On "Bitch" and other Misogynist language

[redqueen]

95. Did you read the OP? That is No. 2 on the list.

It is one thing for a woman to use it with her friends in a non pejorative way... a gay man with such a woman doing so is probably not going to offend anyone either.

The issue here is really pejorative use. That is what people complain about. And responses like yours are all too often the reaction.

It needs to stop. This is really not complicated.

By pretending its complicated, the message is sent to people who use misogynist hate speech that, 'hey, go on and do it, we'll help make sure society doesn't come down on you by constantly trying to make it look like this is all really subjective and confusing' when it is anything but.

Edited to add the relevant part of the OP:

2. I use it. My using the word cunt to describe myself and a man using it to describe another man are fundamentally different contexts. To pretend that this difference is not patently fucking obvious is what August calls a fabricated belief. No one with two brain cells still knocking together honestly believes that white people using the n-word as an insult and black people using it for any reason are equivalent, nor that a gay man describing himself as a faggot is the same as Ann Coulter describing John Edwards as a faggot. And no one should have the slightest bit of trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that my (or other women) reclaiming the word cunt (or bitch, or other sexist euphemisms) to describe ourselves is not the same as a man using it as an insult.

I love the word cunt, and I'm all for reclaiming it—but reclaiming "cunt" is about a woman wearing it herself and wielding it ironically, which is necessarily as a compliment, not an insult. If I call my girlfriend "a beautiful cunt" for expertly handling a sexist wanker, that's got reappropriative power. If I call her "a dumb cunt" because she does something foolish, not so much.

There are ways to use words and there are ways to use words—and knowing the difference, rooting out the subversive context from that which simply perpetuates oppression, is not remotely difficult

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