Jenice Armstrong | Ban the B? It's a bitch

WHO HASN'T done it? You're out in a club dancing and realize that on the song being played, someone's rapping a "bitch" or a "ho."

A lot of times, it doesn't even cause you to skip a beat. You can blame the noise at a bar but maybe the real reason is that a lot of us have become desensitized to this kind of misogynistic language because it's so commonplace.

As offensive and damaging as this kind of language can be, the idea of imposing some sort of ban on these words is absurd. But that's exactly what a councilwoman in New York City - the city that not too long ago officially banned the n-word - wants to do. Darlene Mealy, D-Brooklyn, sees it as a symbolic act and a much-needed attempt to clean up rap and pop music.

Even though I applaud her for taking a stand against the raunchiness that's part and parcel of pop culture these days, taking on the b-word is a wasted effort. But so far, she has gotten the support of 20 of the council's 51 members, including the guy who successfully got the Big Apple to "ban" the n-word.

By the way, she puts the word "ho" in the same category and wants that on the don't-say-it list, too. (The Rev. Al Sharpton recently denounced TMZ.com for referring to Beyonce as a "Roboho" after her appearance on the BET Music Awards.)

"When these words are used, they injure all women," says Mealy.

Yesterday, a friend and I were chatting about the proposed banning of the b-word, when she opened her mouth and let slip an even worse slur. (Let's call it the C-word.) It has such a vile ring to it that it stopped me from even taking notes. After a beat, I gathered myself and we wound up laughing so hard that we never finished the discussion about the use of the b-word.

Neither of us uses "bitch" casually. As the saying goes, "we don't play that." Still, it's hard to get all worked up about it when you hear smart folks such as the editors at Bitch - the 10-year-old feminist magazine - defend its use. On the magazine's Web site they say: "We know that not everyone's down with the term. Believe us, we've heard all about it.

"But we stand firm in our belief that if we choose to take the word as a compliment, it loses its power to hurt us. And if we can get people thinking about what they're saying and why when they use the word, that's even better."

Besides, it's not as if the word "bitch" lacks total legitimacy as the n-word does.

"It's daily vocabulary for us," said Daisy Okas of the American Kennel Club. "I understand where they're coming from but it doesn't exactly make sense to me."

Stephanie Buehler, a psychologist and sex therapist, sent me an e-mail in which she wrote, "Today, it's bitch, tomorrow it's another word, and I find that disturbing."

Therein lies the problem with lumping the b-word and the term "ho" with the whole n-word debate. Even many who wish they'd never heard the n-word again are uncomfortable with the notion of a ban.

"It becomes that whole slippery slope thing," my friend Philly-based novelist Karen E. Quinones Miller pointed out. "She [the councilwoman] is actually providing the ice.

"It's not the same thing [as the n-word.] It doesn't have the same gravity. Right now, we have a crisis on our hands that we're trying to deal with. Don't water it down."

And when you start piling on other sexist putdowns, that's the unintended consequence. *

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