IMO, Bastard is far worse a word than Bitch is.
Also, and this is a bit of technicality nitpicking, Bastard is gender neutral (Originally it referred to someone who's parents were not married, "The bastard son of the king and his mistress").
Personally I don't have a problem with either name. :-)
As for bastards being born out of wedlock and bitches being female dogs, that's etymology rather then meaning. As for the etymology, I think bastard is mainly male, because it's about inheritance: The "real" son with the claim to his father's legacy (kingdom, company, whatever) vs the bastard son who isn't a real prince or whatever.
Based on this etymology, I can agree with you that bastard does indeed seem worse then bitch.
I don't personally have an issue with either, I just find it baffling that anyone would consider Bitch to be a worse word than Bastard. And I know that I've heard the term "Bastard Daughter" at least once but I won't press that issue.
Cutmaster-san
Really? Because at least in the circles I travel in, "bitch" is the worse word.
I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.
I tend to hear Bastard as an insult and only and insult. Bitch on the other word tends to be held up as almost a badge of honour.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Zzzzzzzzzz
For me, "bastard" is an insult (the seriousness of it varies wildly, depending on the relationship between the person using it and the person being called it); "Bitch" can be used to refer to a personality type (insultingly, admiringly or anywhere in between), or as an insult; or as a badge of honor.
More to the point, I can't think of any pair of gendered terms that even comes close to working as well to replace them with. This is one time that we need to have agreed on replacements that work before we decide to make any changes.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
...why not just collapse them under the more unisex "bastard"?
By the way, regarding the reclaiming of words like "bitch"
. Read it. It's important.
edited 6th Nov '10 11:49:41 AM by Aoede
survival of the tight-lipped
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
link's broken.
It was too long and got hyphenated. Fixed.
survival of the tight-lipped
English isn't my first language, but from what i've gathered, the main issue of Bitch is that it's less threatening than Bastard. You can call anyone a bitch instead of a bastard if you think that they're immature, annoying or stupid, while bastard is usually a word of some competence. To me, Manipulative Bitch isn't really working, since bitches don't have thiat kind of power, thogh they may try to get it. Isn't there a gender neutral variant to repace it with, so that the tropw works smoothely for both sexes?
Both b-words should be avoided whenever use of them is not needed. Hell, I would even recommend renaming Magnificent Bastard if not for how clearly established it was and how overwhelming trying to clean up all the mentions of it on works articles would be. (No, using the h-word is not for the sake of Hypocritical Humor; there is a difference between cussing in the forums and cussing in trope names.)
EDIT: But for now, just replace use of "bitch" with "bastard" since the former is clearly more controversial and the latter is gender neutral.
edited 6th Nov '10 12:17:02 PM by neoYTPism
I already replaced the use of the word bitch with bastard in the Disney sleeping beauty page... I almost forgot it was even there until thinking about this thread.
What reason is there for NOT replacing bitch with bastard, anyway?
The rare use of it to describe a woman, perhaps? It's one of those words tha makes you immediately think of a man, no matter how neutral the original intent may be
edited 7th Nov '10 6:09:34 AM by Mimimurlough
If we consider "The Situation", perhaps it would be better to avoid these words on pages that really don't need it. Magnificent Bastard is drawn for a very famous quote. I'm not sure if we can get rid of that one, but perhaps the others could be renamed.
@ Mimi: "Bastard" for me ranks about the same as "you guys" on the genderedness scale, which is to say, a little but not very.
survival of the tight-lipped
To toss it in: Bastard Operator From Hell. I don't think anyone calls him bastard because he was born out of wedlock.
Therein you have one of the peculiar things about cuss words: their original meaning gets diluted a lot. Like "twat", which we were discussing in another thread, it really depends on the context. When people try to get out of trouble the use of "bitch" by saying "it means a female dog!", they usually didn't actually use it in that context either.
I know at least one definate use of "bastard" in the original sense being applied to a female: Daiane Sarrasri from the Tortall Universe books. For that mater, go look at Heroic Bastard...
Don't forget Henry VIII's various daughters being declared bastards.
survival of the tight-lipped
Indeed, I remember seeing the female dog excuse in my discussion of cuss words in trope names when I used Bitch in Sheep's Clothing as an example.
It is preferable to avoid cussing, but failing that, using the less controversial cuss words is the next best thing. Replacing bitch with bastard tones down the vulgarity, and does not require gandering trope names for the characters they apply to.
Is there any difference on how the characters are treated/expressed/whatever, other than being a Gender Flip, that would warrant separate pages?
Nope. But someone's already redirected Magnificent Bitch to Magnificent Bastard, so whatevs.
survival of the tight-lipped
The female versions were always redirects, that's not the issue.
Thanks for the link, Aoede. It was very interesting.
There's a huge difference between talking about real people and fictional characters. The former require consideration for their feelings and respect for their self-identification in ways that the later does not. For example, the page quote for Manipulative Bastard would be an ethical problem if LOST had been a reality show rather then pure fiction. Seriously, there are people who have suicided after realizing that they are now the Manipulative Bastard or The Scrappy or whatever with society at large. Of course, Magnificent Bastard does not have this problem: It's about how the person is portrayed, rather then about what word is used.
Anyway, the tropes for manipulative b and magnificent b uses bastard for male as well as gender neutral, and bitch for gendered female. Works fine for me. And on a second thought I think it's cool that Magnificent Bitch has so many potholes. Less fun that Manipulative Bitch have twice the amount. So for people who want to replace the word bitch with the word bastard (and I don't agree with them, but I don't really care either), I'd be glad if you focused your efforts on Manipulative Bitch rather then on Magnificent Bitch. One could easily oversimplify it into that the former is oppressive/derogatory while the later is reclaimatory. :-)
As for the other tropes, I woke up this morning thinking "Hey, 'Abusively' is strong enough in itself, it doesn't really need a b-word for emphasis."
I have now added the redirects Abusively Sexy Woman and Abusively Sexy Man for potholing. For the female trope, I'm thinking of renaming it - making Abusively Sexy Woman the main title instead of Abusively Sexy Bitch.
"So for people who want to replace the word bitch with the word bastard (and I don't agree with them, but I don't really care either), I'd be glad if you focused your efforts on Manipulative Bitch rather then on Magnificent Bitch. One could easily oversimplify it into that the former is oppressive/derogatory while the later is reclaimatory"
... what
^ I don't understand much either, but this is how the words are used. Bitch is on one hand often used as a synonym for slave or servant (which one could argue is its real ddifference from Bartard, who is a free agent). But it's also used for synonym of a self assured or provocative woman, as stated earlier. I think these connotations should be held in mind, but otherwise 'm confused,
TV Tropes uses a dichotomy ( = pair of counterparts) where a certain kind of man is called a bastard and the same or equaliant kind of woman is called a bitch:
Lately, some people have expressed uneasiness with the word "bitch". While I'm personally okay with the word in the mentioned contexts, I do think it's worth discussing.
- Is the word "bitch" worse then the word "bastard"?
- I asked my girlfriend about this (she's american), and her opinion is that it used to be but that it has lost much of it's destructive power over the years, partly because people have started using it as a positive thing. (Magnificent Bitch here on TV Tropes would be a good example of that! Another example would be the feminist site heartless-bitches.com
.)
- Are bastard and bitch very bad?
- Not in my opinion, it feels like a bit like a "Santa Davaka" situation to me.
(I was about to explain what that means, but I think I'll start a YKTTW about it instead. Will provide a link later. In short, it's from Penn And Teller Bullshit.)I hope that this thread will either get constructive or die quickly. :-)