Christina Hoff Sommers: “If ‘bossy’ has to go because it is sexist, then shouldn’t we stop using male-vilifying terms like ‘mansplaining’ & ‘rape culture’?”
I follow a lot of truly terrible people on Twitter — Manosphere bloggers, white supremacists, Fidelbogen — so it took me a moment to realize that this dopey, backwards tweet didn’t come from some obscure reactionary bigot but from none other than antifeminist celebrity academic Christina Hoff Sommers, inventor of “equity feminism” and the author of the bestselling The War Against Boys.
If "bossy" has to go because it is sexist, then shouldn't we stop using male-vilifying terms like "mansplaining" & "rape culture"? @banbossy—
Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) March 12, 2014
Oy.
Also, I think she meant to end that with #BanBossy, not @BanBossy.
Interesting that she doesn’t seem to understand hashtags any more than she understands rape culture.
Posted on March 12, 2014, in antifeminism, antifeminist women, mansplaining, rape culture, twitter and tagged #banbossy, anti-feminism, antifeminism, antifeminist women, christina hoff sommers, rape culture, twitter. Bookmark the permalink. 117 Comments.
QFT
You’re right that it is a childish insult. That might be part of why it’s used. The way I usually hear it used is in the “overstepping authority” way, but in the sense of the person having no authority at all. Like when a kid tells an adult what to do, or a kid on the playground is ordering everyone around. I’m in Australia too hookergal, and I’m sure I got called a bossy boots as a kid too.
So, to direct it at a woman is saying she’s acting like a kid with delusions of authority. Calling an actual boss ‘bossy’ implies they shouldn’t have the authority they are wielding.
Everything Kim just said (except for the being in Australia part). I’ve used bossy a lot in my life, and thinking about it, it was always chiding somebody for overstepping their authority (kids I was minding, and peers who weren’t the boss of me).
I was called bossy a lot as a kid, by kids who resented the fact that I had leadership skills and wasn’t afraid to step up and use them. Lucy van Pelt was my role model.
The more recent phrase, “You’re not the boss of me,” doesn’t have the sexist connotation of “bossy,” which is pretty exclusively used on girls. I’d prefer to “challenge bossy” or “examine bossy” for its sexist usage, rather than “ban bossy,” which just gives fodder to the anti-PC crowd to claim that the PC Police are at it again.
@Luzbelitx
Oh, “ze/zir/zirs” are Argenti’s preferred pronouns - that’s why I used them. I don’t think there are any gender neutral pronouns here though that is accepted as the pronouns to use. So while it’s important to use the pronouns that people prefer for themselves, it’s okay to use the “x” pronouns for everyone else. I just woke up so hopefully I made some sense.
In regard to anti-feminist women and previous discussion. I’ve only felt comfortable telling a few people IRL, but luckily not come across many that didnt believe me about the sexual abuse I recieved when I was a small child. I don’t actually remember it, but was told later by my parents and suffered PTSD until my early twenties. The person who didn’t believe me was (is, in theory, but she unfortunately passed away) my best friend when I was a teenager. I don’t really understand her viewpoint, but her opinion was that as I didn’t remember it surely it didn’t happen (or if it did, why would it matter?). She wasn’t an unkind person, but unequipped to deal with things she was inexperienced with. I try and remember this when I read ‘she put herself in that position’ etc articles - their reaction comes from an inability to empathise with things out of their experience, and a belief that in the same situation they’d have got out of it unaffected. Ultimately, I’d rather have seen some darknesss in my life and developed that ability to feel something when I see someone else has been hurt. It’s was a heavy price, but worth it and a positive I can take away.
I delurked before once but hi again
I found the manosphere indirectly out of a desire to meet people who had had difficulty relating to the opposite sex such as I had when I was younger. Wow, what an eye opener. I didn’t really consider myself a feminist, although liberal, Im also quite traditional in the things I want out of life. I wondered why feminism was even needed anymore. But the rubbish spouted on such sites has made me see that it is still unfortunately needed. Thank you david, and regular posters, for bringing a bit of light to the internet!
Trust me, the PC Police Police is going to complain to anything that isn’t the unrestrained right of bigots to humiliate other people.
Pretty sure women can perpetuate rape culture as well. Like Phyllis Schlafly. Or Christina Hoff Sommers…
@breadandroseblogger…
Of course they can, as people have already said in the comments. Every time a woman says that another woman wouldn’t garner unwanted sexual attention if she dressed more modestly, every time a woman dismisses rape as a problem…It may come across as men being more of the problem because men are more likely to rape, but it’s called rape culture for a reason; it’s not isolated in the minds of men.
Also, I like bossy when it’s used in the ‘you don’t have legitimate authority’ sort of way. It’s fun. Just not when it’s ‘you’re a girl, no leadership skills for you’. Let’s keep the word, change the attitude.
