i have so many Feelings about the word ‘bitch’. i love when it’s used humorously (’i’m out here ruining my own life as always bitch’), i love when it’s reclaimed (’i’m a boss-ass bitch’), i love when my female friends call me jokingly (‘listen here bitch’), but when a man says it? sirens, warning lights. when a man calls a woman it it comes with such hatred. it’s stabbing. it’s sharp and vile and it drips misogyny. it’s funny how the word can be fine 95% of the time and the other 5% of the time it genuinely fills me with fear
This is the nature of reclamation! In 2019 “bitch” is for women. Gay jokes are for lgbtqia+ people. The n word is for African Americans. And the list goes on. There’s a reason why those words feel different depending on their source; just because we’ve reclaimed the word for ourselves does not mean we’ve reclaimed it for everyone. It doesn’t mean that word is cleansed of its history and stripped of its weight. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the groups who used to wield those words as weapons against us can’t still hurt us with them - even if that’s not their intention.
Yes. A word CANNOT be reclaimed by, or for, a group it never described.
And we are not obligated to GIVE BACK “bitch” (or “queer” or any other reclaimed slur) to our oppressors, even if we use it daily to describe ourselves.
They don’t get to use it to describe us anymore. Not for a very long time, and maybe never.
it really is next to impossible to write realistic sibling dialogue, I just passed my brother on the stairs and instead of greeting each other like human beings I said ‘born survivor’ and he said ‘youtube rewind. let’s set it to rewind.’ like you ain’t gonna find that shit in a novel
aw man writing siblings is so wild because sometimes you just can’t portray it
me and my little brother don’t even greet each other - if we pass each other on the stairs or in the corridor, we jump into ridiculous fight stances then feign karate chopping and slapping each other (stopping just before we make contact) whilst making “HIIIYA” and “POW” noises for a solid 30 seconds, then silently walk off and continue what we were doing
and then sometimes he’ll either just do the Had To Do It To ‘Em pose when I enter the room or dab as a greeting
exactly! I have three younger brothers and the original post was just about the oldest, the middle one and me usually do some kind of elaborate dab also, and a lot of the time when I see the youngest I just yell his name like a wrestling commentator…siblings have a different language
i have so many Feelings about the word ‘bitch’. i love when it’s used humorously (’i’m out here ruining my own life as always bitch’), i love when it’s reclaimed (’i’m a boss-ass bitch’), i love when my female friends call me jokingly (‘listen here bitch’), but when a man says it? sirens, warning lights. when a man calls a woman it it comes with such hatred. it’s stabbing. it’s sharp and vile and it drips misogyny. it’s funny how the word can be fine 95% of the time and the other 5% of the time it genuinely fills me with fear
