A follow-up on my “Quitcher Bitchin“ post from yesterday since I think I may not have clearly reflected my concern. Turns out last week Kimberlly of of The Errant Wife found herself subjected to a rash of insults that possibly better reflect the point I was trying to make.
Well, who doesn’t love a torrent of abuse on a Thursday?...
So far I have been called despicable, a urinal, a whore, a cunt, a bad mother a bad wife, a swine: and that is just what they are calling me on my comments, you should see what they are saying over there. By a day in it had degenerated completely: apparently I should be killed and I should have AIDS – if the world were fair that is. Interestingly, the comments got uglier as time went on. “Group think” as my husband put it. Much as we bloggers legitimize ourselves via our similar leanings – they draw strength from their numbers.
The use the perceived worst things of femininity: I have my period, I am a bad wife, a bad mother, I am ugly, I am fat, I am rapidly aging, I have a big vagina, I am (god forbid) saggy – they judge me based on a view of what it is to be a woman that I have long since rejected.
It fascinates me that in crafting their insults they see only the female – I am not a terrible person, I am a terrible woman – most of what they hurl at me from their safe anonymity are gendered insults. Because I am not a person, you see, I am an object to be possessed.
Yes, I’m aware of various etymological and linguistic support for the inevitability, and even, I guess, desirability, of using attribute-denigrating language. That plus various “recovering meaning” initiatives for words like “slut” and “queer.” And the whole “but you n-words say ‘n-word’ all the time” business.
I don’t think Kimberly’s interlocutors have any of that in mind when they call her the words they call her. Instead they call her those things because they believe it specifically, descriptively identifies her as precisely those things. Which, they believe, are the shittiest, crappiest, lowest, most worthless, things they’re capable of imagining: characteristics “of or peculiar to” something with a vagina.
My point in saying it’s hard to be sex-positive and still use those words wasn’t because I thought it’s just naughty to use un-PC words because they might hurt someone else’s feelings. Nor was it because I think there’s a real problem with people using dead metaphors without considering their once-living implications.
Instead I mean what I said, in my usual starchy way, in my first post ever on this site: “it’s hard to use cock-sucker as an epithet once you’ve met someone who knows how to do it.”
It’s not that calling someone a cunt, a cocksucker, or a slut might hurt their feelings. If you want to hurt their feelings go for it — if you pick a really scummy degrading one maybe it will hit home and they’ll feel really bad and you’ll win! It’s just… it’s hard to use those words as insults once you have an actual sexually positive understanding of their “technical” meaning.
Call me naive but I’m pretty sure none of Kimberly’s comments come from particularly sex-positive individuals.
Submitted by 2897 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-05-02 05:58.
I think saying they were not the sex-positive type is a fair assumption. Thanks for the post.
Submitted by 2897 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-05-01 01:57.
brings to mind the time in middle school when my grandmother came to visit, and afterward my "nemesis" saw fit to tell me, "your grandmother's OLD!" well, yes. yes, she was. that is a common characteristic in grandmothers, in fact.
at the time i just stared at him like the idiot he was.
Submitted by 2897 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-05-01 04:18.
A few years ago at a scientific meeting we heard a presentation from a woman who had been involved in a Supreme Court case on the teaching of evolution (on the pro-evolution side). She talked a bit about the hate mail she had received, and continues to receive decades later. The striking thing was, it was (as she told it) almost all gendered: you're ugly, you're a lesbian, you'll never get a man, you should be raped.
She expressed some bafflement as to why anyone thought "You're ugly and you'll never get a man" would be an effective insult to a long-term married mother of several children.
I was very much surprised that gendered insults seemed to far outnumber religiously based ones.
Submitted by 2897 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-05-01 07:00.
Interesting the qualities the original "how to spot a slut" post ascribed to dirty sluts--they're attractive, worldly, assertive, and good in bed. And all this is a bad thing?
[Yeah, I think that's exactly it, Holly. How the sam hill did being a cool, sexy, aware woman become the 2nd or 3rd most triggering insult? Same, for that matter, with cunt, which started out as perfectly fine word like tongue or cheek before topping the English-language insult chart. I think the answer's way, way more complicated than, say Twisty's view that everybody just hates women so why not. But "more complicated" isn't the same as "so not really a problem." I think it's got a lot to do with people... and for some reason mostly men... being scared of and/or conflicted about sex. And associating women with it. (Leo Tolstoy, to pick a famous example, was horrified by what he considered his desire for celibacy and his helplessness in the face of his wife's seductiveness... even though her diaries say she really, really wasn't into it.) Heteronormative as heck, sure, but there's a lot of heterosexuality out there. So anyway, that's why I keep thinking it collides with Ethical Slut-style sex positivity. --fl]