On Bitches and the Angry Intolerant Left

Yesterday I placed my latest Anti-Ann Coulter rant on Dkos - and because I refered to her as a "Bitch" - All Hell Broke Lose. Here's the update I had to include after changing the title.

Hm, I wrote my post, took a nap and while I was gone a shitstorm happened. Ok, people - I have CHANGED THE TITLE. Obstensibly because of Rule 7. That one word was not the reason I got up a 5am to write this diary. I personally happen to use the word often in a gender neutral way, have been married happily for 15 years - to a female. I express here my thoughts on re-contextualization. Something that singer songwriter Meredeth Brooks explored in her song "Bitch" in 1997, still HER biggest hit ever.

The debate of gender roles and gender rules is a good one, not the point of this diary - but a good discussion none-the-less. I think much of the overreaction to the original dairy title is missplaced and frankly, sad. I tend to agree with Brookes as well as Ice T (when he wrote that Men could be "Bitches 2") that words only have meanings within context and usage. It should be about what idea the person is trying to convey, not simply because the listener has a negative connotation to one particular word that was used because of it's historical meanings. If that's not what they mean, it's not what they mean.

Words change over time, and trying to exlude certain words from usage will never work because people will simply recontextualize other words to make the same point.

About 15 years ago I was member of the Black Rock Coalition and was in attendance of a meeting in UCLA when Living Colour came to town on tour with Rolling Stones. Guns N Roses had been added to the L.A. show dates at the Coliseum and while on the air at KROQ FM two members of LC were asked about the GnR song "One in a Million" which has the line...

"Police and Niggers - that's right - get out of my way. Don't need to buy none of your gold chains today.

While on the air they pretty much trashed the song, and Axl Rose who wrote it - but things weren't that simple at the meeting - which was almost entirely black, except for my wife and stepson) I happen to be black and male. The truth is that black people use the word "Nigger" also, frequently. They have for a very long time, both in a negative context and a positive. Vernon Reid's position was that you can never escape the historical meaning of the word and that ANY usage is inappropriate because it will always have the weight of history attached, no matter who is saying it.

At one point Vernon apologized for his own language use (lot's of "fucks and mother-fuckers" were flying) because of the presence of my 12 year old step-son, who then responded with "I've already heard all that stuff at middle-school, don't sweat it".

Others disagreed with Vernon's position and felt more like the members of Body Count. I was with those others and also sided with Guns N Roses (there was an apology on the cover of the album explaining that that song was "highly generalized" - the song was actually about overcoming racial and ethnic strife by finding a bond with some, but needed some rework to make that point clearer). If you attempt to exclude certain words, you may believe something has been accomplished - but all you've done is short circuited the listening process.

People may not use those words, but they'll still feel the same way and will simply swap in news words to say the same thing. The entire "Macaca" experience shows us this.

I feel it's better to speak your mind openly and honestly rather than self-censor. If people are at least listening to what you say rather than what they want to hear, they probably won't need to decoder manual to understand you.

Yo Nigga, Vyan

Even after making the title change, there were still complaints - because I simply refused to agree with their premise that using such an epithet should always be offlimits because it can be hurtful to women.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Look, I agree that some people are clearly made of candyglass, but my advice to those people is to stay home and stock up on a shitload of bubble-wrap to sleep in. The world is a cold hard place sometimes, if you don't have toughskin to deal with it, it'll deal with you. Whining and crying that somebody hurt your feelings by calling someone who really is a bitch - a Bitch - is ridiculous IMO.

When I discussed this with my own wife, she said "Bitch" is an empowering word for her. It's almost like what you do when you've lost the arguement... like petulantly tossing the gun when you've run out of bullets. I get that. To some extent calling Coulter a Bitch is actually a compliment, she succeeded at her goal of being a "media whore" (Don't fucking start with me, ok- you know what I mean) and drawing attention to her demented ideas. But my original post wasn't really about her anyway - it was about those ideas, which is the real issue.

Was I thinking of the female-dog version of "Bitch" when I wrote what I wrote? Not really. I honestly didn't think about it for more than a half second. I thought it might make people look at the dkos version of the post, but I really didn't spend that much time on the entire thing in the first place. Reformating it for dkos - removing all <> tags took longer.

And they were mean too. (Lol) Check out this irony, their complaint was that I was insulting women - in general, not just Coulter, all women - and it was inappropriate. Unacceptable. EVER. I changed the title, then explained that they hadn't changed my mind about how words can and should be used (as explained in the update above) and some of them said - "Bullshit". "That's a load of crap" and "idiotic pop philosphy."

