Round these parts, we like bitches. We reclaim the epithet. We even advise you to Be A Bitch (a lot).
But I’ve been thinking about men’s fear of women’s anger and power and the word “bitch.”
Bitch, bitching, etc.: these are thrown at women all the time, for any minor “infraction,” from asking for parity in pay or pleasure to daring to stand up for yourself. I have no doubt that those who use it mean to silence and intimidate women.
But the “shut up, bitch” or “whatever, you fuckin’ dyke” dismissal that you’ll no doubt hear when you don’t submit to some dude’s leer/request/authority is just chest-thumping bullshit that Guy Code obliges him to perform as a way of having the almighty Last Word.
The kind of anger that is serious, profound, actually poses a threat to men (like the kind we were talking about in the Help Me Harpies thread last week)–that is more than an irritation–these kinds of reactions are far less likely to result in the B-label. In my experience, anyway. Because yeah, dudes actually are scared of us a lot of the time. It’s a good thing to know. You have power. You can use it. I said it ages ago, but it bears repeating: anger has its uses.
Its making me think that if a dude calls you a bitch, it might be because he doesn’t really see you as threatening, and that you’re just sorta bugging him. Does that take the sting out, to think that you’re really not making a fuss, that he’s just over-reacting? Or does it make it worse to think that women get smacked down for things that don’t actually matter so much?
And its making me think that if (okay, when) you get called a bitch, maybe that’s the time to ramp up your protest. Bring the rage. You want a bitch? You got it, chief. Now, this is just something I’m chewing over, and I’m not advocating going ballistic over nothing, or everything, or ever–I mean, it’s up to you–but what would happen if when the label meant to silence you turned into a goad to further action?
This post has been brewing for a week, and I still haven’t quite figured out where I stand on the issue, but I’d love to hear from our readers on the issue.
Oooh, I feel you! Whenever I fail to respond to a catcaller and hear him hiss “bitch!” at me, or when I’m told that standing up for myself–or other women, or issues I feel strongly about–makes me “sound all bitchy.” I absolutely see red.
But I’m all for embracing it these days. Yeah, I’m a bitch when you disrespect me! Got a fucking problem with that? or If I’m a bitch for defending my viewpoint, what are you? Let them chew on that!
I have really complicated feelings on this subject. I really do think that using this anger-power (I’ll call it that) is a slippery slope. And I know we all laugh at those arguments or whatever, but really, anger is sort of like a wildfire; once you start it up it’s often difficult to keep it going in the direction you want.
And yet anger got me to social justice activism.
The thing that has always appealed to me in feminist/anti-racist work is the whole idea of building a radically different world. Not just accepting this one by appointing ourselves different masters. And the use of anger as power, i.e. to intimidate someone, to exploit their weakness… that doesn’t sound that different to me than what we’ve already got. Maybe I’m just a weakling, but that’s not the kind of social justice action I actually want. I don’t need to beat the dominant at their own game.
I have found that the use of the word bitch in my presence has, in fact, led to me expressing my anger. (BTW, I missed your post On Anger until just now, and I love it.) I can’t remember the last time I was actually called a bitch. I don’t really get out much, and I don’t interact with people if I don’t know that they’re the type to not use the word bitch as an insult. But a few weeks ago a kid in my class called Dante’s Beatrice a bitch, and I was totally like WTF?! Another guy responded, “No dude I hear she’s totally hot,” which I think was supposed to be making fun of the original guy for acting like the bitch/not-bitch judgment has anything to do with an academic discussion of literature. Of course, it that just annoyed me further, and I was all, “Yeah can we try to avoid discussions that involve us acting like we’re in high school?” And it eventually led to me explaining my problems with the word bitch–besides it’s general misogyny, when the guy said that it was cool for him to use the word bitch, his reasoning was that it isn’t misogynist because he calls men bitches, too. So I went in to how it’s meant to feminize men, and of course nothing in the world is worse for a dude than being woman-like, amiright?
