So, this latest thing where Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) made a reference about watermelon when presenting Jacqueline Woodson with the National Book Award for her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming. With me being unschooled in the details of American racism, I had to look up what the hell watermelon has to do with anyone. If you’re not American, and similarly baffled, here’s an explanation. (Or maybe it’s just me, for whom this particular stereotype is news.)
Daniel Handler has since made an apology and is even donating money towards helping fix lack of diversity in children’s literature. As a consequence, we’re all reminded how it’s not okay to talk about someone’s race when she is accepting an award — hammering home, again, how someone’s main identity is ‘black’, that she can’t just go ahead an be a writer and a person during one of the most significant events of her career.
When it comes to language and joking and big-name authors and the language they toss off lightly, I’m reminded of something written by Neil Gaiman, but I don’t remember the attendant twitter storm. Maybe there was one and I didn’t see it. Anyhow, remember a while back he schooled up readers on why we shouldn’t be harassing George R.R. Martin for taking his sweet time before releasing his next Game Of Thrones instalment? Gaiman wrote on his blog:
George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.
This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now.
When I hear the word ‘bitch’ I feel a twinge. Maybe it’s similar to the reaction a black American hears when they get linked somehow to ‘watermelon’ — who knows. When our female prime minister was called ‘Bob Brown’s Bitch’ I felt it, independent of how I felt personally about Julia Gillard.
Because isn’t the word ‘bitch’ a gendered insult? Whoever provided the definitions for ‘bitch’ at Urban Dictionary didn’t include any gendering in this particular use of the word:
(3) Modern-day servant; A person who performs tasks for another, usually degrading in status.
And it’s true — bitch is applied to both men and women as an insult, in the same way men are quite often called ‘girls’ or ‘grandmas’ as insults (most recently, in my experience in the first Wimpy Kid movie, by the coach, oh no, and also in The Grey, a crappy film which happened to broadcast on TV a few nights ago… I could go on.)
Etymology only takes us so far, I know it. When I tell someone ‘goodbye’ I’m not saying ‘God be with you’, and although ‘bitch’ refers to a FEMALE dog, we’re not talking about dog breeding. But take a look at another of the Urban Dictionary meanings of ‘bitch’ (which isn’t used much Down Under):
(2) Person who rides specifically in the middle of a front-seatting [sic] only car meant for 2 passengers or less [sic].
We don’t need much of an imagination to realise how this meaning came about, with driving historically being a man’s job, with any woman sitting in pillion position.
Bitch is still a gendered insult. Even when applied to men, the insult is still gendered because the main thrust of the insult comes from being a man losing his manhood due to behaving, supposedly, like a girl.
Gendered insults are so prevalent in the culture that they have been completely normalized and people often don’t even notice when they are using them, but “being completely normalized” is not equivalent to “unsexist…”
When Neil Gaiman says ‘George R.R. Martin is not your bitch’ I’m reminded instantly of another, earlier time, in which I squirmed whenever my grandmother would say regularly and without awareness of her own racism, ‘I’m not your little black boy!’ This was one of her regular sayings. She’d come out with it if we asked for a drink of water or something. Not so implicit meaning: Black boys are for doing your jobs.
It also reminds me of signs in workplace kitchens which say, ‘Your mother doesn’t live here.’ Not so implicit reading: Mothers are for tidying kitchens.
Of course we’re supposed to read these things ironically. Ha ha. Except it usually is the mothers doing most of the kitchen work. It is still black people disproportionately employed in low-paid work.
That’s why it’s still not okay for a white author to draw attention to a black author’s race at the National Book Awards. Tried and tested now, thanks Handler.
What about the gendered equivalent of oppressive language? When is that going to be not okay?
