Re: utter exasperation

Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Thu, 10 Apr 1997 01:08:07 +0000


At 11:33 PM 4/7/97 +0000, Kathryn wrote:

>IOW, try and find a male perjorative term that would fit into the above
>list [of female gendered terms of abuse], I doubt you will succeed.

A favourite term of (light-hearted-through-furious) abuse in Australia is
`dick-head'. `Fuckwit' has its fanciers, and is at least gender-free.
Calling someone a `prick' is colder and less forgiven, oddly enough, than
any of the pudenda epithets - well, of course, there's so much more
phallocratic mana attached - and `bastard' tends mysteriously to be the
male equivalent of `bitch' (while I suspect `son-of-a-bitch', little used
here until recent media saturation, equals `bastard' in the States?).

Damien the discourse analyst