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Quick word association: Bossy = [fill in potential presidential candidate name]

Quick word association: Bossy = [fill in potential presidential candidate name]

Do not underestimate the electoral power of a victimization narrative.

Yeah, me too.

Donald Trump.

But I don’t think that’s what the Ban Bossy campaign is about.

The #BanBossy movement pretends to protect little girls from the humiliation of being called “bossy,” and thereby will empower a generation of strong, powerful female leaders (so long as you don’t call them bossy, because that would crush them).

The movement is backed by “Lean In” Sheryl Sandberg and The Girl Scouts, for whom every girl is a potential victim. (Put aside all the objective evidence that girls are outperforming boys in almost every measure.)

A slew of major corporations and celebrities have lined up behind the banning of bossy.

)

There nothing wrong, and much good, at encouraging young girls to lead. But this campaign has a strong victimization narrative. This teaches young girls that they are victims and need the emotional protections that little boys don’t. At best that is a mixed message.

And why now?

Why have the word police suddenly descended on us to shape our speech? Can’t boys and men be bossy too? Has there been some epidemic of bossy such that now is the time to act.

A follower on Twitter made the connection to prepping the battlefield for Hillary:

Ashe Schow at The Washington Examiner expands on the point,

Make no mistake, there is always a deeper agenda whenever a seemingly innocent campaign pops up overnight.

On Sunday, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg launched a new campaign, known as ‘Ban Bossy,’ which would – as you can imagine – encourage people to ban the word “bossy.”

Is there some kind of epidemic of that word being used to keep girls from achieving? Many of the surveys cited by the Ban Bossy campaign are decades old, and a more recent survey by the Girl Scouts of America found that girls are more likely than boys to see themselves as a leader or have the desire to be a leader.

So, why start a national campaign?

For starters, Sandberg is an ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016….

Two years ago, Democrats launched a campaign to brand Republicans as engaging in a “war on women,” a campaign with a lasting impact that will no doubt stretch into the 2016 elections if Clinton runs.

Now the Ban Bossy campaign gives Democrats another weapon to use against those who disagree with Clinton’s policy ideas.

I think that’s right.  The banning of the terms “illegal immigrant” or “illegal aliens” were an integral part of the amnesty push.  So too, any criticism of Hillary’s demeanor will be portrayed as sexist, and the type of belittling done to little girls. 

It’s not about Hillary, it’s about our daughters!

Do not underestimate this.  We all thought Julia was a joke, until a generation of young, single women voted for Obama.

As with Julia, the “ban bossy” campaign likely is the result of values research by pro-Democrat researchers trying to find something that reaches deeper than most of use realize with a group Democrats need in 2016.

Everything is contrived.  They create the war, and then accuse us of fighting it.

And yes, Hillary is bossy.  Just like many successful male politicians.

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Comments

Emperor Penguin | March 12, 2014 at 3:40 pm

HAHA!!!! funny how their being bossy about the word “bossy” go figure.

Is there some kind of newsletter that goes out to lefty stars?
How do they get these people to sign up so fast to the latest campaign? Oh, let me guess. This has been in the works for a year or more and right now someone is signing people up for a new cockamamie crusade that will be everywhere this summer.

Formerly known as Skeptic | March 12, 2014 at 3:49 pm

Not only that, but this campaign seems completely wrong-headed to me to begin with. There IS actually a difference between a child being assertive (vs. passive) which should not be overly discouraged, and being “Bossy.” In my experience “Bossy” refers to a child who tells the other kids what to do – not in a “Hey, I know a good way to do this” kind of way, but in a “You have to do it my way becasue I told you to” kind of way. And yes, for some reason I can’t explain, little girls seem to have more of a predilection to go “there.” Bossiness SHOULD be corrected in children since it doesn’t allow for other children to do what THEY want and discourages those that ARE tending towards being passive from learning to assert themselves and isn’t that what they supposedly want? Isn’t it?

The 7 Most Ridiculous Things About The New Ban Bossy Campaign
March 11, 2014 By Mollie Hemingway

So wait, all the cool and beautiful girls who are super-popular and wealthy got together and decided that not only were they not going to use a word but that no one else could either?

http://thefederalist.com/2014/03/11/the-7-most-ridiculous-things-about-the-new-ban-bossy-campaign/

Formerly known as Skeptic | March 12, 2014 at 3:53 pm

Gack! becasue -> because Pardon the dyslexic fingers.

    That word, “becasue” is my trademark and the reason I could never use a sock puppet. The word “becasue” would be all over it. Try as I might I can’t stop doing it…always have to correct it,if I notice it and squiggly little red line under it.

