So it is summer, and things have slowed down and now I have time to do things like watch television. It seems like it has been awhile since I have watched so much television, but I am going to put a halt to it very soon. I cannot believe what I am seeing! Has the world become so numb and accepting of the violence against women in TV? Reality television has stooped to the lowest level when a bunch of women are vying for a bachelor? Roma women are punching each other and slapping the face of a pregnant woman? Vancouver beauties fight over who has more filler or botox? And on top of that the “Bitch” word and “Slut” word gets furiously hurled around like it was nothing, even in daytime programming which was once supposed to have higher decency standards!
Since when did it become acceptable and common place to call women female dogs? I don’t care if some women have reclaimed this word as their own. The connotation is still negative. We are ascribing half of the world’s population to the status of an animal. Why are anti-racist activists so good at challenging the use of derogatory and racist words and women are not? Is it that women are unsuccessful with challenging it, or are their calls not being heard? When was the last time you saw the “N” word written if full? You probably haven’t. The “N” word has become so repugnant in our vocabulary that the mere sight of it, makes a lot of people enraged. It’s meaning heralds back to a time of slavery, inequality, and the inferior role that black people had in our society.
I wish that we could do the same with the “B” word or the “S” word and others What will it take for us to see that calling women these words is repugnant as well? It seems that we haven’t really progressed that much. By using these words, we show that we are backward and that women have not reached the same equal status as men in our society. We still judge them on their submission, passivity, and on their sexual history.
Let’s challenge one another when we use these words against women. One by one we can make these misogynistic words cast outs from our vernacular. It is going to take some time but high time that women enjoyed equal status in this society, don’t you think?