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Language is really the funniest thing. It moves in such interesting ways through time and culture, with progression and regression. Language is certainly arguable. How often do you hear, “well I didn’t mean it like that,” or, “don’t be so sensitive”? It’s tricky, because something meaningless to me may easily offend you, and vice versa. Somewhere, someplace, someone gets offended. How do we manage that? What is our responsibility?
Let’s talk about pussy. Specifically, what does it mean to be one? Why do we use this term? How has it been manipulated over time to be derogatory and offensive?
Believe it or not, pussy actually used to refer to a cat. This was a common term across many dialects, including German, Dutch, Lithuanian and Irish. But as early as the seventeenth century, pussy was used to refer to women as a somewhat derogatory word. Noah Webster’s original 1828 dictionary defined pussy as “inflated, swelled; hence, fat, short and thick, and as persons of this make labor in respiration, the word is used for short breathed”. The 1913 revised version of the dictionary called puss “colloquial or low”. The third edition began to make connections between pussy and “vulva” as well as “pocket” and “purse”. A similar French word, pucelle, means “maiden” or “virgin,” and is not related to the English word — however, crossover correlations are now made.
Through its history, pussy’s various meanings haven’t been all that bad. So what is with this lame modern connotation? As the end of its history shows, the association with women, perhaps the personification of women’s genitalia, has given the word demeaning value. Today, the term pussy is used either to reference female genitalia or as the popular and derogatory word meaning “coward, weak, and easily fatigued,” usually targeted at men who seem to be falling short of their hegemonic masculine ideal.What exactly is the insult here? Don’t be a wimp? Or don’t behave like a woman?
I spoke to some male and female students about how they use the word pussy in this regard, and here is what I learned:
A nineteen-year-old male said he uses the word pussy “when someone is bitching out.” He explained that he would most often use it in the context of peer pressure; “Just like, don’t be a pussy, you know?” he said. “The word is sexist, weak, and inferior,” he continued, “but that’s not the way I want to mean it.”
Another twenty-year-old male said that he uses pussy “in an endearing, teasing way with friends,” although he said, “it is not the most appropriate because it sends bad vibes.” He said he will most often call someone a pussy when “a friend wants to do something but doesn’t… because pussy holds a different weight than wimp.”
I was not surprised by the responses of these men, and it was interesting to see them stop and rethink their language of choice and its effect. I also spoke with a couple of women, who I anticipated feeling somewhat differently because of how pussy might affect them as the ones being parameterized.
An eighteen-year-old female I spoke to said that she “hates the word,” and that it “makes [her] uncomfortable,” however she “uses it in the context where a guy is un-masculine. A nineteen-year-old female explained her usage of the word as exclusively directed at men when they exemplify “lame” or “weak” behavior.
So, while agreeing that the word can be offensive, both women surprisingly exercise it in the same derogatory manner.
This is the feminized side of the story, but how about the masculinized? Let’s take a look at perhaps pussy’s opposite: dick.
The aforementioned nineteen-year-old male said he uses dick “only towards a dude” in an “almost always sarcastic way.” He said that he considers it a word that, “girls seem to use more than guys, although it is not as sexist as pussy.” He explained that, “pussy is more derogatory towards girls than dick is towards men.” The twenty-year-old man I spoke with similarly felt that, “dick is kind of the same thing [as pussy], but as a way to poke fun at a friend for doing something I don’t like.”
The same eighteen-year-old female left her experience of the word dick at “jerk.” The nineteen-year-old girl explained that she uses the word “way more frequently than pussy, for when men are being assholes.”
So, what have we got here? When we stop and look into the way we manipulate language, we can see that it isn’t necessarily the best way to speak, and specifically, not a very nice way to identify a person.
The binaries that these words represent are bothersome on both extreme sides of gender performance. If being a pussy today socially means that one is portraying a weak, timid, fragile and generally un-manly or macho behavior, what are we really saying?
It is clear that the use of the words pussy and dick are simply reinforcing these binaries. Pussy acts as an insult for someone behaving feminine, and dick works to insult someone for behaving overly masculine. The people I spoke with concurred, feeling as though these words succeeded because of their harshness — because they exceed other terms such as “cautious” or “jerk.” But using these words that are so deeply rooted in the stereotypes only hurt gender by telling people that being cautious is being feminine or that being a jerk is behaving in too far of a masculine manner.
It’s a social responsibility to validate the challenges being made by stereotyping. Surely, somewhere, someplace, someone will be offended anyway, so is it so hard to watch our mouths? Our words are important. Our words are affective. Why not be positively effective? Being conscious of the language we choose is a small way to take a big step in redefining what it means to be yourself.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Dani Pinkus at danielle.pinkus@colorado.edu.
