In the present day, the word “bitch” has so many different meanings that it is nearly impossible to define. It can be used as a scathing insult directed at a woman, but it can also describe something impressive or cool (bitchin’). If someone engages in the act of bitching, they’re whining. But perhaps the most challenging definition to grasp is its use by self-proclaimed feminists as a method of empowerment.
The idea of reclamation is a nuanced one. Boiled down, it’s the concept that a community of oppressed people can take back a word that was previously used by those in the position of power. The word bitch is particularly interesting to me for a few reasons: I am a woman, I have used this word often and I have heard this word being used often by many different groups of people, in many different ways, eliciting different reactions each time. When my high school gal-pal called me a boss bitch, I felt differently than when my mom used the b-word toward me during a heated argument.
“I like to use it to refer to my female friends but if anyone ever called me it in a derogatory way, I’d freak out,” said Emma Rosen, a sophomore Resident Assistant on the Gender Equity Floor of Carson Hall. “The first time I was ever called bitch in a mean way was by a female friend … I was really jarred by it.”
I would be jarred, too. One of the first unspoken rules of word reclamation seems to be that you have to use the word in an empowering way, or the word reverts back to being oppressive and cruel. “Reclamation of words only works if it’s in direct opposition of the way it originated,” Rosen said, implying that knowing how the word was originated is important as well.

The word bitch comes from old English ‘bicce,’ meaning female dog, but comparing women to dogs was done before there was a word for it. In the Ancient Greek and Roman empires, women were equated to dogs in heat, groveling for sexual attention. Modern usage of the word begins in the early 20th century, during the same time as the suffrage movement.
“Now that women were appearing more and more on the American stage, the insult bitch began to slip slowly into popular discourse,” Clare Bayley said in her essay, “Bitch: A History.” And reclamation of the word takes this into consideration: second and third wave feminists (pioneered by Jo Freeman’s The BITCH Manifesto) are okay with being bitches; we’re okay with being powerful and strong and even hated at times by people who don’t have the same sort of power as we do. And this is great – the reclamation of the word bitch has good intentions.
But why, then, have I used the word toward women I don’t like? Why did my otherwise wonderful, feminist mother think it was okay to say it to her young daughter? Why can men use the word, in a negative or positive way, without receiving backlash? Why is it okay to dehumanize women so casually and colloquially? In studying the word, one realizes that women can’t do anything without criticism: we can’t be powerful, or else we are bitches, unwomanly and animal-like, and we can’t be weak (picture a frat bro saying “little bitch”: “You’re being a little bitch, Jeremy, just chug it already!”). The reclamation of the word bitch is not working in the status quo because of its acceptance into everybody’s vernacular, meaning such a variety of different things.
“If you knew the meaning and the history, would you still want to use the word?” said Momo Wilms-Crowe, Office Assistant at the University of Oregon Women’s Center.
I can’t say for sure, and I certainly can’t speak for everyone. But we should recognize that words are more powerful than we think – they are symbols, and as such, they have meaning. Maybe we should all stop saying it until we, as strong, powerful women, who aren’t afraid to take over spaces previously occupied by men, can truly take it back as our own.