How the Gender Binary is perpetuated through
Casual Language and Gender-Based Insults and Profanity
Laurie Hite
Salt Lake Community College
Gender in The U.S.
Kindra Amott
April 27th, 2015
Casual Language and Gender-Based Insults and Profanity
Laurie Hite
Salt Lake Community College
Gender in The U.S.
Kindra Amott
April 27th, 2015
Introduction and Bias
This paper will explore the gendered nature of the English language, focusing on both the historical and modern usage and meanings of gender-based insults and profanity, and how the gender binary continues to be perpetuated through symbolic interactionism, labeling theory and use of profane metaphors.
I am the youngest girl in a family with five children (four girls, one boy), raised from the age of two in Orem, Utah. My family is LDS, while I chose to leave the church when I was nineteen. To get a good feel for my bias, I feel it’s important to share the things I was always very confused and frustrated about growing up in the church, that ultimately led me to leave: 1) Rely on authority’s interpretation of events, don’t trust your own analysis. 2) Motherhood is the parallel to Priesthood, therefore my purpose is to submit and support, and not to contribute leadership. 3) Certain things are ‘just bad’, simply ‘because God said so’ or some variation. No empirical data given to provide logic, just ultimatums from authority that are agreed to under duress (threat of losing salvation unless you act on blind faith).
Symbolic Interactionism, Labeling Theory and Metaphors
Before we can understand how words can perpetuate a social structure, we must first dissect how humans interact with certain forms of communication. There are three very important concepts to be aware of:
Symbolic Interactionism: Humans learn to interact with other humans by assigning mutually-agreed upon values to everything that exists (like names of everyday items like cups and bikes, for example). Humans act towards things based upon the meaning that particular thing has for them. The accepted meanings of things derive from social interaction, and these meanings are dependent on (and modified by) the process of interpretation by the people who interact with one another.
Labeling Theory: A sociological approach that suggests that when a human is given a label (told that they are a certain way, regardless of the reality), that label may become part of that person’s self-identity (especially if it is a young person) and cause them to develop into that label (self-fulfilling prophecies).
Metaphor: A figure of speech that makes implicit/implied comparisons between unrelated things or people, highlighting similarities between the two by substituting one for the other. Different from a simile in that there is no usage of ‘like’ or ‘as’ in the comparison. “…she is the black sheep of the family…”
These concepts are critical at understanding how language, in general, can cause and sustain misunderstandings, stereotypes and social roles. Misunderstandings can occur when people interact with conflicting interpretations of the same symbols. Stereotypes can be developed through repetitious and hyperbolized metaphors. Upon close inspection of our language, social roles (expectations and behaviors) are pretty much built-in to us as soon as we learn to communicate verbally.
Utilizing metaphors to highlight the undesirable masculine or feminine characteristics in subjects creates a culture of harmful generalizations and blanket statements. We, as humans, form opinions based off of the information we gain access to and the experiences we have. The opinions we form dictate the actions we live by. The language that we use is therefore crucially crucial for any kind of social progress. Entire societies at large have been conditioned to believe that certain people will act in a certain way simply because of their physical characteristics.
People burdened with certain labels and without access to emotional or educational support may internalize those labels and metaphors, integrating them into their life and behavior (perhaps out of a feeling of helplessness) completing the cycle and causing the labels or metaphors to become true.
One can see how damaging it can be to use gender-based insults, which are in fact, metaphors.
History of Gender-Based Insults in early modern England
In sixteenth century England, gender roles were extremely prominent. With gender roles comes a list of both socially acceptable and unacceptable characteristics to possess (specific to each gender, as in today’s society). Both men and women in this culture were excessively concerned with upholding their reputations, and one of the most popular distractions of the day was to gossip about the defamation cases made against women, specifically crimes involving sexual deviance or promiscuity (Gowing,1993).
Interestingly, men and women were often tried in different courts as the cases brought against them were typically gender-dependent. Allegations considered to be detrimental to men were activities such as drunkenness, debt or theft; these cases were almost always tried in secular courts. For women, the main concern was sexual defamation and these cases were almost always tried in the church courts. Because of the heavy conservative religious influence on the government, this society essentially defined a woman’s integrity and worth by her sexual behavior. It is important to note that men were almost never charged with ‘sexual deviance’ crimes, although I doubt they managed to restrain themselves from participating. I find it very interesting that this appears to be the ancestor of our current social code that dictates women are ‘sluts’ for engaging in the same behavior that would define a man as a ‘stud’.
