because they are stupid

Son of a bitch - literally breaking it down, someone is insulting your mother. I think thats reason enough to get insulted.

Calling another man a bitch is emasculating him and belittling his manhood, practically calling him a woman.

Really? Hmmm...I learned something new today.

Why is jerk considered worse to men?

There is a lot of truth in this Blarg.

So far I think I've come to the conclusion that this is what I've been doing (and it obviously has not been working) that's why I'm trying to just stay comfortable (and it really isn't taking much work in this case, which is a bit unsettling, but no more overthinking) and just take things as they come. One lesson I've had to learn several times is that you can't force love to be what you want it to be, it just is.

This is another revelation that has taken far too long to grasp. Almost to the point that it's embarrassing, but I eventually realized that I was not the only person in the world, much less in any respective relationship. For a long time, I brought to the table what I wanted to bring, I did the things I wanted to do, and I didn't worry about much else. As you might expect, this complete ignorance (whether intentional or not) didn't leave much room in my relationships for my partner's wants. As I've aged I've tried to quit being so horribly self-centered. A good recent example from last week. N.G. called me when she got off work, and asked what I was doing and at the time I was watching Game 6 of the Finals (wanted to see the C's win it all). She said cool, she was doing something, and would be over in a while. After a few hours the game ended, and still no N.G. My initial response in this situation (don't hate me) was to get a bit angry. Where was she? Why wasn't she there when I wanted? After about 30 secs, I realized I was being a huge douche for a variety of reasons a) I really wanted to watch the game by myself (or at least not with N.G.) because I didn't want to have to be distracted or constantly explaining what was going on (would not care any other time, but it was THE close-out game) and I got to do EXACTLY what I wanted, b) N.G. is a person too. She has her on plans, her own commitments, and just because she was not there the second I wanted to put my full attention towards her is not a problem. c) I was being a self-centered jerk again. After 30 secs, I realized all this and then just got angry at myself because I haven't completely cut-out these feelings, however, at the same time I didn't let them temper our relations in any negative way (an old fault), so it was really only a problem to me about me.

I'm trying man.

So the extremity to which I put these situations (they either work out or the dont, but goddam it I'm going to know now) is too narrow a focus? I really don't get this. I do think to achieve love you have to put a part of yourself up for the ultimate rejection, and I don't really see a way around this. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing, I just really feel like you have to be ready to sacrifice to achieve something better. At the same time, my view of what love is I guess could be viewed as a lock where I feel there are only a few select keys that would make it work ... are you saying I should open it up more? Be willing to accept more faults, or people I feel less of an attachment to? Or are you just saying, if you look only for the absolute perfect person ... your chances of finding them are extremely small?

so you admit "bitch" is not a denigrating term for women only? It's also used on occasion as a badge of honor by some women, labeling themselves "tough,"; more often, in the business world. "Bitch" is not a "special" word that insults women, like the n-word is for blacks. It's just another insulting word. That's it.

Just solely based upon the discussion between the two given; ass hole and jerk i can easily break down why people would prefer being called an ass hole to a jerk.

An ass hole is a literal thing. Someone really can't be an ass hole. When used to insult someone they're tending to use it as an adjective, describing what the person is like.

As for "jerk," it is all the qualities of a person someone doesn't like. You're not comparing someone to something, like an ass hole, you're actually telling them they're a ****ty person, someone they don't like.

Its much easier to be compared in likeness to something, than to be definitively told what you are.

Seriously? It's not an insult to a man, it's an insult to his mother. And I think we all know that you "don't be talkin' bout my momma".

Literally that is. I think it's just identified as pejorative slang (love that term) and pisses people off without really needing any connotation. For instance when someone calls me a bitch, I don't think "Why is this gentleman calling me a female dog?" I just think "Oh, you want to go tough guy"

I do not know. Actually ass hole is a close second. But based on my experience they REALLY bristle at being called a jerk. It's like when a girl is called a bitch. She's thinking "hey, I'm not really a bitch. That's a mis-characterization of me. I don't appreciate that label." Same goes for a guy being called a jerk.

