Two Ministry of Justice workers are in hot water for describing a researcher as a “bitch” in an online conversation.
Academic and author Barbara Sumner made a number of Official Information Act requests as part of her PhD research into the systems around adoption. Then, in October last year, she asked for all correspondence mentioning her by name.
“Because I had felt all along that there was a resistance to everything I sent in and you know, just the sort of snottiness, I guess, of some of the responses that came in that request. I wanted to understand how they were treating me throughout the process.”
One page of the response stood out among more than 100 others. A November 2022 Teams conversation between two staffers, whose names were redacted, complained about Sumner’s latest request.
They described it as “a waste of time” and said it “should have been refused on the ground of substantial collation” or that the ministry should “charge her for it and get a contractor”.
“our ministerial services team sucks cuz they wouldnt let us refuse, and helen didnt push back hard [sic],” one worker wrote.
"but also shes a bitch for wanting everything. does she think govt just has unlimited resources for this type of crap lol.
“like theres no public interest in our emails back and forward.”
This was my view too. It was barely calling her a bitch, it was basically referring to her actions as being annoying. But I expect that is heavily soaked in my view of these words, and many people would be offended by this comment.
The word has joined the ranks of trigger words that really set some people off.
It means female asshole. There’s plenty of woman who are complete assholes. Men too. I don’t get it.
See, that’s what I thought too, and that’s how I’ve always interpreted and used it. But there is a not insignificant group of people who think it represents systemic misogyny, and even white supremacy. One of my lifelong friends gets really worked up over the word, and has lectured me at le length about it. I think he’s overanalyzing everything, and granting words way more power than they’re supposed to have. But I feel that way in general about a lot of hot topic subjects right now. Out of respect for his views I don’t use that word around him any more. I generally use it less overall now that I know it triggers some people, and I guess I probably haven’t used it towards a woman since learning how some people view it.
Sometimes using a word to commonality takes the sting out. Grammatical gender is built into the bones of our language and I’ve always considered bitch to be apart of that. I very rarely use the word and if comes up I guess I’ll ask them if they prefer asshole instead.
Oh, I agree with you, and I’m actually kind of pissed at my friend for ruining a perfectly good adjective for me, but at the same time I want to respect people, so…
In this context, I feel it has more of the sting of “dick”. What a dick for requesting so much stuff. She’s a bitch for requesting so much stuff.