Insulting Women

After I finished my seven-part series on English-language insults, I realized that the words I presented were primarily directed against men, either implicitly or explicitly. Some of them, of course, have a feminine connotation (dingbat, for example, though that word was coined as an insult against men), but most were directed at men. So as not to be accused by my feminist friends of always focusing on the male aspects of things, I have decided to give women equal time in the insult category. Indeed, I have come up with about the same number of insults or negative descriptors of women (30+) as I did of men. The purpose of this essay is to give an overview to the topic; subsequent essays will probe some of these words in more depth.

Let's begin with the list, which may be the largest collection of negative words for women you have ever seen in one place. They are, in alphabetical order: (1) baggage/bag; (2) bitch; (3) courtesan; (4) drab; (5) floozy; (6) harlot; (7) hell-cat; (8) hilding; (9) hoochie; (10) hussy; (11) jade; (12) lass*;

[*lass almost always has a postive connontation.]

(13) minx; (14) mistress; (15) pole-cat; (16) prostitute; (17) punk; (18) quean; (19) rag/ge; (20) ronyon; (21) shrew; (22) slattern; (23) slut; (24) strumpet; (25) termagant; (26) tramp; (27) trollop; (28) trull; (29) virago; (30) vixen; (31) wanton; (32) wench; (33) whore. I am sure this list isn't complete though it is a reprsesentative sample of our creativity in this department. Whoops. One more: (34) feminazi.

Preliminary Thoughts

Many observations come imediately to mind. First, several of these insults have both a neutral and negative connotation. Such words, like jade or wench, show that a term often "matures," or degenerates, as time goes on. Second, the words tend to collect in three categories of "faults," if you will, of women according to the values of the time. Those three areas are sexual deficiencies, deficiencies in cleanliness and in conduct. The "conduct" definition has to do more with intrusive, boisterous or overbearing activity than simply inappropriate sexual activity. Third, for some reason, most of these words tend to congregate towards the end of the alphabet. I don't know if that has any significance. Fourth, some of these insults refer to both men and women, but I have put them here if the "female-usage" seems to predominate. Fifth, I was struck by the fact that most of the insult words against women are very old words; in fact, I found only two in the modern era (1955-today) that expressly referred to women. This is strongly contrasted with my conclusions about male insults. In that case, the number just keeps growing. Perhaps this says something about us and our culture. With the combined forces of feminism, where insulting women just isn't "progressive," and traditional views of women, where insulting women isn't "nice," our minds may be so pre-occupied with thinking good things of women (or at least suppressing the verbal expression of bad things) that we cannot invent contemporary insults against women in English. Nevertheless, this last point may give us insight into how we might be able to cultivate insults over time. Since they, like Jesus' poor, will always be with us, we might as well have some that really capture what we are talking about.

The "Contemporary" Insults of Women

The two negative descriptors of women developed in the last 20 years are feminazi and hoochie. The latter may not be as familiar as the former, but here they are. The OED, usually the "Bible" of the sport of words, says that the inaugural use of feminazi was in March 1990 in the Atlanta Journal & Constitution. But what would have been helpful is if the OED had really credited the right person for the word: Rush Limbaugh. It does say that he "popularized" it; it would be nice to know if he invented it. Perhaps the J & C article does that, but here is all we get from the OED: "Let commie-liberals, femi-nazis and other bleeding hearts quibble over that." It gives the second attestation in 1992 in Rush Limbaugh's book (can he write?), Way Things Ought to Be: "Many young women today have little in common with the militants of the 1970s, many of whom are now the embittered feminazis."

But if you do a little more research, you realize that the term appeared in Dec. 1990 when the NY Times dedicated a story to Rush Limbaugh, whose two year-old daily radio show had, at that time, garnered an average of 1.3 million listeners per day. That Dec. 16 article, entitled "The Rush Hours," includes a lexicon of some "Rushisms" that were prevalent about that time. Everyone knows of words such as "dittohead" and "ditto," but Rush coined words such as "Gorbasm": "Any sign of approval of the current Soviet leader displayed by Americans other than Republican Presidents" and some others. Among his most popular were: "Feminazis (i.e., radical feminists), Environmental Wackos, Humaniacs (this never caught on), the Art & Croissant Crowd." These people were the objects of his displeasure and, according to him, causes of the world's major ills. Among others he despised were gay activists, homeless advocates, animal rights activists, black activists, artists, vegetarians and female reporters in locker rooms.

I think feminazi caught on because it captured the dour, puglistic, puritan-driven conduct of the first-generation of feminists. One might argue that the first generation of any movement needs to be terribly committed and focused, but that same first generation can easily be ridiculed. So he did.

I am out of space here; let's turn to the other modern insult and then move back in history.

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