It ended up being helpful, not only because I think the people in my class were actually thinking about what I said, but because it was an outlet for my anger. My anger about misogyny and the social injustice of the universe is like my pilot light, and it just keeps going and going and is present in everything I say, everything I do. It occasionally manifests itself in rage or sadness or depression, but generally it’s just the background of my existence. When I hear some casual misogyny happen, I can usually express the anger without dropping into rage or sputtering and, ultimately, paralyzing fury. But when it’s directed at me, it’s different. I’m libel to turn in to smashy-smashy Hulk Me, or just as likely to calmly and rationally express the anger as a response. Thing is that sometimes I hear casual misogyny, but respond like it was a personal attack. The biggest problem with both of them, is that if I respond at all I’d be worried about more serious retribution.
“And the use of anger as power, i.e. to intimidate someone, to exploit their weakness”
But when I use my anger, it isn’t about anyone else. It’s about me, and my own way of dealing with the injustice. It’s like, I can either ignore it and go on with my life, acting as if nothing’s wrong (except that I can’t actually do that, I’m just not made that way), I can become overwhelmed and depressed, or I can get angry. The anger doesn’t exploit any person, because it’s just like this resource of fuel inside of me–rather than allowing myself to be run over and trampled, it gives my actions a shape, and an energy, that they wouldn’t have if I wasn’t angry. Besides which, I can’t help being angry.
The other thing is that my anger has made me kinder. Anger at social injustice (the patriarchy) has made me kinder to my mother, to women I have to deal with who would otherwise annoy the shit out of me. When my mother does something that would normally make me angry at her, my general anger, the anger that I have bubbling in me as a general rule, somehow redirects that energy into itself instead of out at her. I can be angry at the world, at the patriarchy, at the socialization that has poisoned my mother’s mind, rather than be angry at her. Ultimately, that means I spend less time angry at her and am then able to talk with her and, potentially, do some good for her (like telling her not to feel guilty when my father makes fun of her for feeling anxious about the appearance of her house, rather than agreeing with him).
When I get angry at someone who’s done something that makes me angry at them instead of simply adding to the already existing anger, like if someone makes a rape joke in front of me, I get angry at them but it doesn’t really exploit a weakness. Either it has no effect, or it surprises them because they so rarely see an Angry Woman.
I’ve actually tried this method before, not by upping my anger but by assertively repeating my complaints and saying why they are valid.
I don’t like to sound “angry,” because when I’m angry, I sound shrill and childish and I don’t get my point across (often because people are laughing their asses off–I’m apparently very funny when I’m angry).
So instead, I’m just extra assertive. (This is just semantics, really).
For example, my ex-bf was trying to get me back in a friends-with-benefits situation. I told him that at this point, I’d only take him back if it was a serious relationship. He starts saying crap like “you just have this outdated concept of what relationships are.” Usually, I would just be pissed and start yelling at him, but instead, I just said very calmly, “No, I don’t even care about what a relationship ‘is.’ I care about what makes me happy. The situation you’re proposing would not be satisfying to me. It is not what I want. I don’t give a shit about what a perfect relationship ‘should be’ or what I ‘should want.’”
This got across that I was calling bullshit on his argument and that I was mad, but avoided me looking like a crazed loony.
So I’d say yes, not backing off after being called a “bitch” or “crazy” or “silly” is definitely the way to go. I would just add to your advice, Becky, to make sure and pick an “angry persona” that is threatening to your audience. For women like me with high, funny voices, choosing the staredown and soft voice over yelling/crying can work wonders.
PS A couple of years ago my sister called me a bitch and I picked her up (she’s really tiny, so I can do that) and threw her out of my house. Then we had an hour-long screaming match in the street, totally trashy.
So that’s what happens when I get angry, which is why I’ve toned things down to “assertive.” Yikes.
One of the things I’ve noticed about getting angry is that it rarely actually does me any good at the end of the day. It can be an excellent motivation, but it also makes me sloppy: sloppy in my arguments and too quick to respond, so that I’m starting a statement without any real idea where I’m going with it except that “someone needs to disagree with that because it’s bull and it makes me furious!”. For me personally, it just doesn’t work. I need to be (at least outwardly) calm if I’m going to make a point and make it well.
This is not to say that others don’t use their anger with a deftness and skill that can be pretty damn powerful. And getting angry about a problem can be a very effective way of drawing other people’s attention to it. But in the long run, controlling anger as much as I can, keeping a clearer head, usually ends up working better for me personally. (Even during blazing rows, which was something I was surprised to realise. “Icy” seems to work for me…)
So I think it’s each to their own; anger affects us all a little differently. Some people need it, others (like me) find it gets in the way of the goal they’re trying to accomplish or the point they’re trying to make.
