When women don’t comply with a smile when cleaning up your shit
By Katherine Needleman
Before I go any further, I need to say something obvious: a huge proportion of women have been called “fucking bitch” by a seething man. Some of us are “lucky,” like me, in that the damage shows up as professional fallout—quiet, untraceable, and impossible to fully quantify in my lovely shitstain of a profession. Others are not lucky at all. Some end up dead, like Renee Nicole Good. We cannot underestimate the violence men perpetrate against women.
Just today, I heard from a woman and advised her to sneak out of her apartment with her baby in the middle of the night. That is the continuum we are talking about. “Fucking bitch” is violent language. It is not casual. It is not harmless. It is not expressive language. It should raise every red flag and hackle you have when you hear a man use it.
Yesterday, I had a brief comment interaction with a self-described musical instrument repairman named Art Gale. He came to my page to explain the oboe to me and tell me how to care for it. I thanked him, because apparently I do not know anything about the oboe or oboes cracking and this was all new information to me.
After a number of people pointed out that I did not, in fact, need an education about the oboe from him, he eventually seemed to get it. I told him not to worry—I wasn’t upset. I told him I was naming something, not reacting to it, because I am deeply used to this. I told him that every single day, men who are less qualified than I am explain things to me that I am expert in.
He asked if it was really only men. I said yes. He didn’t believe me. I told him to believe me. Then he got upset and said that women also do problematic things.
For the record: I cannot recall a single woman ever giving me unsolicited criticism about my oboe playing or instructing me on how to do something with an oboe without my asking first. Men do it constantly—especially every time I post something with an oboe in it. And in the same vein, it is only men who have ever called me a “fucking bitch” with the kind of vitriol I describe in the piece below. It has never been women.
“Fucking bitch” is not a figure of speech. It is what men say when they believe you may not be fully obedient—when they may just be beginning to smell that you are not the woman they need you to be.
I am so used to being called “fucking bitch.” And I am naming it now. I need to today.
Sometimes “fucking bitch” just ends in professional damage that can never be fully traced. Sometimes it ends in fear. Sometimes it ends in women quietly planning exits. And sometimes it ends in death.
What follows is a story from decades ago, but it is not old. The language hasn’t changed. The entitlement hasn’t changed. We are in a constant loop. And I am naming it today because I need to.
This morning, watching the video of Renee Good being shot and hearing the officer say “fucking bitch,” I felt physically ill. I wasn’t shocked or surprised. I was sick with recognition. I knew this moment exactly. Renee Good’s murderer simply carried something I’ve heard on repeat my entire life to its lethal end.
Watch the men who speak like this carefully.
What you say is painfully true and is still so common in day to day dealings between women and (some?) men.
What I find even more frightening, not diminishing your frequent experience of such animosity and your resultant fear, is that a government agency (paramilitary force of the Right) is hiring people who are so unstable and operating on a hair trigger before their hatred and insecurity kick in and they shoot a woman in the head multiple times.
Excellent aricle. Thank you. On a broader note, ICE are Trump/Steven Miller’s Brown Shirts! Beware. They won’t stop with the Fucking Bitches.