I hadn’t heard of Backbone Zone before. Ant Allan informed me via tumblr. They have some great posters.
You can order them at their site.
I like this one, too:
I like it because I detest the “shame men by calling them girls” trope. It makes me feel murderous.
Another good one (they’re all good):
I’ve ordered the “This is a bitch. This is a girl who speaks her mind” poster for a friend of mine. She’ll love it.
I never understood why otherwise thoughtful men and women use the phrase “son of a bitch” to castigate someone. Don’t they understand that the object of the invective is the fellow’s mother?
I’d still like to be able to understand how ‘bitch’ got to be a pejorative in the first place. I gather that it’s got something to do with dogs not be as well regarded back in the day, not that I know the etymology of the term. It seems just another regressive, nasty aspect attached to its pejorative use, and the poster seems to address it implicitly.
@Bruce – Wiktionary (I know, I know. I’ll check a real source later) tells me that bitch in the sense of ‘female dog’ has been around since old English, in the form ‘bicce’, which became middle English ‘biche’, and it has been used as a derogatory word since the 15thC. Wiktionary also notes that ‘vixen’ and ‘cow’ also carry derogatory second meanings…
“Don’t they understand that the object of the invective is the fellow’s mother?”
They do, that is the point, if someone puts up with an insult against his mother, he is deeply humiliated.
Wow, I unfriended 3 people when I posted this poster on my facebook wall. Woman comes on and says, “I like being called a bitch” “I made an acronym out of it. Cuz BITCH stands for…
Beautiful
Intellectual
That
Challenges
Humanity
Sounds like a compliment to me :)”
Gag. When my response is, “No, it’s really not a compliment.” I then get accused of “sounding mad” sigh
Too bad they didn’t call you a bitch. All the irony meters in the world exploding would make for one hell of a fireworks display.
Joking aside, I’m sorry you got that kind of responses.
Ah, EllenBeth, isn’t it wonderful when friends defend their own oppression and then perpetrate it on you? I know I’m always touched when gay men tell me to stop being such a sissy about the word “faggot.” Oh, wait, I can’t actually remember that ever happening. I’m sure it does, however. But it’s remarkable that so many women aren’t even aware of their situation.
If you want to compare someone to a dog, you can also call them a cur, which is at least non-gender specific.
Wondering: Is “bitch” related etymologically to (Spanish) “bicho”?
If we’re using the cigarette as the meaning for fag, then I don’t see the problem using it as an insult.
In fact, it only makes more sense considering how disgusting smoking is and how annoying it is to find butts everywhere on the ground. Makes calling someone “fag” more akin to to calling them “piece of shit”.
In other words, if the context of sexuality was removed from the word, why not use it as an insult?
@Jamesfrancesco – “If?” “If?” Don’t try that with your hypotheticals. Just don’t.
Words are not violent.
Saying that words are violent just makes you look silly.