I need your help: I like your writing and I especially love supporting your independent work, but I have a real problem with the word 'bitch'. I know using it for the title of your new work is supposed to be challenging and radical, but it's still a negative term being touted as a positive trait. Can you help me understand how the term 'bitch' can have positive meaning so I can get past the cover title?
//I know using it for the title of your new work is supposed to be challenging and radical//
Whoa. Hang on! You don’t know that. You think that. Which is fine, but for the record, I’m neither being, nor trying to be challenging and/or radical in using that title. I chose it because I think it’s hilarious. I’m trying to be funny. …I’ll leave it to others to evaluate my success in that pursuit.
Look, here’s the thing: I don’t know how to make something not offend you. If it’s problematic for you, don’t read the book. We can still be friends. And honestly, if that word triggers you, then what you find on the pages therein is going to be lot more problematic than the cover. (And I appreciate your desire to support independent work, but PRETTY DEADLY ain’t gonna be your cuppa either. And that’s okay. Not all books are for everybody. No biggie. Doesn’t mean anything about either one of us.)
My feeling on this sort of thing: words are powerful. Some words we ask children to abstain from because they can use them to hurt themselves or someone else. You don’t have to use special words to hurt someone, but they make it a hell of a lot easier. My four year old can’t be trusted with “bitch” any more than she can be left alone with a machete or chlorine bleach. I, on the other hand, am a grown ass woman. I understand the repercussions of my language choices. There are some words I will never use myself, because they’re words that would never do anything but cause pain coming from me and I don’t want to do that. (That said, I might write a character that uses those words, because sometimes I write people who are angry or ignorant or in pain and sometimes those people use language in a way I hope I never would myself.) I understand that putting bitch in the title means some people won’t buy the book. It also means some stores won’t carry the book. Val and I have weighed those pros and cons and decided we’re all right with that.
More damage has been done to me and mine with assumptions, insinuations and seemingly innocuous word choices than with all the “bitches,” “cunts,” “sluts” and “whores” on all of 4chan.
And there’s the HOW it’s used too. When Marky Mark says in Transformers 4, “You going to do this or you going to bitch out on me?” (that’s not a direct quote but fuck, I’d rather swallow my tongue than watch that movie again to get the quote right) he’s equating the feminine with the weak or the cowardly. I take offense to that. That is not how I know women to be. But when Dani calls me Queen Bitch, she means I’m assertive and BOSS. I like that. I wear that necklace proudly.
People say shit about me that is patently untrue on the internet every fucking day. From who they think I “ship” [Peter and Carol?! Are you fucking kidding me??] to how they think I got my job [google it]. For a multitude of reason—not the least of which is simple time management—I cannot go about correcting them. I live with it. That makes me CRAZY.
If they say I’m a bitch? If they mean I speak up for myself and others and call out bullshit when I think it matters… even when it means I’m going to make the room uncomfortable… I can live with that. At least there’s a grain of truth to it. I wish I were brave enough to be a bitch more often.
The women on Bitch Planet are wildly imperfect, but on the whole they are my heroes. They are the ones who refuse, at great personal cost, to live in the little boxes allotted to them. And SPOILERS:
areudirty
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
izzy806
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
