I’m biting my tongue again. Its always a minor instance, I let it slip endearingly or in a flash of anger. So casually it jumps out to punctuate my sentences and name my stories characters. Then follows a sort of remorse. Betrayal as the betrayer, taking a point from my own team. Its bigger than me anyway, in the way where I’ll never produce as much waste as an entire factory. Yet the pollutant still exists and I am still a participant in the degradation.

A bitch can be separated from the adjective and the noun:

1. Bitch (adj) def. an insult for someone who is rude, deceptive, conniving, manipulative, or unwilling to stand on any principle firmly. 

2. Bitch (noun) def. a female dog

They’re simply equated in common context because of misogyny. What’s worse than being a dog is being a woman and a dog. When a man says “I’m not a bitch” do they mean they aren’t a woman with a vagina, or do they really mean they’re not a punk and will stand on whatever they need to. “Pussy” is used to the same degree. They aren’t scared. Men endearingly call themselves dogs for aggressively grotesque behaviors and still use the term bitch degradingly. For some, being a dog isn’t bad in the slightest. Being a woman always is though. Somehow we’re roped back in. What could just be an insult must perpetuate misogyny, for how else could the fragile patriarchy survive… 

It is akin to using the word female over woman, it is reductive. It removes the humanity from the statements as if referring to a scientific specimen rather than a person. A word as derogatory as bitch becoming used as synonymous to refer to a woman could only be indicative of a societal hatred. Especially toward Black women, who are disproportionately addressed by this within and outside of the community. My own usage is linked to this internalization and it feels embarrassing to know Big Misogyny’s agenda got me. Using it jokingly with comrades behind enemy lines still echo their presence. I am unsure of reclamation being so simple.

Baddie has become synonymous with the term bad bitch (which is a “positive” derivative of bitch), and is still unfortunately as objectifying. It is a small departure from the original meaning. My hopeful definition still stands at multifaceted entrepreneurs and future leaders with more to offer than just their looks. A google search will yield results largely made up of physically idealized women toting hourglasses to keep time with the male gaze.

However, that’s the cycle prescribed to us. Caricature Black Bodies entangled in Sex and Violence. Entertainment. They are the product (we are the consumers). There are no innocent, by design. Peddling the belief of anything but perfection will be persecuted is act of suppression. Why fight against something you engage with, hypocrite! How many times can we receive the same product in shinier and shinier packaging until we realize its full of shit.

I question true liberation in the illusion of freedom and choice. I am now of the belief of living in a manufactured society, a Truman Show-esque nightmare where choice does not exist. Money exists and money is needed. If feminisms goal is to liberate us from toxic language, help the genders find common ground and give us time to think about more pressing issues, then feminism cannot exist. Not according to me of course, but the show-makers and puppet-masters and such. 

I am annoyed because as a black woman, they haven’t created many more archetypes. I am not anger and I am not sex. I am not an animal. My race and sex shouldn’t make me a sub-genera. Language is often used to keep us from escaping real prisons. They are the walls reinforced by real actions. It didn’t have to evolve in this manner. Words are not adapted without intention and definitions are ever changing.

Several times I’ve found myself wanting to define a Bitch as a broken woman. I know this is wrong with the implication there is a uniform version of an ideal woman to achieve. Every experience is correct whether it be happy or angry or confused. If I could define a Bitch in strict relevance to women, it would go as follows:

1a. woman seen through the eyes of the man living in her head…an efficient self-surveillance system which breeds shame and anger (volatile reaction to coerced conformity).

2a. product of abused kindness and policed freedom. she refuses to be small. she refuses to ask for less.

3a. protective mask, a hardened shell, a spiky exterior to ward off danger; show her you’re a dog and she’ll bark like a bitch. 

She can never rest.