Shameless Magazine, the print edition, (subscribe! subscribe! subscribe!) has a column, written by Melinda Mattos, called The Last Word: “A shameless look at the history, use and power of everyday words.” Today, while browsing the comments section of a feministing.com post, I was faced with the question: is it anti-woman to use the word “douche” as an insult?
Admittedly, I use the word “douche” quite a bit, along with entertaining variations like “douchebag” or my personal favourite, “bag o’ douche.” Ironically I use it most often to describe individuals who are sexist, mysogynistic, anti-woman and anti-feminist. (Which, when used literally, also sums up my feelings on douche of the store-bought variety.) I’d never actually thought of it as a term that was anti-woman; obviously it’s not the classiest of words, and I’m no proponent of namecalling, but is use of the word “douche” sexist? Is it sexist because it seeks to emasculate by labelling someone (generally men) a feminine product, or is it rather a label that describes someone who “exists to both inculcate shame into women and profit off of that shame while harming women’s bodies in the process.”
This blogger defends “douchebag” as a feminist insult, stating “we good feminists know that douche is definitely a Tool of the Patriarchy.” I’m interested to know what readers think…
(give me a break, it’s friday.)
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four comments
Ooo! Oooo! I have a lot to say about this!
I used to obsess to an unhealthy degree about the origins of words that I used, and whether or not they were hateful. (By the by, I love the Last Word). For a long time I even thought it would be a good project to write an insult dictionary, with the origins and implications of all of our insults.
I came to realise that basically any word that is an insult is hateful. Becuase in our culture, most of our insult words aren't bad in and of themselves. They're only bad because as a culture we dislike and discriminate against the things they represent.
Like the words "lame", "spaz" (short, incidentally, for spastic, which is the same as cerebral palsy) and "retard"? We generally don't like sickness or weakness, and we definitely don't make things easy for people with physical or intellectual disabilities. The word "jerk"? As a post-Christian society, we really don't like masturbation. The many varied and colourful synonyms for women's genitals? Well, if you're reading this website, you'll probably agree that culturally we don't respect women.
For a while I thought I might only use insults that actually are, in and of themselves, negative. Instead of calling people assholes, I tried calling them warmongerers. This was amusing, but also confused others and seemed to uh, trivilise the reality of war. (Sometimes we do use words that are in and of themselves bad, but the way we use them dismisses how bad they are - for e.g., when people say things "i got raped by that exam." Cringe.)
I have no happy ending to this. I've basically given up on trying to find language that is non-hateful. I subscribe to the harm reduction strategy and try to say as little hateful things as possible, but if I sometimes use the words "crazy" or "jerk" to refer to things I don't like, I can forgive myself.
And I am a big fan of reappropriation, so douche away, Stacey May.
Posted by thea
September 21, 2007, 1:44 PM
Great post! It's funny because I've been wondering the same thing lately.
Posted by Carmen Van Kerckhove
September 21, 2007, 2:11 PM
There's a certain person in my life who I really dislike. This person makes inappropriate comments, is blatanly sexist, homophobic, transphobic, mysoginist and knows nothing of "personal boundaries." When I express my dislike for this person people often ask "What's (this person) like?"
It's often much easier to say "He's a douche" than explain all of the sexist things he's done.
(I tried really hard to write that entire comment without revealing the person's pronoun, but gave up near the end.)
Posted by Stacey May
September 21, 2007, 2:37 PM
You wanna insult someone? Call them a "Freakin' Idiot".
Posted by Sexy Sadie
November 8, 2007, 5:10 PM
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