Branston, I’m sorry that happened tho you. Thanks for sharing your experience and view point
‘Cause of course…
I’m getting really sick of hearing people talk about “true equality” - only to show that they totally don’t misunderstand what equality means. The idea that everyone should be treated exactly alike makes sense if espoused by children, who may not understand biases within our system, but is infuriating when done by 20-something adults who’ve managed to go to college and graduate. It makes me suspicious of anyone who goes around flexing their academic credential muscles - as if a degree somehow negates their lack of perception or ignorance about how the world works. It’s something that’s made me less and less enthused about the online atheist movement, since many supposedly “logical” people show their true colors when discussing an issue that pokes the right buttons.
Our system has been in favor of white, hetereosexual/cis-gendered males for just about all of history and a lot of the positive progress made has been historically recent. You can’t just apply the “treat everyone the same” when a lot of people are born into the world privileged either monetarily or culturally at the expense of many, many others. It only makes sense to those who are already privileged and oblivious of their own status - considering it “normal.”
Yeah, when mocking someone’s need to be domineering - regardless of their gender. I hate the fact it’s used as a derogatory term for any woman in a leadership role, as if men are only allowed to act like such.
Reminds me how “white-knighting” was appropriately used for apologists of various ideologies or ardent defenders of certain individuals, but has since been co-opted by misogynists to dismiss the arguments made by anyone supporting feminist policies or individual feminists. Especially with the weird caveat they’re doing it to “get laid”…over the internet. By someone they don’t know. Who may not even be a woman. ‘Cause that’s obviously the reason anyone defends anything…right?!
*Gah!
“Totally don’t understand what equality means”, anyway - I’m still tired…
I’m not sure that can really be done, though. Because the word has the effect of robbing the subject of legitimacy; once you call someone bossy, it immediately makes them seem like they shouldn’t have been acting that way, regardless of their position relative to you.
Compare “you’re not the boss of me:” If you say “you’re not the boss of me” to your boss when she tells you to do something, she can just be all “actually I am, now do what I said,” no undermining of her authority. But if you say she’s being bossy, she can either a) deny being bossy (tacitly acknowledging that she doesn’t have the right to tell you what to do) or b) acknowledge being bossy (accepting an unflattering character trait that implies that she is overbearing and makes unreasonable demands).
“Equity feminism” as analogized through a race:
First, everyone shows up, and based on some completely arbitrary and unrelated trait (gender, race, hair length, ability to remember the second verse of America the Beautiful, whatever), gets assigned the garage where their particular vehicle is waiting.
These range from a top-of-the-line sports car, fully tuned, to a Toyota Cavalier, to a Model T, to a thoroughbred stallion, and so on, all the way down to a pair of five-year-old sneakers with a hole in the left sole, and no lace for the right shoe.
Then, the lanes are selected in the same order, due to the same criteria. Thus, the guys with the best vehicles also get the innermost lanes (there’s a reason ‘the inside track’ is considered an advantageous position).
Finally, a judge comes out and measure, with a picometer, to make certain that all the racers’ starting lines are at the exact same position, and then declares the race to be ‘fair’.
It’s alays the exact same people who don’t “get” that the ban would not be literal, but a guideline of decent behavior. Like how many times do I have to tell the same colleague that he can still call little girls bossy but that doesn’t mean he should, and that it’ll say a lot about the character and biases of individuals who choose to still perpetuate that line of thinking after so much attention has been drawn to it.
Oh no, what am I even thinking, this is FREE SPEECH we’re talking about!!
It would be nice if “bossy” was reduced to people trying to control others when they don’t have the authority, or people who are pushy inappropriately, etc, but reason to highlight it is because it’s used so much to define appropriate acts of leadership by girls and women so we have to highlight it just to make that point. I don’t think it is specifically a gendered slur in the way that b*tch is, but it’s as close as a word can be without being designed just to insult women. I would definitely like the conversation to go in the direction of using the word in the right way if that’s at all possible.
Jessay, to get back to your question about Pizzey, the story about feminists killing her dog: as Pizzey herself admitted in a recent Reddit AMA, her dog wasn’t killed, and she has no evidence that whoever shot it (with a bb gun I believe, though I’m not sure) was a feminist.
@trans commie
I don’t think there are in Spanish either. I like using the x, but some replace “a” and “o” for a neutral “e”, and some use *, and of course most people outside the LGBT (+ BDSM) community don’t really how they work or what they mean…
I hadn’t seen anything simmilar in English until this morning, I guess that’s what got me so excited xD
Tell you what, Christina: we’ll work on “mansplaining” (in which the offender’s gender is mentioned only to highlight the sexism) and “rape culture” (which isn’t even gender-specific) after we work on “b*tch”, “c*nt”, “wh*re”, “tw*t”, and the rest of the endless list of slurs that actually vilify people based on their gender.
