1. Thank you for the question; I do think it's worth asking and discussing. 2. I'm not sure 'bitch' should be a negative term, and my self-esteem is high enough that I feel comfortable owning the term. 3. I'm a growth marketer and I knew it would get a bunch of clicks.

I agree with you that bitch should not be a negative term. After all it just a female dog. But colloquially it is used as a negative term. That’s the society/world we live in. It dosnt matter what you and I believe how it should be used. What matters is how’s it is actually used. You wouldn’t get the clicks you were after if the word was used as you think it should be would you? And my question comes from that perspective of grounding in our world’s reality. Given that, by used the term, it promotes objectification - May be not yours since your self esteem allows you to own it - but of women in general. And that might be too selfish of an action perhaps?

Maybe. But maybe it's like calling Voldemort 'he who shall not be named.'“Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” By using 'taboo words' like bitch, we decrease the stigma around them.

> why implicitly promote objectification of women by explicitly being ok with (crazy in my opinion) the personal choice of objectifying onseself?

A woman choosing to own the term "bitch" doesn't promote objectification of women any more than me owning the term "queer" promotes homophobia/transphobia. Bigots will always find an excuse to be bigots; they don't need a woman to give them that excuse.

Additionally, your use of "crazy" and "sane" in this context is exactly the type of tone policing that hurts women (not to mention very directly propping up the stigma against those suffering from mental illness). You're not helping.

If the writing were good enough to stand on its own merits, the attention seeking title wouldn't be necessary.

That statement is hard to prove. Most people do not read "all" content - they look for headlines that will draw them in. It's hard for any content to reach critical mass without first getting a bunch of eyeballs on there evaluating it.

Actually you're probably right. The world isn't rational or fair!

An approach for people who are marginalized to feel stronger is to reclaim language that was previously used against them, and to repurpose it to mean something positive when applied to themselves.

See: "queer" to the LGBTQ+ community, "bitch" for women, and the "n-word" for the black community. In this specific case, my understanding - I'm not a woman, but am an ally to them - is that "bitch" means a strong woman who does what she wants, regardless of societal expectations.

But there's also a tendency I've noticed of American female writers to pepper their writing with expletives, as if this makes them come across as tough, when for me it achieves the exact opposite.

Why do people in the software industry refer to themselves as "nerds" or "geeks"? Both are (or were) rather derogatory terms.

Learn to relax, man.

> "why implicitly promote objectification of women by explicitly being ok with (crazy in my opinion) the personal choice of objectifying onseself?"

your need to caveat your comment with "Serious question / Genuinely Curious", if forthright, should have given you pause in the way your question was phrased, as it indicates some underlying apprehension. that impulse should be a bright red flag to think more carefully about how to squeeze out ambiguity and obviate the need for such caveats.

as is, your phrasing is overly certain, a priori assuming its own correctness, and thus primarily phrased to project an internalized, negative connotation onto others and moreover challenging those others to disagree.

alternatively, you could have just asked "hey, isn't calling yourself a bitch objectifying to women?" in this phrasing, you'd be proposing a similar position, but also signaling uncertainty, which invites the alternate perspectives your "Genuinely Curious" preamble seems to angle toward, rather than challenges.

Have you ever wondered why someone would have a wallet that says 'Bad Motherfucker'?

Because when you own an epithet, it loses all its power over you.

Or it internalizes the negativity into low self-esteem.

If you used these words with their original, negative, meanings, sure.

But that's missing the point - words like "bitch", "queer", and the n-word are used to mean positive things in their respective communities.

(I'm reading the comments first)

  My first impression was that the article was written by a 

man. Calling yourself a 'bitch' would be a self-insult that could jolt you out of your laziness. I'm pretty damn lazy though...

Yeah, I was somewhat surprised to find the author is a woman. The bitch is not very gendered here.