According to Chuck Schumer's office, he made an "off-the-cuff comment under his breath" on Sunday after a US Airways flight attendant told him to turn off his cell phone. According to a Republican aide who was lucky enough to overhear the exchange, that "off-the-cuff comment" would be the b-word. This was apparently enough for Republicans to accuse Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who was sitting next to Schumer, of being a bad feminist. The National Republican Senatorial Committee says:

For a politician who claims to have a "family first" agenda and who claims to fight for women's rights, Kirsten Gillibrand's silence is stunning. It appears clear that when push comes to shove, she's far more worried about offending her political mentor, Chuck Schumer, than standing up for women in the workplace. It's our hope that those womens' rights organizations that have already endorsed her campaign for the Senate will ask Kirsten Gillibrand why she believes it's acceptable to call a female flight attendant a "bitch."

Why didn't she strangle him with her bra immediately? Sarah Palin totally would've. Kidding aside, though, the whole incident raises the question of whether "bitch" is a big deal anymore. On the one hand, Bitch Magazine and others have worked to reclaim the word. It's so much a part of common parlance that I hardly think twice when someone uses it casually. And it was hardly shocking when Double X ran a piece by Hanna Rosin yesterday under the headline, "The Rise of the Kitchen Bitch." Then again, that essay also illustrated some of the lingering problems with the word. Rosin says Sandra Tsing Loh uses the term "kitchen bitch" to refer to "a friend's husband who was anal and fussy and altogether too feminine-he belonged to an online fennel club, for God's sake." When a man gets called a bitch — as when he's called a pussy — it usually means he's acting stereotypically feminine. Which means, in turn, that simply being a woman remains a stinging insult.

But what of "bitch" as applied to women? Like "slut," women sling it around often enough affectionately. And many who say it without affection just use it as they would "asshole" — a word to describe someone whose behavior sucks. But it can also be used to put a woman in her place — to insult her, for instance, for rejecting a man's advances or for speaking her mind. The word "bitch" can imply that a man is too feminine, but it can also imply that a woman isn't feminine enough — and these connotations alone make its use problematic, even if the user doesn't mean to make any kind of gendered statement.

I'm a pretty conciliatory person, and I don't get in a lot of wars of words — or any other kind. But I do remember the first time (that I know of) that someone called me a bitch. It was early in college, and I'd been clashing with a fellow student who was my superior at work. After a particularly heated argument, I heard that my superior was telling our coworkers what a "bitch" I was. To be honest, I was thrilled. "Bitch" meant that I'd stuck up for myself, when I'd often been too passive to do so in the past. It meant someone thought I was difficult, and perhaps even insufficiently feminine — but it also meant I had a certain kind of power. I'd become someone who wouldn't back down, someone whose opponents' only recourse was to throw around a word whose meaning I could, in fact, choose to interpret for myself. And if bitch is to be truly reclaimed, that's what I'd like it to mean.

Sen. Schumer Regrets Comment To Flight Attendant [AP, via MSNBC]
Word Prompts Apology From Schumer [NYT]
NRSC Plays The Feminism Card [Washington Independent]
The Rise Of The Kitchen Bitch [Double X]
Bitch [Dictionary.com]

If you'll recall, "Victim? In Virginia" wrote in asking Amy whether the non-consensual sex forced upon her at a frat party against her explicit protests, was, in fact rape. Her "Sobering Advice to Rape Victim" (the paper has since changed the headline) included the line "first, you were a victim of your own awful judgment," and a hefty dose of victim-blaming. Thus, we imagine this reader letter was not the only one of its kind:

From: [Redacted]
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2009 2:33 PM
To:AskAmy
Subject: Please pass this on to the rape victim you attacked in your Nov. 27 column

Here is the Virginia code's definition of "Rape";

"A. If any person has sexual intercourse with a complaining witness who is not his or her spouse or causes a complaining witness, whether or not his or her spouse, to engage in sexual intercourse with any other person and such act is accomplished (i) against the complaining witness's will, by force, threat or intimidation of or against the complaining witness or another person, or (ii) through the use of the complaining witness's mental incapacity or physical helplessness, or (iii) with a child under age thirteen as the victim, he or she shall be guilty of rape."

