A few days in the low countries
This discussion gets more and more peculiar and interesting as it goes on. There is a whiff of disingenuousness about much of it – a peculiar air of outraged innocence about something that many people take to be a very overt insult. The thing that’s peculiar about that is that usually when we are told we have accidentally said something insulting – we blush and stammer and hasten to explain that we didn’t mean it that way. We don’t insist on going on using the word in the way we (but not other people) understand it. Yet this apparently doesn’t apply to epithets about women. That’s interesting.
Suppose you know a little Dutch, and you’re in Haarlem visiting friends, and you pick up a word that you take to mean something like ‘chump’ or ‘buffoon’ and you start to use it yourself. Then a friend takes you aside and gently informs you that actually the word is a vulgar racial epithet and you have horrified several very nice people by flinging it around so breezily. Would you argue? Would you say ‘well it can also just mean “buffoon” and I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.’ Maybe you would, but I doubt it. I think the usual impulse (except among deliberately obnoxious people, the Fred Phelpses of the world) is to err on the side of caution when it comes to words that can easily be taken amiss. But when it comes to epithets for women…it appears that lots of people are quite happy to just go right on cunting and twatting away.
It’s almost as if hostility to women is okay. Hostility to other races and other nationalities* not okay, but hostility to women kind of hip. Would never call someone nigger or spic or wog, but call people cunts and twats without a second thought.
If it’s true that there’s a different standard, why would that be, do you suppose?
*Except perhaps American…
Why is there a different standard? Because women don’t hit back as hard and as fast as Mike Tyson does nor do they raise the fuss that the so-called Israel lobby does, because women are raised to be understanding of others, especially of men, because women don’t want to seem aggressive or bitchy.
O.B maybe greater equality has made it seem o.k? when I grew up it was impolite to swear in mixed company.
It’s so ingrained?
Remember, even here, we’ve had at least 2000 years of propaganda that women are inferior (the catholic church being the obvious “European” example) that it is going to take time removing that idea, or at least subordinating it.
And, of course, the religions are still pushing that meme, because it enhances their power.
Richard, you miss the point.
The point is not that we should try to avoid using *ist epithets because some of the people in our company might be offended, but that we should avoid it because it’s the right thing to do.
Or are you cool with the oppression of particular groups of human beings? I certainly hope not.
TFA
Hang on, what is twat supposed to mean then? Popular opinion where I’m from is that it means pregnent camel, or something like that.
Here, cunt and twat are often chucked at men by women. False consciousness? Scuzzy women? Similarly bellend and dick are applied by men to men, and are as common as cunt and twat as all-purpose insults. Hence, I don’t believe we have different standards, just peculiar attitudes to our genitalia.
Feminism is a very radical movement. If gays marry or if apartheid ends in South Africa, it affects me not, and so I can promote freedom in those situations without any personal cost.
There is myth found in Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex and in much feminist literature, that the liberation of women implies the liberation of men too. While it’s not entirely a zero sum game, the full liberation of women has costs for most men: changing diapers and washing dishes isn’t pleasant for anyone; most males (and women) like to dominate a relationship; receiving pleasure in sex is more pleasurable than working hard to satisfy your partner in bed. Hence, feminism produces more resistance than calling for the end of racism. There’s another myth, that most sexist males are like the husband in the movie Thelma and Louise: stupid, clumsy in bed, spending most of their time watching football matches on TV with a beer in their hands. Sexist males may be brillant, witty, excellent lovers, etc.
*headdesk*
I think amos is spot-on. But I have seen the same phenomenon around racism. Just not as much, or as intensely.
Hostility to women is often considered a sign of edginess and coolness even in liberal circles, in a way that racism rarely is.
TFA, I hardly think jocular use of a hateful epithet is any guarantee of being cool with oppression.
“Hostility to women is often considered a sign of edginess and coolness even in liberal circles”
Yeah, that’s what I’m beginning (oh so slowly) to figure out. That appears to be particularly the case in the UK.
This tangentially reminds me of something depressing I’ve been thinking for awhile now: I wonder if sexism isn’t rather like a black market: just as a single unstable government provides a safe haven for things like cocaine and heroin production, as long as sexist men are able to continue getting what they want from women, if substantial change is even possible. That isn’t to say that women deserve any blame here; the ways we’re socialized and acculturated are many, and complex, and more importantly (and obviously), it’s no one else’s business whom you have sex with as long as you’re both consenting adults. But I don’t think men are sufficiently made to pay for their sexism in a way that encourages change.
There’s a terrific amount of knwlogede in this article!