Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

I’ve just finished reading the introduction to “Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women” by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Have you heard of it? It was written in 1998, and has been collecting dust on my bookcase for as many years. The inside cover reads, “Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behaviour, from biblical times through to trophy brides, political wives and dazzling depressives.” As indicated by the title, Wurtzel is attempting to reclaim and celebrate the label, and begins by exploring what traits are characteristic of a bitch and why it can be a positive term. In this sense, the book is a little dated, as so much has been written over the past 11 years about reclaiming the word, and why a refusal to tow the party line in terms of ‘acceptable’ female behaviour is progressive and powerful. Despite this, she highlights a number of issues that are even more relevant now than when she first wrote them.

Wurtzel quotes Ellen Wilis who argues that, “Feminism has transformed women’s consciousness without, as yet, transforming society, leaving a gap between what many of us demanded of a relationship and what most men were willing to give.” She challenges the reader to “go to any bookstore” and review the vast array – the industry, in fact – of self-help books for women who love too much/can’t keep a man/are fearful of abandonment/are addicted to love, before attempting to identify any similar works aimed at men who want to address their failure to commit/be faithful/non-possessive, etc. The reality? They don’t exist. They don’t need to. Why? “Men don’t have to change the way they sexually assess women, the way certain triggers and indications of female power or feminine weakness may frighten them off. They don’t have to because we women will learn to behave.” Depressingly, I still feel that this statement is all too true. Although there are exceptions, thanks be to Christ, it generally tends to be women that are expected to check and change any behaviour considered to fall outside the narrow margins of female acceptability, not men. As if to reinforce this position, Wurtzel quotes Susie Orbach, the feminist psychoanalyst, who states, “I see all sorts of young, confident women around, but when they’re in my consulting room, they talk about the same bloody issues we had thirty years ago. They’re afraid. Women in the most oppressive relationships are trying to manage them rather than get out of them. Only now, with no women’s movement, if you have problems you feel like a freak. All the problems are internalized.”

The sentence in bold above particularly resonates with me, as I have a close friend who I see making the same futile mistakes time and again with her partner. Rather than removing herself from an unhealthy relationship, I witness her pacifying and mollycoddling her controlling and possessive partner, rather than taking the zero tolerance approach that women would hopefully adapt if feminism had successfully filtered down to the personal. In this situation, the problems are her male partners’, who repeatedly refuses to acknowledge or take any responsibility for them, whilst she suffers considerably as a result. Attempts at assertiveness are often met with threatening and aggressive behaviour, while she chooses to display typically female traits of acceptance, control and denial “out of love”. She’s 21 years old. What hope is there for the rest of womankind?

I’ll leave you with a quote used in the book that I’d quite like embedding in brass and hanging above the threshold to my pad:

“Women who pay their own rent don’t have to be nice.”

So remarked by novelist Katherine Dunn – all power to yer!