Earlier this week, the world’s greatest and most important recording artist went on a stream of consciousness tweeting spree about “bitch” and its numerous connotations. Although he drew no ultimate conclusion about his basic premise — Is the word “bitch” acceptable? — the short and largely rhetorical conversation touched on a topic that will never not be relevant to people who enjoy language, all language, and the myriad ways to incorporate it.
Personally, I think that, under certain conditions, bitch is perfectly acceptable. Like nigger/nigga and any other politically charged word, the word itself isn’t inherently wrong, and the rightness or wrongness of its use is completely dependent on context, speaker, and audience.
When exactly is it perfectly acceptable to say bitch? Glad you asked…
When speaking ironically
Example: “Hey man. What’s going on?”
“Just sitting here at my cubicle, filing expense reports, preparing for this staff meeting, mackin’ bitches. You know, the usual.”
“Cool”
When your entire wedding party, including your unborn daughter, has been murdered by a group of ethnically diverse and impossibly attractive world-class female assassins
Although you might not be as adept at tracking each of them down and murdering them as Beatrix Kiddo was, if something like this happens to you, I really can’t begrudge you the right to refer to your would be assassins as bitches. Plus, “I’m going to straight-up murk those bitches” just rolls off the tongue much better than “I’m going to straight-up murk that group of ethnically diverse and impossibly attractive world-class female assassins.”
When asserting dominance over an inanimate object
Examples: “You probably should put a jacket on. It’s getting chilly”
“Don’t worry about it. The approaching cold front is totally my bitch”
or
“What did you have for breakfast this morning?”
“Dude, I made those pop tarts my bitch!”
When alone in the car and repeating the lyrics to any rap made before 2003 by any rap artist hailing from somewhere west of the Mississippi river or south of the Mason-Dixon line
There are too many songs to possibly list that could qualify, but for the most bang for your buck, listen to “Bitch Ass Niggaz” just so you can recite the first couple bars of Hitman’s aggressively homoerotic verse.
When addressing a female dog
And by “a female dog” I mean “an asshole cat who’s attempting to eat the shoe off of your foot because the shoe is gray and his dumb ass thinks it’s a giant mouse with a white swoosh on its abdomen”
When paying someone a compliment
Example: “Man, those new foamposites you’re rockin are pretty bitchin”
“Thanks, dog. I didn’t think anyone would notice”
“I always notice, man.”
“Always?”
“Always”
When derisively commenting on something done by a professional athlete
Example: “Kobe’s making his bitch face again”
“Why is Kobe always bitchin to the refs? F*cking bitch!”
“Ugh. I want to root for the Lakers this year cause I love Steve Nash, but I can’t because Kobe is such a bitch”
“There goes Hobe Bitch-ass Bitchyant playing hero ball again. F*cking bitch!”
When talking to actual, real life bitches
Because it can be very difficult to determine exactly what makes someone a bitch — and because most people properly and fairly given the bitch designation will still reject and scoff at said designation — it’s still probably not wise to refer to properly deemed bitches as bitches. You’d be morally, logically, and linguistically correct, but you still might get shanked.
If you’re a hipster, a liberal academic, or a person who shops at Trader Joe’s
Why? Well, if you’re one of these things, you can’t possibly be sexist, racist, xenophobic, or homophobic and nothing you can possibly say could be offensive to anyone in any context because you deeply understand how words can injure and insult and you’d never intend to do that to anyone
When someone owes you money
Doesn’t matter if it’s a priest, a bank, or your girlfriend’s great uncle. If someone owes you money, and has gone a suitable period of time without returning said money — and, for argument’s sake, “suitable period of time” is determined by a complex matrix dependent on how long it’s been, how much you’re owed, and how broke you currently are — it’s perfectly okay to mutter “That bitch better have my money” to yourself if on the way to see them.
Anyway, people of VSB.com, do you think “bitch” is ever acceptable? If not, why not? If so, are there any other situations where using it is appropriate?
—Damon Young (aka “The Champ”)
Don’t forget to listen to The Blaqout Show tonight at 8pm. Panama will be discussing things that men don’t understand about women on his segment, CP Time! Listen to the squad of Beny, Angel, Malik, Prepster Punk Squad Gangsta Click, Komplex as they wax philosophical on all things waxy. www.blis.fm from 8-10pm EST!!!