I think that some women use the term "bitch" to refer to themselves in the same way that some black people use the n-word to refer to themselves: as a means of deflecting its negative connotations. It's an attempt to empty the word of its offensiveness by using it yourself as a symbol of your own power.

And I think men calling each other "bitches" is a relatively new thing - but it still begs the question: why the word "bitch"? Why not some other negative word that refers to women - like ho or something?

I would rather be called a ho then a bitch. Bitch implies wussiness and a general sense of acting like a vagina (sorry) to a man. When used against a woman it means more petty or mean. Not sure why the different definitions for the sexes, or if it's even more widespread than the people I talk to (and conversations I overhear). Does anyone else agree with this?

To sum it up
When I call a man a bitch, I'm saying that he is being a wuss and acting like a princess.
When I call a woman a bitch (which doesn't happen too frequently), I'm saying that she is either bad-tempered, rude, or petty.

"Son of a bitch" is saying your parents were not married and you are an illegitimate child. Naturally, this is no longer much of an insult these days as it once was.

"Bitch" when relating to a woman means the person is shrewish, mean, vindictive and just an all-around unpleasant person to be around. It's an all-purpose term, like "azzhole" is for a man. I guess you COULD call a woman an 'azzhole, but we don't, for some reason...we call her "bitch" instead."

However, when "bitch" is used on a man, it's meaning takes on some interesting changes. It's calling the person unmanly, weak and putting on the man all of the negative attributes women might have. It's also a challenge, and therefore, a threat. It's a call to action. "Wanna fight?" It's a direct questioning of your manhood. there is no correlation for a woman. Maybe "slut" or "whore."

So actually, I think it's a much worse insult for a man to be called a bitch than it is for a woman.

Good post HollywoodMatt. I think that is exactly right and you explained it well.

Hey i was actually acknowledged in the lounge. Lol i post and post and wonder if I'm the only one who see my posts come up. Now I just know that people do see them and just don't reply to them lol.

But thank you very much.

For me everytime i hear "jerk" I see Steve Martin, so to me I just laugh.

"Prick" and "douche" are the words you're looking for. And "creep," "weirdo," "bastard," "dick," "mother****er," "jerk-off," "fudge packer," "**********," "putz," "schmuck," "loser."

And "bitch" and "whore" are gender-neutral these days.

Of course, the true equivalent of "bitch" is "*******." It's almost a perfect match.

"*******" has a certain cachet. It implies style, independence. Some men wear it like a badge, just as some women are proud to be "bitches."

"Jerk," on the other hand, has connotations of weakness. An "*******" is a loner with a mean streak, a "jerk" is a loser who attacks others to make up for his own insecurities.

I'm saying that not all happiness is of precisely the same type and so shouldn't be judged by the same rules. And that there's a tremendous value in all sorts of different happinesses you can open yourself up to if you don't refuse them for the cold comfort of some expectation or distant ideal.

Single-minded pursuit of a very narrow goal -- the one you will love forever or put your heart on the line for -- makes of most everything else you ever do, think, or feel, and most everyone else you ever meet, chopped liver.

This seems to me a backwards way of living and thinking, and the way to minimize love and happiness in life. You can either push away 99% of your potential happiness because it isn't the 1% (or less!) that matches your ideals and keeps you in your comfort zone and immune from any real risk or need for courage, or you can practically find happiness growing on trees, free for the taking everywhere.

If a relationship isn't perfect and you know it going in, or is the type unlikely to last long or be entirely fulfilling, that doesn't mean it doesn't have a lot to offer for its own appropriate period of time. And that's nothing to sneeze at. It's not like if you are less happy than you could be today, this week, month, or year, you'll get the chance to live it over again. Poof, it's gone! We may only be allotted so much happiness in this life, and turning it away unnecessarily is an irretrievable mistake and lifelong loss. Who is to say those chances will keep on coming? Who is to say we'll even be alive next year to collect on all our delayed gratification?