The most popular insult for women at the time was a string of words indicating dirtiness and disease, followed by ‘whore’. Fascinatingly (and demonstrating the same pattern as modern day insults), popular insults for men were still referencing sexually deviant women: ‘cuckold’ (a man ‘cuckolds’ another man by sleeping with his wife…so, his property…how dare he! Does he have no honor?) and ‘whoremaster’ being favorites of the time. With women’s sexual behavior apparently being the characteristic that defines someone as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it makes sense that insults would evolve out of the idea of defaming someone’s sexual integrity; and because men in that time derived their status and respectability from wealth and honor and NOT sexual integrity, the insults really only evolved along the ‘women are inferior’ track.
Gender-Based Insults in the US
The United States is obviously a massive country, and I can’t claim to know the ‘worst’ insults across the entire country. However, in order to gain a better picture of my own social circle’s understanding of gender and gender based insults, I created and distributed a short survey. From the thirty six surveys I received back, I assembled a list of the worst insults for men and women (separately), what participants indicated those insults meant, and then included a short history of the actual word.
It is interesting to note that except for one, every one of the ‘worst’ insults refers to a woman or body part of a woman. The lone insult that is not a woman or a part of her, still indicates feminine stereotypical qualities.
Worst Insults for Men (and what they mean to survey participants):
Worst Insults for Women (and what they mean to survey participants):
Historical Origins of words used as Worst Insults:
Gendered Titles of Respect
While researching all of this and speaking with many different people, I realized that our dialect of English does not contain titles of respect that are gender-neutral. The gender binary is built into our titles of respect (containing titles like ‘Mr.’, ‘Sir’, ‘Mrs’, ‘Maam’, etc) and only allows us to compartmentalize in two directions. Participants in my survey responded to my plea for alternatives with suggestions like “Just call them by their first name!” and “That never occurred to me…do we just invent new words then?” While calling androgynous people by their names is obviously accurate, I don’t define it as a title of respect.
The closest thing our language has to gender-neutral pronouns are in the plural form, such ‘they’ and ‘them’. While these words are sufficient for most casual conversations, they remain inaccurate as well as contributing to the submission of people who don’t fall inside the gender binary. I don’t believe this lack of a gender-neutral or genderfluid title of respect is malicious or intentional, but I do believe that it is time for our culture and language to evolve in a way that allows for the showing of respect to everyone, regardless of their gender identity.
Conclusions and Solutions
The gender binary is being perpetuated (albeit unknowingly for the most part) through our society’s casual usage of gender-based insults. While throwing an insult at someone is obviously an insult to that person, most people have simply never thought about what a certain insult might infer about a totally different person or group of people. After reading through my survey results, I realized that very few people stop to ponder the origin of these kinds of insults (I hadn’t, prior to this class!) and are unknowingly reinforcing gender roles and their correlating characteristics by using gender-based and insulting metaphors.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to contemplate a solution to the centuries-old tradition of gender-based insults…and I don’t believe that there is any way to resolve it in my lifetime, since the nature of the problem is so deeply embedded in our culture that we literally cannot communicate without using gendered language and gendered concepts.
So the solution has to be a slow but steady evolution of our language and symbolic interactionism; the introduction of gender neutral and gender fluid pronouns and titles of respect will open many doors to that evolution. As long as the power dynamic is embedded in our language it will be sustained in our culture. I also believe that the evolution of these concepts cannot be accomplished unless individuals are willing and able to step outside of ‘herd behavior’ and refuse to be bystanders to socially harmful interactions and communications.
This paper will explore the gendered nature of the English language, focusing on both the historical and modern usage and meanings of gender-based insults and profanity, and how the gender binary continues to be perpetuated through symbolic interactionism, labeling theory and use of profane metaphors.
I am the youngest girl in a family with five children (four girls, one boy), raised from the age of two in Orem, Utah. My family is LDS, while I chose to leave the church when I was nineteen. To get a good feel for my bias, I feel it’s important to share the things I was always very confused and frustrated about growing up in the church, that ultimately led me to leave: 1) Rely on authority’s interpretation of events, don’t trust your own analysis. 2) Motherhood is the parallel to Priesthood, therefore my purpose is to submit and support, and not to contribute leadership. 3) Certain things are ‘just bad’, simply ‘because God said so’ or some variation. No empirical data given to provide logic, just ultimatums from authority that are agreed to under duress (threat of losing salvation unless you act on blind faith).