I hear ya, P.Soul, and it’s something that I’m chasing round and round in my head, but even though I haven’t quite sussed it all out yet, I don’t think anger = domination. Certainly, most of the domination in the world today isn’t fueled by anger, but by dismissal of the humanity of others. By ego.
Yes, anger intimidates. Or can, but that’s not necessarily the point. And anger can be about ego in unhealthy ways (“you hurt me and now YOU MUST PAY”), but it can also be about ego in good ways (“I won’t silently accept your poor treatment (of me or others),” or “I deserve to be heard”).
Maybe this is a language thing. In the earlier post I reference, I limn anger and rage as distinct things, embracing the former, warning against the latter. I find anger can be tremendously productive, because it’s a kind of fuel (which Cim notes, above). It propels.
It’s a fine line, though. I’m not advocating name-calling or violence, but persistence, sass, righteous indignation? Hell yeah.
I don’t find myself worrying about issues of domination when I’ve been insulted or belittled. Taking back my power by being righteously indignant and asserting myself is a response to domination. I’m not trying to dominate that other person, I’m just letting him know that he can’t dominate me.
I’ve never seen anything wrong with fighting fire with fire, but I completely agree with M’s observation that anger/indignation doesn’t need to be done Tasmanian-devil style, or at high volume. Sometimes an icy glare and a controlled, low voice gets the point across very well, and it pre-empts the whole “oh, you’re just being emotional/shrill” dismissal. I use tht approach frequently at my office and with certain members of my family.
I have always had a meek, embarrassed, get-me-out-of-here response to street harassment. But a few weeks ago when I was walking my dog and some dude started following me in a car, honking, and beckoning for me to come over to him, I decided to take your advice and Be a Bitch. In the past, I would have kept my head down, pretending that I didn’t see him, or changed directions, or some other avoidance tactic. But this time I snapped and went ballistic. I just started screaming, “Fuck you, you fucking asshole! Get the fuck away from me!” and flipping him off. He drove off in a hurry and I felt awesome. I think learning how to Be a Bitch is an important step toward feeling like a whole person with boundaries you are capable of defending. Thanks Harpies!
In my view (and its only my view) anger can do good if its then let go like a dove .. let it work then let it fly away. Caged like a canary, it is a killer. Sorry for the dumb bird analogy.
Go Jenny! WOOT WOOT!
My usual response to street harassment–as taught to me by my mother–is to put my nose in the air and imperiously ignore the harasser. But that doesn’t always work, so it sounds like your Be A Bitch response was perfect!
The reason I equated anger to domination in the above, FWIW, is that PhDork was connecting it to power and its exercise explicitly, and also saying something about how afraid men were of it, which… exploiting fear is my issue. And yeah, I kind of feel like we often tread too far when we start advocating the exploitation of people’s weaknesses.
“I can’t help being angry” works to a point, but I can’t help but point out that that is also an abuser’s self-justification, so…
I mean, look. I’m not saying people shouldn’t stand up for themselves, but I’m growing less and less fond of tongue-lashings and smackdowns as tools. Yes, they have educational value on occasion, I’m not denying that. But just as frequently I find them incredibly abusive. Obviously this all depends on whether or not your interlocutor is in good faith, and if they’re unironically using “bitch” they likely aren’t, so maybe the point is moot.
This is gonna be inarticulate because it’s on the fly, but I just feel like this whole emphasis on personal power is really destructive as a tool for social justice. Yes, it’s great to feel like you’ve “won” the situation, but having been both the stepper and the stepped-on, I can’t say my experiences with people who emphasize their anger have led towards a better world. I just can’t.
Like irnan, I find icy to be more effective for me. At this point in my life I don’t have enough control over my anger to be able to harness it healthfully. I lose focus and my point very quickly when I’m angry.
That said, I really would like to get to the point where I can harness the anger better and Be a Bitch. I couldn’t do it yesterday when a man sidled up to me and kept taking to me about how I didn’t need to worry, it was the end of the day and I could go home and rest. I kept my head high and said relatively little but I desperately wanted to tell him to back the fuck off. I just felt so powerless in the moment.
