Well, another cowardly attack...

[kjones]

14. Wait, what's wrong with shrill? And hasn't "hysteria" developed well beyond it's origins by now?

Douchebag is certainly a word for certain contexts, but I'm also not quite sure how that's
particularly offensive. Maybe there's something in its origin in pejorative use that I'm not
aware of, but all you can really connect is that it is an inanimate item used to hold inanimate
items used by women.



There's an article I read during research:
Title: "Thieving Buggers" and "Stupid Sluts": Insults and Popular Culture in New France
Author(s): Peter N. MoogkSource: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Oct., 1979), pp. 524-547

Basically, the paper used old correspondence, records and such to look at 17th century insults used for men and women,
and found they breakdown along general trends. Male insults attacked for business worth and honesty....financial conduct ("thief" "scoundrel" "cheat&quot , whereas female insults attacked sexual fidelity or promiscuity ("whore" being the leader by a wide margin).
Perhaps similar trends are often in play for modern insults. Women are frequently attacked for promiscuity (though men are as well)
and men are often attacked for economic, intelligence (often related to economic factors), and honesty. Seems males insults are more evenly distributed, while female ones focus heavily on the sexual, which is also what the study showed, though it's pretty anecdotal. So, women are "slutty whores" and men are "broke, lying dumbasses." Both are pretty harsh targets. Common sense (knowledge? though sometimes certainly inaccurate) seems to show that women value men who are honest, hardworking money makers and men value women who are healthy, attractive and sexually loyal. Again, big anecdotal generalizations, but it's at least something to think about. Insults are obviously meant to be aimed at where they will do the most damage. If one or the other sex (or others?) are disproportionately targeted by specific genre of insults, it's probably because those are the things that they or others value in themselves. Maybe an updated version would be "Gold-Diggers" and "Parents' basement Dwellers."