TrooperJohnSmith | March 12, 2014 at 3:53 pm

If they decide to ban: “Lying sack of warm, steaming, runny sh!t,” we will definitely know it’s intended to help Hillary.

ufo destroyers | March 12, 2014 at 3:54 pm

Professor,
Are you sure you don’t mean to ban “cankle?” Or “pantsuit?”

He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Bossy.

(Sorry, saw that tweet yesterday and it still cracks me up!)

Whatever happened to the Girl Scouts? It sounds like a indoctrination camp at this point. If the left didn’t have victims, what would they have?

Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics:

2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

#BanBossy strikes me as the apt rallying call for liberty lovers every to drive the BigGov’t Totalitarian Left out of power.

    David R. Graham in reply to Aucturian. | March 12, 2014 at 11:59 pm

    Concur. Ban Bossy Hillary! Were I a poli consultant, I would commend: agree with every dem attack, and turn it on them. Climate change? You bet, I’m for it. When are you selling your high carbon home and car and jet and club memberships and giving the procceeds to the poor? Bend the barrell of their gun so their discharges return to them. Not at all hard to do. Agree with everything they say and throw it back in their teeth.

      DINORightMarie in reply to David R. Graham. | March 13, 2014 at 8:00 am

      That is exactly what Alinsky teaches. 😉

        David R. Graham in reply to DINORightMarie. | March 13, 2014 at 1:41 pm

        Then Alinsky is right about that. In a war, it is always desirable to induce the enemy to fire at himself. It is one among an array of classic battle tactics. Perhaps libertarian conservatives (Safire’s term) would benefit from learning battle tactics. We are in the midst of a civil war, after all.

        David R. Graham in reply to DINORightMarie. | March 13, 2014 at 1:42 pm

        Is not Breitbart’s “So?” of a piece with this tactic?

Why have the word police suddenly descended on us to shape our speech?

Nothing sudden about it-

Remember “commerce”? Nobody else does either-

That thing everybody did, since the beginning of time (trade)…that is in no way political, just a function of society..

Changed to “capitalism” somewhere, somehow, by somebody..

That can now be attacked as evil…the worship of money/property/personal belongings

…gee, I wonder who did that!

LukeHandCool | March 12, 2014 at 4:29 pm

What am I going to say to my wife?

“They’re talking about banning you, Honey.”

One of my favorite stories among my wife’s many stories from her experiences volunteering in our kids’ classrooms in their elementary school days, was when a typically verbally adept, fast-to-mature little girl was giving a little boy classmate of hers a rapid-fire dressing down.

My wife said the frustrated little boy couldn’t get a word in as she berated him and, finally, when she paused to take a breath, he mustered a stammering,

“My, my mom said … that … that you’re bossy.”

My wife said he then turned and walked away, but the little girl followed him, in shock, and angrily demanding,

“What?! Your mother said what?! Come here! Come back here! What did you say your mother said??!!”

My wife ended the story with a laugh and simply said, “Scary!”

Somebody’s mommy is lucky that happened a few years ago.

As for me, I wear the pantsuits in the house … when Bossy lets me.

    Browndog in reply to LukeHandCool. | March 12, 2014 at 5:21 pm

    What am I going to say to my wife?

    “They’re talking about banning you, Honey.”

    Not sure what you wrote after that…laughed so hard my eyes watered.

D… straight I’m bossy! I’m a mom. This country started going to you-know-where-in a hand basket when moms stopped being bossy and started trying to reason with their two year olds.

    Emperor Penguin in reply to JoAnne. | March 12, 2014 at 5:49 pm

    Amen!!!! iv seen to many kids ruling over the parents by whining and crying than i would like to believe. But it makes me thankful for my spanking filled upbriging

I’ll back off on “bossy” if Washington can keep “Redskins.”

Love love love this post! Spot-on throughout.

think I will start a #ban-niggardly campaign just to see how bad that goes.
pc word police suck.

LukeHandCool | March 12, 2014 at 5:16 pm

What would Bruce Springsteen do?

I don’t recall ever using the word “bossy”. I’m pretty sure I always used the other “B word” instead.

Seriously, if you want to ban words, how about you at least pretend to start with actually offensive words.

Bossy isn’t even gender specific.

How about you start with b*tch, c*nt, and wh*re first. Those at least are gender specific and derogatory.

And yet people still use those words. Why?

BECAUSE THIS IS AMERICA.