Besides, no one knows how long even the best relationship is really fated to last. We can be making nothing but false promises to ourselves when we say we are looking for "the one" and "the relationship that will last forever" because we may never find that person and even if we do, we have no idea how long that relationship will last.

At any rate, you can still wait for that ideal 1% of situations to come along while making the very most of the other 99%. And in exploring that other 99%, you may find a diamond in the rough that turns out to be just what you had been looking for in the first place.

Personally, I don't believe we can always figure everything out up front anyway. It takes a while to get to know people, sometimes quite a while, and a lot of our personal biases don't help, to say the least. For one thing, they often describe our limits and stupidities. When we see the limits in others, we're often simply seeing our own lack of understanding, empathy, kindness, and character and our own distorted value systems reflecting back at us.

This sounds very programmatic. Perhaps some relationships grow organically rather than become "achieved." Perhaps expecting achievement of some extraneous goal or reaching some ideal imposed from without that is unsupportable in the situation at hand is the way to experience, understand, and enjoy it least and take it -- and your partner -- for granted the most.

It can also be a form of retreat and surrender, a cautious maneuvering to keep oneself unchallenged and safe. A sort of romantic, idealistic, or ethical or sexual sour grapes. A way to limit our horizons in bad faith rather than see where good faith takes us.

Too tragic and deterministic for my taste. I don't think I know that much about the world or about what might unfold before me. I would rather prepare to be delighted, and move on with a minimum of regret when and if the time comes. Which, let's face it, it almost always does. People who do so seem to be happier both inside of relationships and when they are over. It's people who hold their sacrifices dear who wind up hating their ex's.

Yes to all of the above. There are plenty of chances to be happy almost no matter what you find. But the more you narrow the definition, the more hoops you conspire to make yourself and others jump through, the further you will push happiness away and the less often you will find it staring you right in your startled face. Getting in the habit of appreciating what you have simply for what it is, by contrast, makes happiness a much less startling and more frequent companion.

It is not the nature of things, or people, to live according to our theories of them. Nature has a trajectory of its own. We can fight it for all we're worth or we can just knock it off, gather up some humility instead, and make the best of things like a mensch already. Waiting to be happy isn't making the best of things. Making demands on happiness, that it conform to our ideals upon pain of rejection, isn't making the best of things. It making a fool of oneself and wasting one's life. It is a slap in the face of the opportunities we are lucky enough to have and may never be shown quite the same way, or at all, ever again. It is hubris to think that they come in an unlimited supply, if for no other reason than because we have a limited time on this earth. It's very important not to throw away our portion of good fortune.

Any fool can appreciate the 1% of things that are perfect, but only a fool limits himself to finding his happiness there.

A thread about love - is the perfect place to discuss definitions of the word "bitch"

Nice, carry on.

I don't understand how you can have 30,000 posts that are all intelligent, completely logical, and often times so long. You put those 'kool?' kids from BBV4L to shame.

I'm about to leave for the day. I want to read it a couple of more times before responding. But you just constantly amaze me with the quantity/depth ratio of your posts.

Hey AlexSem said something that made me laugh, and thereby not want to punch him in the face. GJ guy.

Very nice post Blarg. The only thing that is slightly problemmatic for me is this passage that I quoted. I know quite a few people who are following this advice, but they still don't seem to be fulfilled (although they are occassionally happy). They are with their partner for the benefits of companionship, i.e., sex, someone to go to dinner and the movies with, etc., but they aren't really that into them though. It can be a little unsettling to see how casually cruel such a relationship quickly becomes with one partner being committed and involved while the other is half-assed about the whole thing, all the while waiting for something "better" to come along.

I don't know if that is how Blarg meant it. But, I agree with you. Casually cruel is a great way to describe it too. I think you could also say that the less committed person is inordinately selfish.

Blarg,

I feel life crushed. I was half-way through probably the most well-thought out reply I had ever made on 2+2 and with one click of the mouse it was just spirited away. Oh well, back to it because it's good self-examination.

