Oh, Girl.

"What a bitch."

How many times have you heard a phrase like that, describing the actions of someone, usually male, doing something that wasn't deemed appropriate within the boundaries of American masculinity?

"Is it that time of the month for you?"

For my fellow females out there, how many times has an act of independence, outspokenness, or really, anything that was wasn't deemed appropriate within the masculine approved and conceived boundaries of femininity provoked this comment?

While I'm sure that there are things that frustrate me more than this casual put-down of women, I am hard pressed to think of one at the moment. I guess this sort of dismissal of behavior stems back to ancient anxieties over being unable to assert one's masculinity. Classical and Biblical scholars alike believe that the proscriptions against homosexual behavior in antiquity had more to do with it being the ultimate act of submission/lack of masculine authority and power rather than any perceived immortality in the act itself.

And don't even get me started on the hackneyed (and sexist) maxim that compares and contrasts male and female sexuality: "a key that can open many locks is called a master lock; a lock that opens for multiple keys is just a terrible lock." (This point always makes me laugh, because anyone who says this in any seriousness has just betrayed their utter sexual insecurities and stunning inability to allow women the same sexual liberation that they themselves enjoy -- and yeah, I've never heard a female state this phrase in any sense of seriousness; only males have brought this up, usually to me, and then pause and wait for me to acknowledge the sheer genius of the statement. Yeah, ok.)

But back to being a "bitch".

As a fairly outspoken, confident, and rather boundary oblivious female, I have been called all sorts of things by both men and women. I was called a bitch in middle school and called a cunt in the workplace for -- get this -- not sharing my music while testing video games. As a female who seems to always find herself in male-dominanted occupations, like video games or the academy, becoming cognizant of gender and how gender is treated can be a humorous exercise. But it's also deeply critical for professional survival.

My video game job, for example, was complicated by my gender and my age. For whatever reason, the women I worked with (very few of them) considered me to be a threat to their dominance in the particular office we worked in. What made it worse (or at least hilariously ironic), was that one of the women who made it her personal mission to malign my reputation, if not get me fired, was the HR manager. I was accused of sleeping my way into a promotion, preferring married men, and hooking up with every semi-attractive male in the office. My performance was almost a non-issue: no one cared what I did at work, because I did my job very well. It was my alleged activities outside the office that garnered the most attention. And that was just something I didn't understand.

Sadly, the academy is not immune to these issues, either; the recent interactions over a book review between its male author and female reviewer, is eye opening and a little more than disturbing. I can't really comment because Black feminist/womanist thought is not something of which I can come even close to claiming I have a deep or even adequate understanding. But the tensions between this entire exchange underscores the way in which we, as human beings, are constantly trying to define the boundaries of what constitutes appropriate behavior in regards to gender, let alone how we can speak about it, or even conceive it.

I realize that something like gender is deeply ingrained into the subconscious of a society; these preconceptions are reflected and even promulgated by the current Miller Lite campaign, in which women verbally emasculate men who ask for light beer that isn't Miller Lite. These are the sorts of things that change slowly, but I wonder how many men stop and think about what they actually mean when they call another male a "bitch", and if they really can champion women and gender equality on one hand and tacitly disrespect and demean females when they deride a fellow male's behavior.