    JOHN B in reply to Olinser. | March 12, 2014 at 8:36 pm

    “.. b*tch, c*nt, and wh*re…” Banning those words would be racist.

    Because…you just eliminated most of the lyrics in songs performed by rap groups.

    Next, you’ll take away their “N” word.

1. I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss

They love to magnify and fortify trivial distinctions like this. Cf. colored person and person of color.

2. The ban campaigns are the stick. There are also carrots, words/phrases whereby one is invited to show one’s hipness. Ready for Hillary is an obvious example.

3. Both sides do it, but IMO the Democrats do it a lot more and they’re a lot more distortive.

4. I hope something reverses the trend. If not, hopefully I’ll no longer be around when reality demonstrates that it is not created by language.

Kall ’em kuntie instead!

LukeHandCool | March 12, 2014 at 7:56 pm

No more “Bossy”?

Fine. I can live with that.

I’d like to propose a coexisting middle ground of left and right, with an endearing interstitial glue of commercialized cuteness like that favored by pre-teen girls.

You all know this cute little character from Japan.

Well, I’m trademarking a very similar, complete line of gifts and accessories and trinkets especially for Hillary’s run.

And I’m going to call it …

Yes, that’s right …

Hello Catty.

Frankly, “bossy” seems like a rather inert term to me, but this discussion brings to mind …

Karl: Sir, I’m retired navy, I know all about classified. But one more thing. The person that finds her gets to name her right?

Dan: Yes-yes that’s right, that’s right.

Karl: I wanna name her Dottie after my wife. She’s a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape.

BannedbytheGuardian | March 12, 2014 at 10:08 pm

Bossy is bad but BOW DOWN BITCHES is bad ass .

A friend of mine several times said that the word ‘retarded’ should be banned. She said it was a word that existed only to demean others and there was never any legitimate reason to use the word. Then one night after one of her monologues inspiration struck, which is when I usually find what I should have said, and I waited until she brought the subject up again and then interrupted her and said. “The old car idled roughly until the mechanic retarded the ignition.” She responded by throwing a pretzel at me but never brought it up again.

David R. Graham | March 13, 2014 at 12:07 am

When they say you are on the fringe, reply, what is that, the place where innovation occurs?, like that lovely filigree at the hem of your skirt?, the lace at the top of the bodice of your slip?, the trailers at the sides of that enchanting scarf you so love? You get the point. Everything they accuse make a virtue. As Sarah said, We’re not the party of No, we’re the party of Hell NO! Or as Breitbart echoed, to every accusation say, “So?” Spine people, spine, in every little act of living, on or off public view.

Hillary’s word is “buffoon” not bossy.

I don’t care if she’s pushy; she both incompetent and dedicated to our enslavement.

Sometimes I am bossy, especially in matters of safety. I find nothing distasteful with being called bossy.

This isn’t about “bossy” at all, it’s about the other B word. Apparently some women who behave like the other B word don’t want to have to own up to it.

Is anyone else offended by the sexist nature of this campaign? It’s being waged by some of the same people who are intent on making me and other women victims under the guise of “empowering” us. This is more of the same, and I find THAT offensive.

So THAT’S why they did this campaign.
Those libs/progs are so transparent.

#BanBossy is a vast Bossy Wing conspiracy

To the extent that “bossy” is female-specific, what is the male specific equivalent? I guess “bully”.

This campaign makes sense then, given the great cultural movement to discourage calling boys “bully”.

DINORightMarie | March 13, 2014 at 8:17 am

Funny, when I saw this tweeted out last night, the first name that came to my mind was indeed Hillary.

And, when I heard that Moochelle and her “ladies” (or “bi-atches” as some like to call their girlfriends) were pushing this, I thought they are trying to expand on the “war on women” theme. I didn’t take it to the next level, though, that they are paving the way for no criticism of the Clinton who wears (and keeps on) the pants in the family.

Someone, like maybe Twitter-savy Ted Cruz – or, better yet, a great lady who is Conservative and tweets frequently ( hmmm, who might that be?) – should take on #BanBossy and say, “Why stop at #BanBossy? Let’s take on these words: ….” and make it so ridiculous, so absurd, that these self-appointed PC Word Police will be shamed into silence (if they are even capable of shame, which I doubt).

Perhaps embarrassed into silence is the best we can hope for from these perpetually controlling, smarty-pants “ladies.”

Are they also going to ban “enabler of a sexual abuser”? Just asking

I R A Darth Aggie | March 14, 2014 at 11:16 am

What’s next? shrew?

How about going after the rappers for ho’s, b-word and c-word usage? what? we have to understand their culture?