Serious A Women's Group Wants to Ban the Word "Bossy"

[BenTheDemon]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/sheryl-sandberg-launches-ban-bossy-campaign-empower-girls/story?id=22819181
I'm not joking. This isn't an Onion Story. This is a serious story.
George Carlin would be rolling over in his grave. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd, twat, and now BOSSY!
To get this out of the way, I'm not a sexist. I believe in women's rights. I agree with the premise that it is absolutely absurd that women aren't paid equally and that women carry less political offices and business roles.
HOWEVER, banning the word "bossy" is most certainly NOT the answer. If anything, I think this would be a step backwards for women's rights as it completely bypasses leadership.

But I want to know what the people of Smogon think. Discuss your thoughts here.

 

[Shinryu]

Ok...I'm pretty sure that word has been used just as much (if not more) to describe...well, bossy male bosses as well. So why did it become such a big feminist thing? Got their panties in a twist or something? I mean, if you really wanna insult a woman boss that's strict there are so many choicier words than bossy. Besides by the sound of it, Sandberg does sound bossy.

Anyways, this is about as stupid as those Arizona's laws that they keep trying to push, which is saying something.

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

This is obviously much less (or should be, anyway) about banning the use of a word than it is about eliminating a prejudicial mentality that tends to characterize the everyday use of said word. This is evident from the conclusion in the article, but naturally, the ignorant will misconstrue the issue as one of free speech and begin misinformed anti-censorship crusades in response, as evidenced by the comments section and elsewhere...

 

[Lanturn314]

I think this lady's heart is in the right place in terms of wanting to make more young girls feel safer and more encouraged to speak up, but... I really don't think banning a word is gonna do anything. How do you even "ban" a word, anyway? Just tell people not to say it? People swear all the time, increasingly so on TV, even though doing so is frowned upon in polite society.

Speaking of which, in my experience, the word "bitch" has been a LOT more harmful than the word "bossy". And the word "bitch" is already considered a "bad word", yet it is still extremely prevalent. So clearly, this campaign is going to be ineffective at best.

Let's be real here: this campaign probably won't even get off the ground, so it's pointless to freak out about it anyway. And there are legitimately dumb initiatives in every movement... this is clearly one of those initiatives and everyone seems to know it, so WHATEVER. It doesn't even deserve a thread, really. Come on now.


A better thing to do would be to try to make more girls see that being a leader and expressing your views is a GOOD thing. Ya know, the whole empowerment schtick. Get girls to be PROUD of being seen as "bossy". Isn't that the real problem here anyway? That girls are often afraid to speak up because of the prejudice against them that exists? Even if we somehow WERE able to eradicate the word "bossy" from existence, it wouldn't change anything. It's way better to try to tackle the roots of the problem (of which there are many).

 

[BenTheDemon]

This is obviously much less (or should be, anyway) about banning the use of a word than it is about eliminating a prejudicial mentality that tends to characterize the everyday use of said word. This is evident from the conclusion in the article, but naturally, the ignorant will misconstrue the issue as one of free speech and begin misinformed anti-censorship crusades in response, as evidenced by the comments section and elsewhere...

I know that it's a women's rights issue at its core, but once you bring up banning a word it becomes a free speech issue.
I'm not comparing these people to Hitler by any means; I'm just using this as an extreme example to illustrate what I mean.
Hitler's extermination of the Jews was at its core an economic issue; he truly believed that Jews were the cause of Germany's economic woes. His solution was to kill them all, but at that point it became a human rights issue.

So what I'm getting at is that I know that women's rights is an issue, but this false solution creates a whole new issue being Freedom of Speech.
And as I stated in the OP, I am all for women's rights. I also find it obscene that women aren't paid as much as men and don't hold 50% of political and business offices. Banning a word is simply not the solution. We've only recently gained our right to say "motherfucker" on TV and radio.
Also, if we ban the word "bossy", we might as well ban bitch, cunt, twat, (BAN ME PLEASE), motherfucker, and even schmuck cause it might hurt someone's feelings.
The better solution would be to let little girls know that if someone calls you bossy, then you should take it as a term of endearment and prove their asses wrong.

 

[Woodchuck]

This is obviously not a free speech issue because no one is actually trying to institutionally ban the word "bossy". Remember when everyone was using "thug" as a substitute for "(BAN ME PLEASE)" when referring to Richard Sherman and Jameis Winston? This is a similar situation in which "bossy" is a way for people to "get away with" calling women bitches for being assertive. When Sandberg says to ban "bossy", it's a similar concept to banning "thug" -- she's not trying to actually remove it from the dictionary; she wants to draw more attention to the way the word is used to belittle women. "Ban bossy" -> ban the use of bossy as a codeword for "this woman is not deferring to men, and I don't like that."

This might be an interesting topic to discuss but the OP is incredibly poorly phrased. "A Women's Group Wants to Ban the Word 'Bossy'." Hah. Those women.

