Once, online, I came across a very heated poll, the purpose of which was to try to define – what exactly is a bitch? This seemed to me no less strange than asking people what, in their opinion, a hammer is and what qualities it possesses.
There are three whole versions of this phenomenon.
The first: it is so rare that few people know what lies behind this term. For example, if someone offers you a reiki healing, you first need to understand what it is, and where this place is to which they will take you for reiki, and only then will you grasp how you might feel during it.
The second: the phenomenon is so commonplace that it can mean absolutely anything. And if she “didn’t give it,” then she’s a bitch. If she gave it, but on conditions – she’s a bitch. If she gave it, but not to me – she’s doubly a bitch. And so on. It’s like calling someone a goat: having horns, hooves, or a vegetarian lifestyle is entirely optional.
And finally, the third: the phenomenon has evolved so much that it requires clarification, just as the word “machine” explains nothing completely. A machine can be a car, a tractor, an airplane, or a steamship – and many other things that work, move, and function reliably over long periods.
From this perspective, the poll is entirely justified, because it’s important to understand who is more of a bitch: the one who gives but not to me, or the one who doesn’t cheat but also doesn’t give. Because a machine – whether a steamship or an airplane – can be both at once.
People often say many words without making the slightest effort to penetrate their essence and understand – what do these words actually mean? When a grandmother on a bench speaks of “immoral behavior,” she means one thing; a vocational school student means something entirely different, a politician a third, and a venereologist a fourth. And the meaning constantly shifts, referring to different things, even though the word remains the same.
Take another example: from television screens, we often hear the word “psycho” directed at certain individuals. Pause for a moment and consider what it might actually mean?! If someone suddenly starts shooting a gun, they’re a psycho. If someone pulls a stunt, they’re a psycho. And if our hero jumps from a huge cliff into the water to escape pursuit, he’s also a psycho. And of course, a psycho is someone who has been treated by a psychiatrist multiple times. “Kids, I’m convinced our doctor was abducted by little green men!” – “Well, father, you’re a psycho, no doubt about it!”
All these shooters, jumpers, and believers in aliens have something profoundly in common, which gives us the freedom to casually toss around this layman’s diagnosis. The commonality is that their actions or their way of thinking are unpredictable. It’s not even about them being strange or eccentric, but that they simply cannot be anticipated. This is precisely what links the insane person, whose thoughts and actions defy all logic and common sense, with someone who is perfectly mentally healthy but acts in violation of all conceivable behavioral stereotypes.
But let’s return to our unfortunate bitches. In the attempt by many to spot a minor sign (she didn’t give it, the seven-times-damned viper), one can easily “overlook” something much more significant. And the logic here is very simple: just as a psycho may or may not be insane, a bitch is a woman who, in all explanatory frameworks, retains something crucial. She didn’t give it – bitch. She turned evil – bitch. She constantly nags you for no reason – bitch. And if she takes pleasure in humiliating you, then she’s a bitch too.
At the same time, my dear friends, what is especially important to notice – none of these actions alone gives us the right to call her a bitch. Isn’t that so? Judge for yourselves what each of those who saw the psycho would say. “He’s shooting randomly left and right,” says one. “That’s why he’s a psycho.” “No, he’s a psycho because no normal person would jump off a cliff,” says another. And so on. The same goes for bitches: one calls her a bitch because she didn’t give it, another because she laughed at him. A third insists that a bitch is someone who deliberately does everything to spite you.
Now I will tell you what a bitch truly is. The actions of a bitch, their form, and even their content hold no fundamental significance. Only one thing matters: a bitch is a label for any woman who has adopted (explicitly or implicitly, willingly or even against her will) a distinctly masculine behavioral pattern, rooted in struggle, competition, the need to dominate, and the desire to achieve her goals by any means necessary.
In the most primitive sense, a bitch is a wife who constantly nags her husband, forever pressing on the sore spot of his inflamed pride. A bitch is one who humiliates a man: always, in every instance, continuously. This, so to speak, is everyday bitchiness. If she does this, then at the very least, she can afford to. And the man can do nothing about it. He may drink, slam his fist on the table, beat his wife, or stop coming home – it changes nothing. The bitch remains a bitch.