Aha, okay, here is something I wrote somewhere else on the slightly different topic of “gotcha”/”good ally” games in progressive communities, but which I think maybe gets a little better at my position on all this stuff:
“It was only gradually that I realized that not only was it making social justice about Me and My Righteousness, it was also fool’s game. All the time I was spending trying to get anointed in this way was time I was not spending actually thinking about and working on better worlds. That a lot of the mistakes I was making in terms of behaving like an ally came from the fact that I had gotten obsessed with being seen that way at the expense of learning how to act that way.
That Doing the Right Thing was not a personal characteristic to be achieved, but a process of trial and error.
Because let’s face it. The people who are interested in this game, the people who are sitting around watching and waiting to correct people who use the wrong word, who try to lay gotchas like “but my friend who is x thinks y, so, eff you,” the people who aren’t opening up spaces but trying to close people down, who shut off any criticism of the tenor and tone with which they do this with “I’m just angry” – they think they’re already there, in Do the Right Thing-land. It’s that thought, that self-satisfaction, that gives them the power to launch these attacks. Because people who are open and working and not already convinced they are there? They tend to make suggestions, venture thoughts rather than lay the smackdown in the most hostile way imaginable.
Why do they do that? Because they are always prepared for the possibility they are wrong.
It all boils down to self-awareness, really. As I’ve gotten older self-awareness has become the kind of thing I just absolutely require from everyone. If you can’t see your own limits, the content of what you’re saying is almost (almost, I said – Glenn Beck notwithstanding, in other words) irrelevant to me. It makes you the kind of person who lets your ego be invisible to you, and that’s just not kosher to me. I didn’t get into social justice because I was interested in appointing a different set of power-lovers to run the world. I got into this thing to share it. I got into this thing to live in a more generous, sharing, caring world that didn’t look like the old one with different people behind the pulpit.
If that’s not what other people want, that’s for them to say. Their space, and their activities, and their goals, are for them to define. But it’s just not something I can participate in anymore. I’m not in it to win it, to put it bluntly. That’s my boundary.”
Oh and I’ll stop dominatin’ this thread right now and go Be A Bitch to an elliptical machine, but someone also pointed me to this blog post which also sets out some positions I really, really agree with.
P.Soul, I’m off to a meeting, but I must say, having read your post/link, that I believe that you and I are talking about two utterly (or at least largely) different things.
Power /= Power Over
I’m not sure we are. What is “power” if it doesn’t have an object? I mean, that sounds nice, “Power =/= Power Over,” but at the end of the day that sounds like a statement of intention but not necessarily one of effect.
More often than not, someone asserting their “power” has unintended consequences for others. So, for example, here, if you are “asserting your power,” and your power intimidates someone else – and let’s not use just men here because I have a feeling it’ll turn into “but he’s oppressing me!” – let’s talk about other axes, i.e. women of colour, the disabled, trans people, and on and on, because those are all risks we take – that’s a problem. Even if you didn’t intend to do it. It’s a problem.
@Cimorene: I’m almost the opposite — if someone hurls a “bitch” at me in an argument or discussion, it almost makes me even calmer, or even icier, like irnan. The word, once invoked, makes me feel much more mature and in charge of the conversation. I don’t even respond to the epithet in words, just in a contemptuous glare and tone of voice that indicates something along the lines of “Wow, are you really so threatened by me?”
It’s a word I like to reclaim, as the Harpies have done here, and I often have to remind myself that it can be very damaging and misogynist. I have such a weird reaction to it that it becomes very easy for me to dismiss that.