Symbolic Interactionism, Labeling Theory and Metaphors
Before we can understand how words can perpetuate a social structure, we must first dissect how humans interact with certain forms of communication. There are three very important concepts to be aware of:
Symbolic Interactionism: Humans learn to interact with other humans by assigning mutually-agreed upon values to everything that exists (like names of everyday items like cups and bikes, for example). Humans act towards things based upon the meaning that particular thing has for them. The accepted meanings of things derive from social interaction, and these meanings are dependent on (and modified by) the process of interpretation by the people who interact with one another.
Labeling Theory: A sociological approach that suggests that when a human is given a label (told that they are a certain way, regardless of the reality), that label may become part of that person’s self-identity (especially if it is a young person) and cause them to develop into that label (self-fulfilling prophecies).
Metaphor: A figure of speech that makes implicit/implied comparisons between unrelated things or people, highlighting similarities between the two by substituting one for the other. Different from a simile in that there is no usage of ‘like’ or ‘as’ in the comparison. “…she is the black sheep of the family…”
These concepts are critical at understanding how language, in general, can cause and sustain misunderstandings, stereotypes and social roles. Misunderstandings can occur when people interact with conflicting interpretations of the same symbols. Stereotypes can be developed through repetitious and hyperbolized metaphors. Upon close inspection of our language, social roles (expectations and behaviors) are pretty much built-in to us as soon as we learn to communicate verbally.
Utilizing metaphors to highlight the undesirable masculine or feminine characteristics in subjects creates a culture of harmful generalizations and blanket statements. We, as humans, form opinions based off of the information we gain access to and the experiences we have. The opinions we form dictate the actions we live by. The language that we use is therefore crucially crucial for any kind of social progress. Entire societies at large have been conditioned to believe that certain people will act in a certain way simply because of their physical characteristics.
People burdened with certain labels and without access to emotional or educational support may internalize those labels and metaphors, integrating them into their life and behavior (perhaps out of a feeling of helplessness) completing the cycle and causing the labels or metaphors to become true.
One can see how damaging it can be to use gender-based insults, which are in fact, metaphors.
History of Gender-Based Insults in early modern England
In sixteenth century England, gender roles were extremely prominent. With gender roles comes a list of both socially acceptable and unacceptable characteristics to possess (specific to each gender, as in today’s society). Both men and women in this culture were excessively concerned with upholding their reputations, and one of the most popular distractions of the day was to gossip about the defamation cases made against women, specifically crimes involving sexual deviance or promiscuity (Gowing,1993).
Interestingly, men and women were often tried in different courts as the cases brought against them were typically gender-dependent. Allegations considered to be detrimental to men were activities such as drunkenness, debt or theft; these cases were almost always tried in secular courts. For women, the main concern was sexual defamation and these cases were almost always tried in the church courts. Because of the heavy conservative religious influence on the government, this society essentially defined a woman’s integrity and worth by her sexual behavior. It is important to note that men were almost never charged with ‘sexual deviance’ crimes, although I doubt they managed to restrain themselves from participating. I find it very interesting that this appears to be the ancestor of our current social code that dictates women are ‘sluts’ for engaging in the same behavior that would define a man as a ‘stud’.
The most popular insult for women at the time was a string of words indicating dirtiness and disease, followed by ‘whore’. Fascinatingly (and demonstrating the same pattern as modern day insults), popular insults for men were still referencing sexually deviant women: ‘cuckold’ (a man ‘cuckolds’ another man by sleeping with his wife…so, his property…how dare he! Does he have no honor?) and ‘whoremaster’ being favorites of the time. With women’s sexual behavior apparently being the characteristic that defines someone as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it makes sense that insults would evolve out of the idea of defaming someone’s sexual integrity; and because men in that time derived their status and respectability from wealth and honor and NOT sexual integrity, the insults really only evolved along the ‘women are inferior’ track.
Gender-Based Insults in the US
The United States is obviously a massive country, and I can’t claim to know the ‘worst’ insults across the entire country. However, in order to gain a better picture of my own social circle’s understanding of gender and gender based insults, I created and distributed a short survey. From the thirty six surveys I received back, I assembled a list of the worst insults for men and women (separately), what participants indicated those insults meant, and then included a short history of the actual word.
It is interesting to note that except for one, every one of the ‘worst’ insults refers to a woman or body part of a woman. The lone insult that is not a woman or a part of her, still indicates feminine stereotypical qualities.