Entirely possible that I misinterpreted Blarg. But isn't this usually one of the consequences for relationships that you go into that are not ideal, not entirely fulfilling, and predeterminedly brief?

**** it. I was going to try to respond systematically to your response, but I just don't have it any me any more.

This is what I think:
I want to be floored by love. In a sense, I feel like everything else in life should be like chopped liver in comparison. Maybe it shouldn't be paramount to everything else, but I have no real faith (oh ****, I'm going to have to tell the Mormons that in about an hour), I think that jobs/work are inherently bad societal inventions and the best I think I can ever hope for is one that I don't mind too much, with the death of my mother I don't feel particularly close to any of my family members (with the exception of my brother-in-law who isn't blood, and his child who is not even two). So all these other pillars that comprise most people's foundation (faith, family, career) are not really there for me, so I kind of want marital love to take the whole burden.

Of course I realize this is a bit unfair for my partners, and is something that I have become aware of. At the same time I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask the person I choose to marry (if that happens) to not simply be the last person I date, but rather the last person I ever want to date. I realize that my idealized bride will not be perfect, that it's perfectly reasonable for me to prefer the way that one girl did something in bed or that I miss the way TSS (more letters for Wookie) used to do my laundry, but I do want this same person to essentially be more meaningful, more important than any of these other lovers. Is this impossible, is it asking too much?

I feel like you might sense I haven't derived happiness from past relationships because they ultimately ended. With the exception of one ex, who I really hate, I remember everyone else fondly. We shared good times together, bad times as well, but happiness was there and grasped in the moment. At the same time, since this happiness wasn't shared for longer, I assume that it is ultimately inferior to long lasting happiness. Perhaps that's not correct. Perhaps the great moments of my life as shared with loved ones, will never pale in comparison to those of new flames, I'm not sure. But at least logically, it seems like they should.

But one thing I can't do is manufacture happiness from situations where it is not there. I haven't dated an abundance of people, primarily because I have never really casually dated someone. If I'm going to enter into any type of relationship with a person, I do it with the full expectation of revealing some about myself. Opening up if you will. This is just not something I'm willing to do casually. By nature, I'm a private (always have been) and the person that those who barely know me is and the person that those who know me well is are two completely different people. Perhaps this is why I feel so strongly about this, but I really do not think there is true happiness for me in relationships of so I simply do not pursue them. I'm not really ever trying to find a long term relationship when I enter them (often it's the opposite), but I haven't (and probably won't) ever date someone with who I don't think it's a possibility. Sure I'm narrowing my range, I realize this, but I'm just not much of one for the shotgun method.

As for the sacrifice stuff. I don't really remember what I was thinking. I think trust was basically the issue behind it all. Even if I'm in a completely comfortable, 'organically grown', non-forced relationship, at some point I'm still going to realize that I had put, over the course of time, a large amount of trust into this person. I trust that they just won't come back one day. I trust that the things they tell me are truthful. All of this, I would call 'putting your balls on the line' or 'sacrificing for a better result'. Once again, it might just go back to the privacy. As I do these things I feel like I'm giving up a little part of myself, and ensuring it in someone's hands, I trust that they won't just completely shatter it. If that's not sacrifice, I don't know what is.

Edit to add two things
1) About the casual relationships. I also feel like I was brought up with belief that the entire purpose of dating was to find the person you were going to marry. In a way, I still essentially believe this. I mean in the small town I'm from, I think the main thing was that you were supposed to do it fast (I honestly feel like at 25, many people think I should have been married for most of the past 7 years). However, now it's just more about finding the right person, and my desire to really not waste time on those who I can initially tell are wrong.

2) I either essentially called myself two-faced or said something that everyone feels about themselves. I can't decide. I just feel like there are very few people in the world that truly know me. So to add another person into that group, is a big deal for me. And now. I either essentially called myself two-faced or said something that everyone feels about themselves.

diddy...

i find your post creepy as i feel pretty much the same way as you on all issues...

i definitely agree with this...

Why would that be a consequence?