Try to actually understand the point of a movement before pointing and laughing at it.

(Eo Ut Mortus said this in fewer words but for some reason I think spelling it out is necessary.)

 

[BenTheDemon]

The reason I said "Women's Group" is because it is a campaign started by all women.
I fully understand the point of the movement. They're trying to taboo the word "bossy" claiming that its an insult to women; I wholeheartedly disagree.
If I sound sexist, I tried making it clear in the OP that that is far from the truth. I'd be just as pissed if it were a men's group trying to ban "dickhead".
I fully realize that at the core, this group is trying to curb sexism. However, attempting to ban a word (And I know they're not trying to take it out of the dictionary; I realize that they are simply trying to taboo it and remove it from mainstream media, etc. I thought that went without saying.) is clearly an attack on free speech.
Do you really want to start hearing an audio bleep whenever someone says "bossy"? I think it's bad enough that I can't go on Fox News and tell Bill O'reilley that he's a fuckhead without being bleeped.

Before anyone criticizes me again, let it be known that I understand the idea behind the movement!
...But I won't try to ban criticism, because I believe in the open share of ideas.

 

[Woodchuck]

Seriously? They're not trying to get the word "bossy" bleeped out on television. They're trying to stop one specific usage of it, of which you appear to be entirely ignorant.

The "ban bossy" movement is not banning a word. It's a movement to teach people that "bossy" is used to belittle and dismiss assertive women, and it's trying to get people to stop using that word. But they are not trying to actually ban that word, in any sense, in any medium - people just need to be aware of the pitfalls of using that word.

 

[faint]

it's good practice to read the article before you post a thread about it.

 

[Blazade]

I thought the article was interesting simply because I don't hear the word bossy used often anymore in any context. Now that I think about it, there probably is an asymmetry and an issue there, but rather than hit it with a sledgehammer, these things tend to be better resolved by tackling the underlying problems. Especially if it's parents spinning things up, when everyone's making a big deal out of the word bossy and most kids don't understand why, it doesn't really help them in the short term, and it would be ridiculous to assume censorship (which doesn't seem to be their goal over, say, awareness) is going to make the idea go away.

"Imagine a classroom in America where 50 kids are present: 25 girls, 25 boys," Chavez said.

"And the teacher walks into this classroom and says: 'Boys and girls, I have this really hard, difficult program that I need to solve that's gonna impact this country.' She writes the problem on the board and then turns around and escorts 24 of the 25 girls out of the room. ... She leaves one girl and 25 boys to solve that equation.

Really speaks to me as a mathematician. God, we still haven't gotten over this kind of thing at ALL in math. I don't really know why we still have problems like this because we're in the 21st century and I haven't seen anything actively or even passively sexist going on in schools I've attended. I guess it's just the slow death of the ghost of an older culture, which will soon quietly be replaced by a better, more stable standard.

 

[MoxieInfinite]

Well, SwagPlay got suspect tested, so why not this?

 

[UsernameSayWha]

She's just campaigning, nothing is actually going to happen. No reason to react.

 

[Shiruba]

Forgive me if I'm shitposting again.

That said, I don't think this is the way to go about this. Banning a word completely just means people will find a different word to describe it, honestly, or make it up if it doesn't exist. "Stuck-up," "strict," "pushy," etc already exist, and that's assuming you can even really "ban" a word in the first place. It's also not like bossy just refers to women or that it's even necessarily unjustified when it is used; some people, both male and female, are honestly bossy people, and calling them that isn't unjustified in the slightest and thus doesn't deserve any sort of banning in that context - unless we're just gonna ban people calling women that, and, well... isn't that against the very meaning of "equality"?

Either way, the best that most people will think of this is to scoff at it [in my opinion, rightfully so], and at worst think lesser of actually impactful campaigns due to stuff like this getting a free pass.

I get what she's trying to do, and it honestly makes sense; a lot of people just don't take women that seriously when they say they're ambitious. That honestly sickens me, and it always will; I firmly believe that someone should be judged on their own merits, not what's between their legs - yes, I am aware that it has other biological and perhaps psychological implications [I'm curious to see how many of those are intact sans the social enforcement gender roles, however], but people should not be punished for not adhering to them, both males and females alike.

While the spirit of this is in the right place, though, the way they're going about it is ineffectual at best, and, in my personal opinion, really stupid.

Not worth a thread, though, like Username said. There's little to no way that this'll get off the ground.

Also, Woodchuck, forgive me if I keep missing something; I skimmed the article twice and actually read it twice as well, but when does it say that she only means "specific contexts"?

Sandberg said she hopes the campaign will open a dialogue with parents and teachers, to eliminate the use of the word "bossy,"

We are not just talking about getting rid of a word, even though we want to get rid of a word,"

is spearheading the launch of a campaign today to ban the word "bossy," is arguing the negative put-down stops girls from pursuing leadership roles.

Perhaps I'm simply not reading between the lines, but I like to take news stories written as such for what they are, not what they could be.