So I can't say Ann Coulter is a bitch - but I'm an Idiot? A Bullshitter? Full of Crap? What kinda double-standard shit is that?

My direct - and somewhat more measured - response was this:

I have yet to call anything you've said to me either "crap", "Idiotic" or "bullshit" - I've simply disagreed civily and explained my reasons. What I think you've done is give a great example of why the Political Correctness movement has failed so dramatically. Sensitivity is good, but regimented obedience isn't.

Pardon me while I do a Rumsfeld:

Do I think certian words can hurt viciously? Yes. Do I think those certain words should be banned from use always - regardless of context and usage? Hell, no! I think people will just replace them with new words, and then we'll all be in the dark - several steps behind until we finally figure out what they're really saying. (I.e Macaca)

My position remains: Fight the ideas with better ideas, not just the words.

Thanks for your comments.

The thing that still really bothers me is how familiar this is - it took a minute and then I realized what it was. This is exactly the same thing that David Brock (of Media Matters for America) went through in college - and was a key moment in turning him from a Liberal to a Neo-Conservative.

In his sophmore year at Berkeley, Brock was a cub reporter for the Daily Californian scheduled to cover an on campus speach by Reagan UN Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, architect of much of Reagan's anti-communist policies in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

It was a near riot, with dozens of protestors chanting "Fourty Thousand Dead" and "U.S. Out of El Salvador". They completely drowned Kirkpatrick out. She attempted several times to speak, but was shouted down - eventually giving up and departing. Brock describes the incident in his book "Blinded by the Right."

The scene shook me deeply: Was the harassment of a unpopular speaker the legacy of teh Berkeley-campus Free Speech Movement, when students demanded the right to canvass for any and all political causes on the campus's Sproul Plaza? Wasn't free speach a liberal value? How, I wondered, could this thought police call itself liberal? The few outspoken conservatives on the faculty, and the Reagan [appointed] regents, raised their voices in support of Kirkpatrick'sfree speech rights. The liberals seemed tome to be defending censorship.

That was the moment that set Brock on a path rejecting the hypocracy of the radical left - and into the waiting and willing arms of the radical right. He wrote about the Kirkpatrick incident and was vilified for it. It became a game to him, a constant struggle of "us vs them", eventually the fight itself became his primary moral compass - he would adapt and contort himself into any position simply to "get them" - to "take some scalps" as he later became a writer for the Moonie Times, and Scaif funded American Spectator. Brock is the man who exposed Trooper Gate, and gleefully trashed Anita Hill during the Thomas confirmation hearings. ("She's a little bit slutty and a little bit nutty") It was years before he came to his senses and realized he had essentially betrayed himself, and his own values in the battle to "get those lefties".

The truth is many of today's Neo-cons are Ex-Liberals like Brock. Coulter herself was once a birkenstock wearing Grateful Dead devotee. There's also people like former consumer rights advocate David Horowitz, who went being hard left to becoming a rabid dog (bitch!) for the hard-right.

The second thing that struck me is the fact the Coulter is a public figure. This was a face-to-face conversation, it's not about someone I know personally and the rules really are different, particularly when it comes to the issues of slander and libel. As was shown by the case of Falwell v Flint (Where Hustler Publisher Larry Flint was sued for making a parody that alleged that Jerry Falwell had been conceived in an Outhouse - or put another way - "he was a peice of shit") the First Amendment protects those who would use even the most vile speech against a public figure.

Sure, peoples feeling might indeed get hurt, I tend to feel that's life in the big city - but if I'm talking to someone directly, not a public figure, but someone I know and have some type of relationship with - they'd have to drive me pretty damn far to drop the B-Bomb on them. I probably wouldn't do it to someone in that context.

That's just common courtesy IMO. But in relation to a well known sociopath wing-nut shill like Coulter? Fouggedaboutit! Bombs Away.

Bottom Line: Liberalism has a ways to go still. True Free Speech is painful. People will definatley say shit you really don't want to hear, but trying to shut them up or shout them down isn't the solution. The Radical PC-ites hypocracy tends to inflame and embolden those on the hard right who push back by becoming profane simply because they can - I would argue that Coulter's own make-up is strongly driven by exactly this reaction.

There has to be a better way. Censorship isn't it, but perhaps - just maybe - better speach is.

I'm just saying...

Vyan