Talk about missing the point
posted by Silvana
Matthew Ygesias directs me to this post by Michael Wolff in which he defends Sen. Chuck Schumer's calling a flight attendant a "bitch" for no apparent reason except she asked him to turn off his cell phone. Wolff is shockingly clueless. As Yglesias points out, it's not just that it's an insult, but it's a "a pure contentless gender-slur. It’s like you’re saying “I disagree with what you’re doing and also you’re a woman which is a bad thing to be!!!!!!!!"".
Yglesias focuses on Wolff's cluelessness about the word "bitch" and what it indicates, but the rest of his article is a train wreck, too. In trying to make the case that upper-middle-class people complaining about service employees are not displaying entitlement, he displays a shocking level of entitlement, and laughingly claims that he's speaking for all people. He says:
Just a few days ago I was flying from LA back to Washington. I had a layover in Minneapolis, and I guess the airport screwed up fairly bad. We arrived on time, but our gate was occupied, and they took their sweet time reassigning us to another gate, and then we had to sit there for 15 mins while we waited for the ground crew to show up. All in all, we were about 30 minutes late, which was just enough for me to miss my flight. I was shocked at how agitated people were, and how rude to the flight attendants. I did an informal poll of the people around me, and none of them seemed to have a legitimate reason for being pissed off, beyond "I want to catch my flight." But why? Important meeting you need to be at? Kid's piano recital? Catching a once-a-day flight to Beijing? Nope. No one had a reason. The flight attendant was very apologetic when I told her that I was going to miss my flight. I was like "eh." So, I waited another two hours.
Anyway, the last part of Wolff's defense is the most ridiculous: "I believe talking back makes everybody feel better..." Ha! Actually, no, talking back makes other people uncomfortable, and makes us wish guys like you weren't such entitled, whiny jerks.
There are three things that are disturbing about this Schumer episode. First, that despite having lived a public life of incredible privilege, that he hasn't developed a sense of grace or humility, like I think a lot of other politicians have. Second, doesn't he fly on an airplane, like, multiple times per week? Doesn't he know that you have to turn off your cell phone when then plane leaves the gate? I mean, come on. Third, the fact that he used the word "Bitch."
The ladies of this blog know something about the word "Bitch." I was reading one of my high school journals last week, and was surprised to find that I referred to myself as a bitch all the time. It wasn't a form of personal pride, or bragging. I was ragging on myself for being too confident, not nice enough, too demanding, too critical. Every time I would express an opinion about someone that wasn't positive, I would write something like "God, I'm such a bitch." My fifteen-year-old self had apparently already thoroughly internalized the notion that being anything less than perfectly sweet and accommodating was not acceptable.
And that's what's really going on here. Someone in comments at Yglesias' place said "If it had been a man, he probably would have said “jerk” or “asshole” or “dick” or somesuch."
No. That's the point of the insult, and in fact is the point a lot of the time when men call women "bitch." "Bitch" is a term that's specifically used to take down women who assert authority that men determine is beyond their perceived station of woman-ness. That is, subservience. I'm certain that if the flight attendant had come over, leaned down towards Schumer, smiled, and said "I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but can you please put away your phone because the flight is taking off." With that apologetic face, you know? But walk by and say "The whole plane is waiting for you to turn your phone off"? No, that makes you a bitch. And so if a man had done it, he wouldn't have been a jerk or an asshole. No, he would have just been a man, exercising his authority. Maybe worthy of an eyeroll.
What's funny is that the person Schumer said it to was fellow New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who I'm sure has had the pleasure of being called a bitch many times for exercising more than woman-appropriate authority. I'm guessing he forgot who he was talking to.
Yglesias focuses on Wolff's cluelessness about the word "bitch" and what it indicates, but the rest of his article is a train wreck, too. In trying to make the case that upper-middle-class people complaining about service employees are not displaying entitlement, he displays a shocking level of entitlement, and laughingly claims that he's speaking for all people. He says:
Everybody knows modern life is a pitched battle between the server and the servedWhat? We do? Wolff is demonstrating a lot more about his own neurosis than he is making any kind of sensible commentary about the world we live in. I actually have no generalized problem with people serving me. Sometimes service employees are unfriendly, sometimes they are incompetent, very occasionally they are both. But it's only a raging asshole that thinks that bad service has anything to do with them, or takes it as personally as Wolff seems to. He also says:
Rather, more to the point, [Schumer]’s expressing the frustration which everybody on an airplane pretty much always feels—so, logically, he should be cheered.Again, Wolff is not speaking for me here. I feel frustration on an airplane, but mostly because the seats are too damn small. I have never, really, never had even a fleeting problem with the behavior of a flight attendant, and I've flown 3 or more round-trips per year since I was basically an infant.
Just a few days ago I was flying from LA back to Washington. I had a layover in Minneapolis, and I guess the airport screwed up fairly bad. We arrived on time, but our gate was occupied, and they took their sweet time reassigning us to another gate, and then we had to sit there for 15 mins while we waited for the ground crew to show up. All in all, we were about 30 minutes late, which was just enough for me to miss my flight. I was shocked at how agitated people were, and how rude to the flight attendants. I did an informal poll of the people around me, and none of them seemed to have a legitimate reason for being pissed off, beyond "I want to catch my flight." But why? Important meeting you need to be at? Kid's piano recital? Catching a once-a-day flight to Beijing? Nope. No one had a reason. The flight attendant was very apologetic when I told her that I was going to miss my flight. I was like "eh." So, I waited another two hours.
Anyway, the last part of Wolff's defense is the most ridiculous: "I believe talking back makes everybody feel better..." Ha! Actually, no, talking back makes other people uncomfortable, and makes us wish guys like you weren't such entitled, whiny jerks.
There are three things that are disturbing about this Schumer episode. First, that despite having lived a public life of incredible privilege, that he hasn't developed a sense of grace or humility, like I think a lot of other politicians have. Second, doesn't he fly on an airplane, like, multiple times per week? Doesn't he know that you have to turn off your cell phone when then plane leaves the gate? I mean, come on. Third, the fact that he used the word "Bitch."
The ladies of this blog know something about the word "Bitch." I was reading one of my high school journals last week, and was surprised to find that I referred to myself as a bitch all the time. It wasn't a form of personal pride, or bragging. I was ragging on myself for being too confident, not nice enough, too demanding, too critical. Every time I would express an opinion about someone that wasn't positive, I would write something like "God, I'm such a bitch." My fifteen-year-old self had apparently already thoroughly internalized the notion that being anything less than perfectly sweet and accommodating was not acceptable.
And that's what's really going on here. Someone in comments at Yglesias' place said "If it had been a man, he probably would have said “jerk” or “asshole” or “dick” or somesuch."
No. That's the point of the insult, and in fact is the point a lot of the time when men call women "bitch." "Bitch" is a term that's specifically used to take down women who assert authority that men determine is beyond their perceived station of woman-ness. That is, subservience. I'm certain that if the flight attendant had come over, leaned down towards Schumer, smiled, and said "I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but can you please put away your phone because the flight is taking off." With that apologetic face, you know? But walk by and say "The whole plane is waiting for you to turn your phone off"? No, that makes you a bitch. And so if a man had done it, he wouldn't have been a jerk or an asshole. No, he would have just been a man, exercising his authority. Maybe worthy of an eyeroll.
What's funny is that the person Schumer said it to was fellow New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who I'm sure has had the pleasure of being called a bitch many times for exercising more than woman-appropriate authority. I'm guessing he forgot who he was talking to.
Labels: m. leblanc
Posted at 11:51 AM
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