Language & Gender: Introduction and Insults

Introduction

• 800 years ago, the word "b****" was a general term for genitalia before modern English.
• Speech can be a weapon if used incorrectly.
• Language is a means through which people can be harmed and is undervalued.
• Human societies were not always patriarchal; man's rule began around 4000 BCE.
• Judgments about women's speech can keep them in a state of self-questioning and silence them.
• Parents often refer to animals as "he", even when the animal is visibly female.
• Terms like "girlboss," "SHE-EO," and "momtrepeneur" show that dominant positions in companies are coded male by default.
• There was no empirical data regarding language and gender before the 1970s.
• Sex is defined as something a man does to a woman, and the word "penetration" is male-oriented.

Gendered Insults

• Insulting a woman often involves calling her a prostitute, while insulting a man involves calling him a woman.
• 365 students compiled a list of slang words, collected by Sutton in 1990, to determine the most often used slang words, yielding 3788 words.
• 166 of the terms specifically referred to or were about a woman.
• Sutton divided these terms into four semantic categories: sexual promiscuity, fatness, evilness, and level of hotness.
• Examples of frequently used words include "slut," "whore," "skanky," "hoebag," "bitch," "hoochie," "heifer," and "hellpig."
• UCLA conducted a similar survey of gendered insults in 1989.
• 90% of slang words for women were negative, while only 46% of slang words for men were negative.
• There were positive terms for women, but they were sex-themed, comparing women to food ("treat," "peach," "slice").
• Linguists thought that any language spoken under a patriarchal system would be this way, because language reflects the culture's power structures and beliefs.
• Negative terms for women in English carry sexual connotations.
• Insults for men tend to stem from their illusions to women ("wimp," "sissy," "pussy").
• Terms for females follow a process of pejoration: starting as a completely neutral term, then as a neutral-female term, and then finally sexualised and negative.
• "Hussy" used to mean housewife (female head of household), but eventually came to mean prostitute.
• "Tart" meant simply and small pie or pastry and then meant prostitute.
• "Slut" used to mean untidy, then immoral, and then prostitute.
• "Manslut" implies that sluts are women and male sluts are an exception.
• Human sexual independence started to be derided around 10,000 years ago when humans stopped living as nomads.
• Female monogamy became a must when people started owning land to be able to leave it to their children.
• Disgust for female sexuality doomed words that talked about it.
• Women are compared to food, animals, or sex workers if you want to insult them.
• Julia P Stanley (1970) found 220 sexual slang terms for women.
• Most of the metaphors were negative and fit with whore or virgin ideologies.
• She found only 22 sexual metaphors for men, precisely 1/10th of those for women, had actively positive connotations.
• The University of Belgrade, Serbia (2013): Men use pig to describe sloppy, untidy women, women use pig to call all women fat.
• Caitlin Hines (1999) found women are systematically likened to sugary fruity items like tarts and cupcakes.
• Women are supposed to be sweet, single-serving items, that can be easily snapped up.
• Sally McConnell-Ginet (Cornell pg.36): women generally get better at picking up on other peoples thoughts, which gives men more space to give specific metaphors that make sense to them.
• Eliza Scruton (2017) examined 50 million words from the Internet to determine gender-specific words.
• Terms like "nasty," "bossy," and "nag" skew strongly female in usage, often appearing before "wife" and "mother."
• Calling names is to shape the recipients actions to fit the speakers desired image.
• Words like "slut," "bitch," "boob," and "tit" tend to be short and plosive which makes them more fun too say and stick around.
• Words used by an in-group become more affectionate.
• Sutton found that many of her young female participants called their friends "bitches".
• Semantic-reclamation is about solidarity and liberation and rejecting old standards of femininity.
• Reclamation-by-meme transfers the ownership of words from abusers to oppressed people.
• "Nasty woman" became a GIF, a fundraising campaign for Planned Parenthood, and was stolen from the man who first said it.
• It is possible to eradicate or redefine words that are offensive to women.
• The idea of criticizing a woman for being over 40 and unmarried is almost gone, and so are words like spinster.
• Using words like "slut" for McDonald's is a form of protest against the condemnation of women's sexual independence.