Some of the comments on this are great:

I watched ABC 'News" last night for the first time in a long time. The first segment was a quick, obligatory segment about the missing airplane. The SECOND segment was about this! I was eating, and nearly threw up - more liberal oppression on the way! After the commercial, the next segment advertised was getting to see one of ABC's employees having a panic attack on the air.
This isn't news, it's a combination of liberal jack booted thuggery and Oprah.
I changed the channel to FOXNews.

MUH LIBRULS

MUH FOX NOOSE

 

[Trax]

My alternate term for "bossy" if it becomes banned is "obnoxious cunt", balls in your court Sheryl.

 

[elcheeso]

Yeah, our freedoms were really destroyed when those damned blackro americans banned the use of the word (BAN ME PLEASE). It was awful, and if we allow these WOMEN to ban bossy we could end up living in some sort of feminist dystopia where women are stealing all the CEO jobs from men! I promise that I will call all of the 5 year old girls obnoxious cunts and bitches other gender related insults if they dare to try and steal our rightful positions in society, fuck them and fuck you too Sheryl! Her attempts to ban the word bossy by... not doing anything in the legal sphere and simply asking people not to use the word and/or analysing why they use it is going TOO FAR! The fact that the campaign IS about getting young girls to feel more comfortable about leadership and stopping others from using language that discourages it is completely irrelevant, WHAT ABOUT OUR FREEDOMS????




OH FUCK IT'S THE COPS THEY SAW ME USE THE WORD (BAN ME PLEASE) AHH FUCK!

 

[Lanturn314]

Crux brings up a good point though in that people will always find alternate ways of insulting and demeaning other people. And also that "bossy" as an insult is pretty innocuous when compared with "cunt", "bitch", "slut", or "whore", or even just "nag". I don't think I've met all that many people who were afraid of being called "bossy"... i mean, who even actually uses that word anymore, anyway? If we're going to focus on language, the idea of focusing on THAT particular word is puzzling to say the least.

The heart of the whole thing is in the right place, but overall the execution of it just seems stupid and contrived to me. Sorry if that makes me a bad feminist :/

 

[Age of Kings]

Sorry if that makes me a bad feminist :/

Considering that you managed to use what is considered a super horrible dirty word on the internet that has only been used once previously in this thread in a deriding context and people obviously tiptoeing around it because of peer pressure, you're doing a great job imo (at being a good feminist, also I agree with your posts)

 

[elcheeso]

I think Crux would be extremely insulted to be mistaken for Trax... and probably vice versa, lol.

Edit: Also Lanturn it's important to note that this is meant to be helping younger kids, like pre-middle school. Obviously swearing to be TOTALLY AWESOME COOL GUYS starts pretty early (if I had to guess, maybe between 10-12), but generally speaking, 7 year old girls aren't being called bitches or whores or cunts by their peers. It can happen, it's just kind of rarer until you're hitting later primary early middle/high school.

Plus if you read the article and the associated website, it mentions "other b-words" in addition to bossy. Obviously the focus is on bossy since that's a word that has more meaning to really young kids, but it is apparently focusing on other gender related insults that are meant to shame girls for taking charge of anything.

Edit 2: Actually read their handout things for parents and girls, they're actually really interesting. Here for parents and here for girls. Learning about what they're trying to teach and/or achieve might make some of you rethink your attitude towards this campaign. Or maybe they're just COMIN FER ER JERBS N FREEDOM!

 

[Outlaw]

I call guys bossy and bitches all the time.

Everyone should learn from me.

 

[aVocado]

I ju-

Feminist a-

I ca-

I don't know if I should laugh because of how hilarious this is or just how sad it is.

 

[whistle]

Nothing says "bossy" more than BANNING a WORD just because YOU don't like it.

itsfromthecomments

 

[BenTheDemon]

TJ sums this up better than I did.

 

[Geodude6]

"Oh wait you're serious."

"Let me laugh even harder."

 

[DarkSlay]

I would hate for this song to be banned as a result of this.

 

[Abra Kapocus]

Any girl with dreams of being in a position of leadership who falters to the word "bossy" probably wouldn't have made a good leader to begin with. I don't see anyone trying to make the same rules against targeting boys with such language. If you want to be a leader, you have to know when to take criticism and when you're going too far, gender notwithstanding. We are becoming a society with increasingly thinner skin, allowing mere words to be so damaging to us. And this is coming from someone who argues in favor of political correctness (with bounds of reason considered, of course).

A measure like this strikes me as more in line of "thought crimes," in which it is assumed that the use of the word "bossy" actually is a substitute for something worse. How would one actually determine the intent of one who uses that word? What if "bossy" is what someone really means? Even if not, would you rather the more crass words to be used instead? If you ask me, using the word "bossy" says everything that needs to be said while softening the blow. Sheryl and co. are really reaching here. I'm all for equality in the workplace, but silly things like these are not the way to go about it.