Date of Completion
2025
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Linguistics
Thesis Type
College of Arts and Science Honors
First Advisor
Maeve Eberhardt
Keywords
queer, anti-female slurs, "bitch", reclamation, linguistic
Abstract
The interplay of anti-female slang, queer identity, and patriarchal power structures provides an opportunity to explore feminist critiques of our society at a deeper level. Data for this project was obtained with a survey and interviews from a sample population of UVM students surrounding the social reformative capability of the word “bitch”. The linguistic overlap of this word within both queer and female communities establishes “bitch” as a focal point in the analysis of anti-female slang, among both genderqueer and cisgender populations, and impacts the larger discussion of gender inequity in our society.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Cochran, Hannah, "The Power of the Word “Bitch”: A Qualitative Assessment of the Societal Impact of Anti-female Slang through a Gendered Lens in Regard to Social Reclamation" (2025). UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses. 709.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/709