In a more advanced sense, a bitch is one who approaches a man the same way he is accustomed to approaching her. And for the bitch, a man is just as much an object of sexual or social interest as a woman is for a man. The bitch knows what she wants, and she is ready to get it by any means. For the bitch, there are no boundaries or taboos; she can allow herself practically anything. Her relationship to the world in general, and to men in particular, is highly utilitarian: she needs to get whatever she desires – and for her, the end justifies any means.
Some are inclined to believe that bitchiness is a mutiny on the ship, an attempt to take revenge on the male gender and vent all the accumulated anger for the entire humiliated and offended female race. But this is merely one specific case of bitchiness. There are men who spend their lives taking revenge on women, and women who take revenge on men. And this is their private matter, their relationship with their own unconscious.
In most cases, vengeful bitchiness and the desire to spite are purely masculine interpretations. The bitch does not have such goals. But if she doesn’t like a man, or he disappoints her, she will easily replace him with another. She not only stops idolizing him, but treats him the same way he treated her. A man, for her, is like a pot of soup: it can be tasty or not. A man, like a book – is it interesting to read, or do you want to pick it up and close it? A viewer who turns off a video halfway through isn’t venting hatred on the film: it’s a completely natural unwillingness to continue. That’s exactly how the bitch treats a man – as if he were a film or an article in a magazine.
A bitch is always something confrontational, associated with resistance and struggle, with attacks, provocations, or hostile attitudes. A bitch is an act, expressed in words, deeds, or intentions. A bitch is close in meaning to the sense a mother puts into the word “little bastard” when she calls her son that.
He might peek into the window of a women’s bathhouse, torture a cat, steal a matchbox, set a neighbor’s haystack on fire, or simply do something just to spite his mother. “Little bastard” means: you’re doing something extraordinary, you’re acting in a way that drives me mad, you perfectly well know that you should never, under any circumstances, do this. And a bitch is almost the same. What you’re doing is utterly unthinkable, completely unacceptable – this is how society, mostly male, issues its threat.
The label “bitch” is an act of collective anger, heavily mixed with helplessness and inability to do anything about it. By calling a woman a bitch, we merely confess our own helplessness and despair. The bitch is a clear diagnosis of the one who fumes over someone’s bitchiness. The problem isn’t in her, but in the one who sees a bitch in a woman. I am outraged, but helpless, and I don’t know what to do about it – this is roughly what the accusers and finger-pointers are actually saying.
Assuming our lives remain roughly as they are now, I would venture to say that the “bitch” phenomenon is very temporary. Who today would even think of objecting to a woman wearing trousers? Yet the first woman who dared to do so was nearly torn apart on the street.
So in about sixteen years, a “bitch” will be as commonplace as a woman in trousers, and the word itself may disappear from our vocabulary altogether, or change its meaning so completely that it becomes neutral and harmless, like the words “air,” “person,” or “milk.”
The philosopher Vasily Rozanov once wrote that the essence of male and female psychology is best described by the characteristics of their sexual organs. Take the set of adjectives associated with each, and you will have the most accurate descriptive system for the male or female psyche.
In this sense, a “bitch” is a woman to whom male-associated adjectives apply more readily than female ones. Psychologically, a bitch is more of a man than a woman. Physiologically, she is entirely female, not losing any of her feminine essence. But psychologically, her nature is more masculine than feminine. At its core, as I have already mentioned, lies struggle and competition, the desire to dominate, and a pronounced need to achieve set goals by any means necessary.
Because a “bitch” possesses many useful qualities that enable her to reach her goals, there is a tendency to almost recommend that women become bitches. I find this advice as strange as someone advising you to become a psychopath. You either are a psychopath or you are not—but you cannot choose to become one. With the “bitch,” it’s slightly more complicated: trying to become a bitch is just as senseless as buying a hammer in the hope that nails will automatically appear in your apartment that need hammering.
Nails represent goals, while the hammer (bitchiness) is merely the tool for achieving them. If, however, you make being a bitch your goal, you’re in for a surprise: you’ll start hitting your own head with the hammer. Want to become a bitch? No problem! Set yourself several goals that you will pursue at all costs. And go after them! The rest will follow naturally.