In my experience, when asked this question, they tend to go with “feminism was necessary, but we’re equal now”, although some will opt for the misdirect and accuse you of being the real misogynist for disagreeing with them.
It never fails to astound me that MRAs can, on the one hand, claim that the idea of “rape culture” is anti-male, while on the other hand claiming that feminists don’t care about things like prison rape, or male victims in general.
@thread, a polite reminder that bell hooks’ name is not capitalized.
…I don’t know how to do quotes, so katz, I think I see where you’re coming from, and maybe ‘you’re not the boss of me’ is more appropriate. I suppose I think I thought ‘bossy’ as appropriate because I don’t think I’ve ever called a boss ‘bossy’. A co-worker, maybe, but usually I’m using it to describe my cousin’s nine year old daughter who is extremely demanding and likes to get her way. I will tell her ‘don’t be bossy when you’re talking to an adult, it’s rude. If you want something, ask nicely,’ and she will usually go along with it. If she keeps being bossy then no ice cream.
But it’s interesting to realize how much a change of words can have an impact.
@J.J
Quotes can be done this way:
<blockquote>insert quote here</blockquote>
Please be safe from the Blockquote Monster, though. You’ll know it if you see it.
I don’t agree with Christina Hoff Sommers, but I’m also skeptical about Sheryl Sandberg’s brand of feminism and her take on the word “bossy”. Speaking as a self-identified feminist. I actually wrote out my thoughts on this last night: Over here
I recently heard about the kafala labor practices on one of the morning talk/news shows (was it Democracy Now?) It does sound very exploitative and I think it would be great if the MRAs wanted to put their energy towards that issue rather than the ones with feminists they imagine.
@JJ
I think you’ve hit the problem though: Most instances in which bossy has been used against me are instances in which people over whom I had authority felt I didn’t have legitimate authority over them because I’m a woman. I don’t think the issue is even so neatly summed up as “you’re a girl, no leadership skills for you”: to reclaim bossy requires a complete rethinking on behalf of many people of what authority is and who can wield it. I’m not sure that’s doable on a reclamation time scale.
Could people, as Jennydevildoll’s post asked, find me bossy for reasons other than my womanhood? Sure. But I haven’t seen the male students with whom I work experience the subversion and underming I have. Anecodotal, but I don’t know of extensive research into the topic. I, at least, take comfort in knowing that my boss sees through coded sexist language. I’m sure other women are less lucky.
The “maybe people think she’s bossy for reasons other than her gender” thing seems to me to illustrate the point. Of course when people use unflattering gendered terms they’ll insist that it’s just because that person embodies those traits, not because she happens to be female. But she will be female. Every time.
What Katz says. And says so eloquently.
Sommers twitter feed is a nightmare in general, she’s insufferable. Your really taking one for the team by following her.
I’ll take a huge pass on Sandberg as well, jennydevildoll. 1% feminism IMHO.
While this is a more extreme example, I have seen many MRAs try to play the “maybe she has [negative trait] for reasons other than her gender” with words like c*nt and bitch, so that’s one thing to keep in mind.
Skye - thanks! I wonder how many other ‘fence sitters’ the MRA movement has converted to feminism!!
I used to be vulnerable to the idea that I could use a gendered/racial slur if I was mad at the person for some reason that had nothing to do with their race or gender, and not have it be actually sexist/racist.
Then I finished with adolescence…
The other aspect of “you just want to ban bossy because you’re bossy” is the delegitimizing thing I talked about earlier: It’s a tactic that silences the debate by making voicing a concern proof of the concern’s lack of legitimacy. The sort of person who wants to ban bossy is the sort of person you shouldn’t listen to, ergo this conversation is over.
It’s the exact same argument as “you want people to stop saying feminists are ugly because you’re ugly.”
It’s a tautology, isn’t it? If you don’t like being called (thing), it’s because you are (thing). Any attempt to explain why (thing) is offensive in and of itself just proves that you are in fact (thing). This works especially well for terms like “bossy” and “bitchy”, which lots of people are always willing to believe of just about any woman who has any sort of opinion.
It’s also an excellent example of a real, bona fide ad hominem. Jennydevildoll is telling us that Sandberg has a particular personal trait, and therefore we shouldn’t listen to her.
I hope one day I can actually find an MRA who knows what an ad hominem really is.
Wait, I thought that meant “when an inferior being disagrees with a man who knows what’s what”.
@Tracy- thanks. I really think it’s important to look at class issues when it comes to intersectionality, given how it ties into other types of disadvantage.