If the lady who wrote to you asking for help never gave consent and thus had sex against her will (see 1) OR if she was too incapacitated by alcohol to legally consent (see 2), she most certainly was raped and she should know that the law is on her side, even if you aren't.

Oh, and you're being talked about here:

http://jezebel.com/5414393/ask-amy-to-date-rape-victim-first-you-were-a-victim-of-your-own-awful-judgment

Couldn't happen to a nicer rape apologist.

Dickinson responds:

From: Ask Amy
Sent: Sat 11/28/2009 3:56 PM
To: [Redacted]
Subject: RE: Please pass this on to the rape victim you attacked in your Nov. 27 column

Did you even read my column? I quoted extensively from the Rape, Incest and Abuse Hotline's definition of rape and suggested that she check her state's laws? Where I said that if she says no at any point, it's rape? I don't know if you didn't bother to read my column or if perhaps it was edited heavily in your paper, but please . . . how dare you call me a "rape apologist."

I see you are a student or affiliated in some way with [law school]? I would expect someone from [law school] to be more educated, careful, respectful and circumspect. I'm not sure why I would expect that, but I'll adjust. Meanwhile, I don't pass inanities along to people who write in to my column. I figure this young person has suffered enough indignity.

Amy Dickinson

But, see, if Amy's going to get outraged at everyone who objects to her "tough love," she has a long slog ahead: A "Tell Amy Dickinson to Correct Her Rape Victim Blaming Advice Column petition is circulating demanding that Dickinson amend what the authors term "insensitive, irresponsible, and factually incorrect advice." And so far 370 signors have endorsed the "inanities."

Rape Question A Matter Of Consent [Chicago Tribune]
Ask Amy To Reader: "How Dare You Call Me A ‘Rape Apologist'" [D.C. City Paper]
Tell Amy Dickinson to Correct Her Rape Victim Blaming Advice Column [Change.Org]

Earlier: Ask Amy To Rape Victim: "First, You Were A Victim Of Your Own Awful Judgment"

As mentioned previously, these unkind words were launched at model Liskula Cohen by class-act blog Skanks In NYC. The 36-year-old model, who has appeared in Vogue and other fashion magazines, is suing Google, which hosts the blog, for defamation, in an attempt to force the blogger out of anonymity. In the lawsuit, Cohen states that the blog's slings and arrows paint her as a "promiscuous woman who is filthy, disgusting, foul and a whore," a rep that's not done much for her "desirability for endorsing products." While the uncharitable could perhaps suggest that this desirability was already somewhat in question — and, further, that said anonymous asshole is considerably more fixated on the model's activities than is the public; and, further still, that this is in fact the first we have really heard of her and this kind of publicity isn't really serving to distract from a site we'd otherwise be unfamiliar with — the real question, which Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory poses is, does she have a case?

Not exactly. As a lawyer tells her, for the case to hold water, the model would have to prove that Skank's assertions were not just their opinion, but rather, deliberately misleading: "a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to a person's reputation." In other words, well-nigh impossible to do. (Although it does seem like she could probably prove pretty conclusively that she's not the #1 skank in New York — surely there's gotta be some viable competition, both amongst celebrities and professional prostitutes, no?)

Of course, however much flack she'll take for the law-suit, her thin skin, the fact that she had an unpleasant bottle contretemps with a bouncer last year, and the possible publicity ploy — in short, however misguided it may be - we get why someone would want to do it: on a basic level, it seems wrong that a stranger (or, even worse, not) should be able to write vile things anonymously. Sticks and stones nothing, reading that has to be a punch to the gut for anyone not trained from childhood to weather gratuitous insults. And the internet is, as pundits are fond of saying, still the "wild west," legally speaking. There's certainly scope for precedent-setting and why not in this case, frivolous though it may seem? It would be nice if there was some resolution to this case beyond "Skanks in NYC" getting more hits, Cohen humiliating herself, and the rest of us just feeling really, really sad. Because we imagine the wild west being slightly more exciting than that - or at least involving more frontier justice.

Model Sues Over "Skank" Comment [Salon]

Earlier:Rag Trade: Model Sues Google After Random Blogger Calls Her "Old Hag"