Kait Mauro

My first post was personal, just my story – how I came to identify as a feminist. My second was about street harassment, a topic that, as far as I know, most self-identified feminists agree upon – street harassment sucks. What’s been exciting to me about working on this third post is that I know feminists don’t agree on this issue. I want to write about “bitch,” the word and the ways it is used and the movement to “reclaim” it. I would like to say that the world has enough people in it telling women how to think and feel and conduct themselves, and I don’t want to add to this by telling women what they should or should not call themselves. However, I do think it can be hard to see the forest that is our sexist culture  for the trees that are the words we use constantly. If it makes you think, great. If not, do what you want to do – that is feminist.

This topic, the word “bitch,” felt bigger and more complex than the other things I have tackled here so far, so I did some research. What I found was rather eye opening for me. Most of the pieces I read about the movement to reclaim “bitch” were disappointingly shallow and lacked analysis other than “We can make the word mean what we want it to mean! Girl power!” or the heavily clichéd statement “You say I’m a bitch like it’s ...