Why I Hate the Word 'Bitch'

Snoop Dogg walking his “bitches” on a leash.

I wince every time I hear someone say the word “bitch”. 

Doesn’t matter whose mouth it comes from, or why…

Every time I hear a woman referred to as a BITCH it feels like a slap in the face. 

…

Growing up, Bitch was well-known as a slur to degrade women. It was the label women were slapped with to keep them in check, particularly if they were not particularly “nice” or people-pleasing. 

But pretty soon, folks picked up on the vast utility of Bitch as a simple, yet harsh way to verbally abuse and denigrate women. So as time went on, bitch blossomed to cover all of our bases:

Assertive women are bitches. Women with boundaries are bitches. Doormats are bitches. Sex workers are bitches. Men’s girlfriends are their bitches. Women who provoked a stranger’s anger for any reason are bitches. Abused women are bitches. 

Successful women are bitches. Pretty women are bitches. Stupid women are bitches. Smart women are bitches. 

Women are just bitches!

So within the last couple of decades, women have tried to reclaim the word that has been used against us by turning it into a source of pride. 

This is where we see women praising themselves and their friends as “bad bitches” or calling themselves “that bitch” when they are have achieved success in their given profession, or when they appear sexy and confident.

But the word bitch hasn’t been reclaimed. 

You know why? 

Because those same women will turn right around and call a woman a “bitch” if she decides she doesn’t like her for some reason.

The self-appointed “bad bitches” will be the first to slam a woman as a “dumbass bitch” if she rubs her the wrong way, just like everyone else does. 

The most common is when folks preface a statement with, “No bitch…” or simply, “Bitch!” before going on a condescending rant about why that woman is wrong or foul—correcting her, making sure to put her back in her place, almost like a verbal slap.

The fact is, people still use Bitch to denigrate women, or to insult men by associating them with femaleness. And that is still the most common way that the word Bitch is used, including amongst those who also try to use it positively.

…

Interestingly enough, I haven’t seen this with the word Nigger. 

Black people reclaimed the word Nigger by changing the word itself to “Nigga”. 

Even though “Nigga” is used in various contexts, black people do not go around calling each other Niggers with a hard ‘er, and it’s not typically used in a hateful context, certainly never in the same manner of its origins. 

Regardless of black folks’ various opinions and feelings towards the term “Nigga”, we are all aware that there is a difference, and none of us like the original word.

Another main distinction is that it has become highly controversial for white people—the dominant class that created the word—to use the word Nigger against black people. This is so much so that in America, Nigger is widely known as “The N Word”.

On a cultural level—the “N word” is supposed to be just for us.

But, Bitch? Nah…it’s just same ol’ same ol’ 

Anyone is welcome to use it, and it all means the same thing as it did before. 

And before any white women try to use my Nigger analysis to talk about how “black people” get more respect than “women”…just stop.

Nobody thinks of you as a Nigger-Bitch.

But I digress…

Bitch is still the first thing a black woman is called right after she is murdered cold-blooded in her own kitchen. 

Bitch is still what women are called as they get pummeled by their mates. 

Bitch is still the traditional word for rappers to call us in their hit songs,

…and then they release an R&B hit right after, making romantic promises to never do it again, as if they deserve credit for not calling us bitches.

.

And I personally don’t like the word bitch. 

My mother has screamed “bitch” at me when I set a boundary she didn’t like. 

I was called a bitch by a random guy on the beach after rejecting his advances. 

A grown man I dated as a teenager laughed in my face after telling me a hurtful joke where I starred as “the bitch”. 

So no, I don’t like the word bitch. 

In fact, I hate it. And I always make sure to correct women when they try to call me a bitch in a friendly way. “Hey bitch!”

Bitch is not my name.  

And I distance myself from women who use the word “bitch” to refer to any woman, because I know it’s only a matter of time before she uses that word against me, too. 

The sad thing is that bitch has become so ubiquitous that it’s seeped into my internal vocabulary. I may not say the word out loud to refer to myself or other women, but it rests in my mind, floating by from time to time.

I honestly believe this is a result of spending too much time on social media, where I am exposed to things my brain doesn’t need—and it’s something that I need to work on. 

But even without social media, it’s hard to avoid completely, and that’s because of the culture we live in.

I’m not going to say I wish we would do away with the word…

Bitch does have an original meaning, which is “female dog”, and there is nothing wrong with actual female dogs.

It’s our cultural attitudes towards the creatures associated with the word, and how we are associating an entire class of human beings with other beings we don’t truly respect that is the problem.

In fact, this could get into a larger conversation about speciesism and how we use animals and female slurs as degrading insults. Perhaps that is for another day…

However, I do wish we could all stop pretending that the word Bitch is less harmful than it really is.

I wish women would swallow the tough pill that there are plenty enough words being used against us, and the only way that will change is through a deeper cultural shift

Not by using harmful words as toys, only to fashion them as weapons against each other.