@ Katz, Cassandrakitty & Trans-commie - my feelings on Sheryl Sandberg are specifically on her, Sheryl Sandberg. Did you go past that paragraph into my acknowledgment that the double standards exist, and why it would be more effective to address the underlying beliefs that limit both genders when teaching kids, or did you just stop there because it kind of sounded sort of like something an MRA might have said about non-specified women? I disagree with Sheryl Sandberg on this, I disagree with her particular brand of pro-corporate, pro-capitalist feminism. Which is my opinion, as a woman and feminist. What, , it’s suddenly MRA to disagree with another feminist about something?
This entire paragraph addresses exactly nothing of what any of us said, but I will note that both “I’m just using a denigrating gendered term about this one person who happens to be female, not women in general” and “if you didn’t read the whole thing, you aren’t allowed to respond to any part of it” are two more classic tactics to silence dissent.
(For the record, I did read the whole thing; your silencing tactics at the beginning were just the most interesting bit.)
No, I asked if you read beyond that paragraph, I didn’t claim you “weren’t allowed” to respond to it. If anything you seem to be using a gaslighting technique of claiming things were in that post that weren’t to try and validate your position.
It’s also kind of funny that you perceive someone who is advocating to examine the meanings of different words instead of just outright forbidding them as “silencing.”
I have no idea why I was supposed to have read whatever post you made, but no, I have not. Did you think the entire rest of the thread was people talking about your post or something?
No, just the three, who seemed to be remarking one this one paragraph out of the whole thing, which you seemed to be doing in your response to Katz’s critique. If you hadn’t read it, then I was mistaken on you, people specifically using my name or things I’d written, not so much.
I don’t think you were supposed to have read it or not. I just saw that Dave had done a post on the topic and I’d posted about it the night before, so I just shared the link rather than re-typing all my thoughts again. Like anything else published publicly on the internet, everyone is free to read it or not as they choose.
@jennydevildoll
I’m just confused because one of your comments name-tagged me, and I haven’t addressed your post at all. When someone gets all DID YOU NOT READ PAST THAT THING WHERE I when talking about something that you neither read nor commented on that does tend to be a little confusing.
@cassandrakitty - Just a misunderstanding then. I thought your remark about tautology was an agreement with Katz’s critique of what I wrote, or at least the paragraph in question. Like I said, my mistake if you weren’t referring to that directly.
Jennydevildoll, any time anyone tries to actually engage, you find a reason that their contribution isn’t legitimate. Sandberg is bossy, Ally just read the first paragraph and stopped because it sounded like something an MRA would say (I assume that was aimed at Ally? It’s wildly random if it isn’t, not that it isn’t wildly random in any case), I’m gaslighting, etc.
Coupled with your continued failure to respond to any of the criticisms that have been made, it’s pretty clear that you don’t want to have a real conversation.
Well, I just read the whole piece, and I wasn’t at all impressed with your “my experience negates Sandberg’s” take, jennydevildoll. Nor your claim that it’s about assertiveness vs bossiness. What gets called assertiveness in a boy is all too likely to get called bossiness in a girl. I wasn’t impressed with the notion that it’s no good “policing” words. That’s just the same argument the FREEZE PEACH types use to say they should be allowed to use slurs.
Oh, nice touch about celebrities being used to “shill” about this. I guess celebrities aren’t able to or allowed to have their own opinions about things.
Oh my. While I agree in a general sense that we need to focus on the root of the problem, not just outright ban a word (which is, from what I gather, more of a catch phrase anyways than a call to start bleeping the word on tv, but you know), and I am personally anti-capitalist, I think the reaction to the reaction was a bit OTT. You can certainly disagree with other feminists without being an MRA, but you can also parrot an MRA-style argument without being one. If that makes sense. LOL I’m just gonna walk away now..
And thanks for the tip David! In reading more from her, my god, she was so paranoid. She seems very tinfoil hat when it comes to her views on feminism, talking about it as if we’re like, stationed in every publishing co, media outlet, government entity, and that we’ve been that way for a long time, so that we can control things.
Like, I’m sorry…. the whole notion of “women are the actual privileged class who are catered to by their husbands who pay the bills and die in war” is something that, if I really strain my brain and stretch my imagination, I could create a fantasy world in which I could literally do whatever I wanted because I had all the free time and money to do so, and sure, that sounds pretty nice. But the REALITY was not women sitting around doing nothing but partying, at least not for the vast majority of them. Like they’re really trying to tell me that women willingly traded their personal liberties (seeing as how they had no protection under the law from their spouses and could be involuntarily committed just for speaking up against them) for the chance to take on the 24/7 job of raising kids AND cooking and cleaning BEFORE modern technology made such things slightly easier? Just, no. But that’s the type of conspiracy theory Erin Pizzey is suggesting when she tried to assert that feminists were in control of things, that they willingly forfeited their rights…. ok lady.