Some thoughts on the term "breeder", brought about from a thread on the Feminists Group...
Some aspects of the social condition that might help straight women understand the terminology:
Straight women are allowed to marry the person they wish, and they are then entitled to all the rights under law that carries with it, including the right to visit their partner in hospital, to inherit their mutual property, even in the event of an unexpected death where no will exists (the law presumes the spouse to be the heir). This is a long, long list that has absolutely nothing to do with religion of any variety.
Straight women holding hands with their partner are not accused of "shoving it in [our] face". They do not make their straight friends uncomfortable, nor do their children stare at their straight friends if they sit together or are affectionate.
Straight women are not assaulted just because they walked by a bar with their partner.
Straight women are not presumed to hate women merely because they like men.
There are some things that have changed since I was a young woman, but they are changes of degree, not of kind. The police no longer arrest us, but everything we do together remains a crime in the majority of states, and efforts to repeal those laws almost invariably fail. People are generally more polite to us in public, and our issues sometimes make it onto the evening news, but the DMA and Prop 8 were passed by straight people, either validating the law or failing to go to vote against it, and more people want to waste their votes on the chimera of a "Green Economy" than want to fight for the Constitutional rights of other citizens.
Although straight women are not as extreme as straight men, they still act nervously around us; despite what straight men like to believe, most straight women are no more interested in having sex with one another than straight men are in having sex with other men; straight women do not generally express their revulsion as strongly or as violently, but they express it very clearly, all the same.
In this atmosphere, where it seems as though straight people are actively engaged in making our lives miserable, unstable, or even dangerous, it is not that difficult to see where our own prejudicial language fits---it doesn't make it noble or even sensible, but it ought at least to make it comprehensible. A pejorative is intended to convey negatives, and "breeder" does that; it is offensive to straight women, particularly to those whose idea of themselves is not particularly in sync with their behaviour (thus the "in our face" &c). It is a riposte along the lines of "lesbo", "fag", and "nigger", and it has the effect intended.
I know a great many gay men who use "fag" and "faggot" (though the two convey different behaviours in their language); a substantial number of blacks use "nigger" in their language and music; I call myself a dyke, and know quite a few women who do likewise---bull dagger is often claimed to have originated among lesbians themselves.
None of that makes the terms burn any less when they are deliberately aimed at one. And I'm not at all convinced that by calling ourselves by these terms we do not damage our efforts to gain legal and social equality. It certainly makes straight people uncomfortable, and it only helps them separate us from "normal" people, who pose no threat to them or to the choices they made. And making straight people uncomfortable has real-world implications.
Perhaps the most hurtful aspect of the slur is that it is dehumaising---one is not a person, but merely an anonymous straight woman who trades reproduction and sexual submission for monetary compensation and social status. That is the retaliatory aspect---straight people do it to us on a pretty much continuous basis---and also the most ruinous to the person speaking it. The moment one lumps all straight people into a pile, one validates straight people doing the same to lesbians (or gay men, or blacks, &c). What I find most bothersome in myself is that I have done to someone else what I so vehemently dislike having done to me.
One of the men on the thread in the Feminist Group postulated that the delivery was key, but I don't know that it is quite that simple, and I'm not sure that one may exercise that degree of control in writing. Certainly among friends or long-standing pals that is true---the tone of voice alone can take the sting out of the word (just as is true for "bitch", or "slag", or "asshat")---and if one is writing to those who know one's style it can be understood, but in an online medium, I don't know that it is possible to not freight such a term with the negatives that gave it birth.
Some aspects of the social condition that might help straight women understand the terminology:
Straight women are allowed to marry the person they wish, and they are then entitled to all the rights under law that carries with it, including the right to visit their partner in hospital, to inherit their mutual property, even in the event of an unexpected death where no will exists (the law presumes the spouse to be the heir). This is a long, long list that has absolutely nothing to do with religion of any variety.
Straight women holding hands with their partner are not accused of "shoving it in [our] face". They do not make their straight friends uncomfortable, nor do their children stare at their straight friends if they sit together or are affectionate.
Straight women are not assaulted just because they walked by a bar with their partner.
Straight women are not presumed to hate women merely because they like men.
There are some things that have changed since I was a young woman, but they are changes of degree, not of kind. The police no longer arrest us, but everything we do together remains a crime in the majority of states, and efforts to repeal those laws almost invariably fail. People are generally more polite to us in public, and our issues sometimes make it onto the evening news, but the DMA and Prop 8 were passed by straight people, either validating the law or failing to go to vote against it, and more people want to waste their votes on the chimera of a "Green Economy" than want to fight for the Constitutional rights of other citizens.
Although straight women are not as extreme as straight men, they still act nervously around us; despite what straight men like to believe, most straight women are no more interested in having sex with one another than straight men are in having sex with other men; straight women do not generally express their revulsion as strongly or as violently, but they express it very clearly, all the same.
In this atmosphere, where it seems as though straight people are actively engaged in making our lives miserable, unstable, or even dangerous, it is not that difficult to see where our own prejudicial language fits---it doesn't make it noble or even sensible, but it ought at least to make it comprehensible. A pejorative is intended to convey negatives, and "breeder" does that; it is offensive to straight women, particularly to those whose idea of themselves is not particularly in sync with their behaviour (thus the "in our face" &c). It is a riposte along the lines of "lesbo", "fag", and "nigger", and it has the effect intended.
I know a great many gay men who use "fag" and "faggot" (though the two convey different behaviours in their language); a substantial number of blacks use "nigger" in their language and music; I call myself a dyke, and know quite a few women who do likewise---bull dagger is often claimed to have originated among lesbians themselves.
None of that makes the terms burn any less when they are deliberately aimed at one. And I'm not at all convinced that by calling ourselves by these terms we do not damage our efforts to gain legal and social equality. It certainly makes straight people uncomfortable, and it only helps them separate us from "normal" people, who pose no threat to them or to the choices they made. And making straight people uncomfortable has real-world implications.
Perhaps the most hurtful aspect of the slur is that it is dehumaising---one is not a person, but merely an anonymous straight woman who trades reproduction and sexual submission for monetary compensation and social status. That is the retaliatory aspect---straight people do it to us on a pretty much continuous basis---and also the most ruinous to the person speaking it. The moment one lumps all straight people into a pile, one validates straight people doing the same to lesbians (or gay men, or blacks, &c). What I find most bothersome in myself is that I have done to someone else what I so vehemently dislike having done to me.
One of the men on the thread in the Feminist Group postulated that the delivery was key, but I don't know that it is quite that simple, and I'm not sure that one may exercise that degree of control in writing. Certainly among friends or long-standing pals that is true---the tone of voice alone can take the sting out of the word (just as is true for "bitch", or "slag", or "asshat")---and if one is writing to those who know one's style it can be understood, but in an online medium, I don't know that it is possible to not freight such a term with the negatives that gave it birth.
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your comment on my set really brighten my day...
very interesting blog by the way...again i admire your insight... such an amazing women...