “malicious, unpleasant, or selfish person, especially a woman.”  The entry then goes on with two additional slang meanings and progresses on to the verb definition. 

The other man in question texted me a comment that, again, used bitches to denote all women. . A whole world of people were just called, "malicious, unpleasant, or selfish" - I had to say something.  I texted him back that all women were not bitches, just as all men are not dicks  He discontinued the conversation and proceeded to post a long, interesting status on social media about how those who judge him need to take a step back and reevaluate and get over themselves. 

I’m over myself.  Standing up for the proper use of language, especially as relates to human beings, does not warrant reevaluation on my part.  The words that we use to refer to people, our activities, and our lives as a whole are absolutely important. Just as our clothes and hairstyles tell something of who we are, our words tell even more. If one is using “bitches” or other negative terms to refer to women in general, there’s a problem.  Misogyny, anyone?  Same for women who use the word “dick” or other such language to refer to men in general.  That’s called misandry, by the way.

Sure, I could blame the music industry, movies, pornography, or whatever other societal influences that are out there.  However, when push comes to shove, we are all captains of our own vocabularies and expressions. 

We all have the power to choose the words we use, and the words we use have power.