Worst Insults for Men (and what they mean to survey participants):
- PUSSY (winner with 26 mentions): Weak, Sensitive, Useless, Ridiculous, Unrespectable, Inferior
- FAG: Stupid, Obnoxious, Ridiculous, Feminine, Annoying, Impotent
- BITCH: Inferior, Not a ‘real’ man, Disrespectful, Annoying, Idiotic, Dumb, To be possessed or commanded or used
Worst Insults for Women (and what they mean to survey participants):
- CUNT (winner with 22 mentions): Inferior, Epitome of female failing to adhere to ‘ladylike’ standards, Idiotic, Angry, Bitchy, Self-Centered, Unworthy of existence, The last thing someone wants to be, Gross, Base
- SLUT : No self respect, Loose, Likes to be used, Inferior, Dirty, Immoral, No self control
- BITCH: Malicious, Belligerent, Unreasonable, Rude, Vulgar, Control Freak
Historical Origins of words used as Worst Insults:
- Pussy: This word as a euphemism was the product of several histories: Derived from the Norse word puss, meaning “pocket” and the French le chat (which has a dual meaning of cat and genitalia). It is speculated that the French invented the euphemism because they are both ‘soft, warm, furry things’. It is interesting to note, however, that in early American mainstream literature this word was often used as a term of endearment. F or example, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Eva is lovingly referred to as ‘pussy’ when asked a question.
- Fag: Most people are most familiar with the English meaning of this word being ‘the butt of a cigarette’. However, it is thought that the euphemism evolved out of the word ‘faggot’, which was a bundle of firewood. In the 1500’s (when burning religious heretics or deviants at the stake was rampant), if sinners recanted and repented, they were forced to wear a sewn emblem of a faggot of firewood on their sleeve to remind themselves and everyone around them that they were deviant.
- Bitch: Originated around 1400 AD, as a common word for the female of many mammalian species (dogs, foxes, wolf, etc). Unlike some other modern insults, this one has always been insulting, but interestingly it peaked in the 1800’s as the absolute worst thing one could call a woman, worse than ‘whore’ (which was pretty bad).
- Cunt: This one is actually pretty straightforward: derived from the Middle English cunte which literally means ‘female genitalia’. The first known reference to this word is around the year 1230, in the street name in Oxford: Gropecuntlane (seriously). The street was known for being a favorite haunt of prostitutes.
- Slut: Originated around 1400 AD, and meant a slovenly, untidy woman, with no sexual implications whatsoever. The first association with sexual deviance was approximately the 1960’s. It was not uncommon prior to the 1900’s to refer to your own dirty female children lovingly as ‘sluts’.
Gendered Titles of Respect
While researching all of this and speaking with many different people, I realized that our dialect of English does not contain titles of respect that are gender-neutral. The gender binary is built into our titles of respect (containing titles like ‘Mr.’, ‘Sir’, ‘Mrs’, ‘Maam’, etc) and only allows us to compartmentalize in two directions. Participants in my survey responded to my plea for alternatives with suggestions like “Just call them by their first name!” and “That never occurred to me…do we just invent new words then?” While calling androgynous people by their names is obviously accurate, I don’t define it as a title of respect.
The closest thing our language has to gender-neutral pronouns are in the plural form, such ‘they’ and ‘them’. While these words are sufficient for most casual conversations, they remain inaccurate as well as contributing to the submission of people who don’t fall inside the gender binary. I don’t believe this lack of a gender-neutral or genderfluid title of respect is malicious or intentional, but I do believe that it is time for our culture and language to evolve in a way that allows for the showing of respect to everyone, regardless of their gender identity.
Conclusions and Solutions
The gender binary is being perpetuated (albeit unknowingly for the most part) through our society’s casual usage of gender-based insults. While throwing an insult at someone is obviously an insult to that person, most people have simply never thought about what a certain insult might infer about a totally different person or group of people. After reading through my survey results, I realized that very few people stop to ponder the origin of these kinds of insults (I hadn’t, prior to this class!) and are unknowingly reinforcing gender roles and their correlating characteristics by using gender-based and insulting metaphors.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to contemplate a solution to the centuries-old tradition of gender-based insults…and I don’t believe that there is any way to resolve it in my lifetime, since the nature of the problem is so deeply embedded in our culture that we literally cannot communicate without using gendered language and gendered concepts.
So the solution has to be a slow but steady evolution of our language and symbolic interactionism; the introduction of gender neutral and gender fluid pronouns and titles of respect will open many doors to that evolution. As long as the power dynamic is embedded in our language it will be sustained in our culture. I also believe that the evolution of these concepts cannot be accomplished unless individuals are willing and able to step outside of ‘herd behavior’ and refuse to be bystanders to socially harmful interactions and communications.