@PS: ““I can’t help being angry” works to a point, but I can’t help but point out that that is also an abuser’s self-justification, so…”
Ah, I think here that we’re talking about different things. For me, anger is a thing that exists–it isn’t a behavior. I don’t “become” angry, I am angry. Something specific will set off and unleash my anger, if it’s the right situation–someone using the word bitch, someone making a bigoted joke, whatever. The anger is already there. It exists in my brain, it just is. It’s there and there really isn’t anything I can do about it. But the fact that it’s there isn’t a justification for anything. Well, except itself, I suppose. I can use my anger to energize me, to allow myself to act in ways that I wouldn’t if I wasn’t angry. If I wasn’t angry, I wouldn’t call people out on their shit. The anger is what allows me to overcome to social awkwardness and the socialized politeness and make me say, “Hey, that’s a fucked up thing to say.” If I wasn’t angry then I would just be polite, and my aversion for conflict (middle child syndrome like whoa here) would negate any prickle of conscience when someone says something fucked up–but the anger trumps my aversion to conflict. Not like a gun trumping a bat, or a fist trumping a face, but like paper covers rock in rock/paper/scissors. The anger is stronger than any of my other emotions, or any of the other stuff that controls my behavior.
And I think my anger is justified. I was listening to some old CDs the other day, and there’s an Ani song detailing a variety of experiences she had growing up, from old men flashing her to a guy groping (assaulting? it’s ambiguous) her on a bus, and one of the lines is something like, “girl, next time he wants to know what your problem is / girl, next time he wants to know where the anger comes from / just tell him this time the problem is his / just tell him the anger just comes / it just comes.” And I was like, Oh, Ani, this is why I fell in love with you when I was 14. The anger is a response to injustice.
I suppose it would be a problem if the anger caused me to do bad things. It was like that once, when I was in college. A semester of depression and anger and misery and misdirected anger. And I had to get over that shit, and I did, and stopped letting my anger control my behavior in a way that was destructive (and also apologized to a bunch of people for my shitty behavior the previous semester). But my anger isn’t destructive now, and that anger is part of what controls me and keeps me from getting angry about other shit. I’m way angrier than I’ve ever been in my life–way, way angrier. But I’m also more mellow than I’ve ever been, because once I became the type of person for whom feminism is a defining feature of my personality–once I was really radicalized–it was like the anger just settled into this big whole inside of me, a hole that was carved out by the injustice of the world, and instead of a fucking crazy storm of chaotic anger it just filled the hole and became a very deep lake from which I can draw whenever I need to.
Yeah, ok enough with my weird analogies. My point is that abuse is behavior, and I think it’s a behavior that’s usually controlled by rage. And rage is chaotic and misdirected and confusing. My anger isn’t behavior, it’s what allows me to do things I couldn’t normally do. And it’s not chaotic, it’s very, very precisely directed, though it’s often difficult for me to articulate exactly what it’s directed at.
I do see what you’re saying though. My “angry semester” at college is exactly the kind of anger and exercise of power that you seem to be against, and I agree with you entirely. But for some reason they seem like, for me, two totally different things. Maybe it’s not just anger, maybe it’s like this mix of anger, indignation, horror, sadness, and righteousness. And I know that righteousness can have a horrid connotation, and your point about people who, if I understand you correctly, exist in a perpetual state of righteous indignation, is sort of a different thing altogether. I agree with you that the type of person who tries to shut down conversation is frustrating and counter-productive, but when I talk about righteousness, I’m talking about being righteously indignant when someone makes a joke about bitches in the kitchen. Righteously angry.
I don’t think that this anger (my anger) is about taking power for myself, or about dismantling power in order to instate other power. It’s about smashing power hierarchies altogether. Like a hammer! My anger is like a hammer. It can smash a window, but it can also built a birdhouse. I think that maybe the concerning thing about anger is about what happens when you try to build a birdhouse but accidentally hit your thumb with a hammer and break it. Ok, seriously, I’ll stop with the analogies.
PS: I feel like you’re deliberately misreading me.
I get that you don’t like being angry, you don’t like how it makes you feel or act. Fair enough.
I don’t have the same relationship/ response to anger that you do. For me, anger doesn’t equal lashing out, or being out of control. It doesn’t mean sprouting horns or calling names or anything of the sort. It means sticking to my guns when faced with backlashy patriarchal bullshit.
This power thing is a red herring. You can’t possible think that all kinds of power are equivalent, anyway. Power can only be used to oppress or dominate, not liberate? I reject that out of hand. It’s like saying that not tolerating sexist/racist/ableist/etc. intolerance makes me the intolerant one.
If you have a dominant group, and an oppressed group, don’t you have to give the oppressed more power, or take some power away from the dominant group in order to level the playing field? Granted I’m still mulling over this post, but tentatively that’s how I see it. If we’re talking about achieving social justice and equality in a world that is currently non-just and unequal, I don’t see how we do that without redistributing power to some degree.
I guess I don’t usually rock the boat enough to be called a bitch. The only time I’ve been called a bitch in the last year or so is by a relatively minor blogger at a relatively big blog. I still think I did nothing wrong & I stand by my original criticism that garnered the “bitch” in the first place.
So I guess that’s my style. I thought about it and decided the “bitch” was undeserved. I have not been able to fully reclaim the word & don’t like to use it except in a good way (example, as synonym for cool – “Bitchin’!”)
For me I *try* to channel anger into more pointed rebuttals if it’s possible. Think about weak points in the other side’s arguments & go for those. That works if you’re having an argument, but what if you just plain don’t like each other?
Well then that’s another story & I’d probably resort to similar name-calling & psychological warfare.
I had a shrink once who said, “the bitch gets a bad rap. Sometimes she’s necessary.” It was a helpful thing to hear. I have been in relationship after relationship in which the guy I’m with is so nice that he’s unwilling to take responsibility for anything, including his feelings, desires, opinions, actions, etc. Eventually, in those relationships, I get angry. It has been a long, long road for me to learn how to feel and use anger without getting stuck in rage, which I could and did use to hurt my partner.
Anger is totally natural. It can be a warning that something isn’t right, a response to injustice or threat, a hot energy that can be used to break out of a rut. As with any emotion, it can be overused, and it can settle into the bones too much so that it calcifies into permanant rage, which I don’t think helps anyone.
I have always, without exception, been called a bitch by men who wanted to have sex with me and to whom I was saying no. When I was younger, in my twenties, I always flushed and felt huge shame. Now, it might make me laugh. I have reclaimed myself and my personal power, and such a sling is so clearly about the other person that I would be able to see that it had nothing to do with me.
So, to me, “bitch” has become mostly positive; a women who won’t take crap from men and who is centered in her strength. I now aim to internally cultivate my bitch and give her tasks to do so she doesn’t get stuck in rage, but is there if I need her.
I love the new control I’ve developed over myself in recent years. Once, I would always get shrill, squeeky and teary eyed when I was dismissed with the “bitch” comment. Now, it’s just fuel to the fire and somehow now I can almost feel myself sit up straighter, pull out my mental legal pad and start to go to town. I keep myself calm and poised and somehow it almost makes me think clearer when defending my argument or point of view.
I fully believe this wonderful “inner bitch” is a good thing to have. It let’s me have confidence in saying what I feel I need to say instead of waiting for a while later to calm down enough to re-think what the subject was in the first place. Ain’t a worst feeling than when you let yourself down.
Okay, speaking of patriarchy/bullshit–I don’t know if y’all have seen this, but I think this is great:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/EVPBingo.jpg
Anyway! I don’t care what random men might say or think about me, because “bitchiness” saves me a hell of a lot of energy. Maybe they think I’m a bitch because I’m basically telling them they’re wasting my time…?
Usually I whip it out in classes or other situations with peers where guys are mansplaining my fields of expertise* or blabbering on about just how fucking awesome they are. I stop humouring these jackasses as soon as it starts to feel the least bit taxing. Bam! Waste of my time: avoided.
*One of these fields is Chinese (Mandarin). In Chinese, one word you could use to express “being a bitch” (at least the kind I just mentioned–though the Chinese doesn’t have the bad/female connotation) is 干脆，which literally means “dry & crispy/crunchy”, like food. I am definitely super dry and crunchy when necessary.
I was raised believing that anger was fine so long as you didn’t lose control. Anger is a rational response to a situation in which you feel threatened in some way, but lose control and you’ve lost the game.
Now, I don’t think that that holds true in every situation, but for dealing with day to day bullshit, it’s fairly effective. There’s something about a person going completely cold and calm that seems to freak out the same people who would laugh at her if she were to lose her shit.
People who call you a bitch or tell you to stop being rude or whatever are obviously trying to remind you that you are not behaving in a feminine enough manner and could you please go back to being all sugar and spice right now, dammit. My response, on the rare occasions that I have been told to stop being rude has been to state very calmly that I have not yet begun.