Today's society displays a large variety of slang terms. These terms can be found on social media, used at schools, or out on the streets anywhere. People conform to these slang terms and use them in their everyday language to fit in and be "cool". Most of the words today are gender based and used to describe people and either how masculine and brave they are or how shy and afraid they are. One slang term commonly used in society today is "balls". Urban dictionary defines the word balls in several ways. The first definition talks about the true meaning of balls, which are male testicles. However, the second and third definitions are definitions society has associated with the word balls, and they are strictly male gender biased. The urban dictionary also defines balls as courage and braveness. People would use this definition when they say something like, "Wow he has balls for what he said." In this context, the person meant that the other person was brave for saying that. Urban dictionary also defines balls as manliness. Sometimes guys will say something like "wow she has balls", implying that a girl did something that should be considered manly.
On the other hand, the word pussy is the exact opposite in our society. Urban dictionary originally defines pussy as female genitals. However, the alternate meaning to pussy is cowardly. People associate femininity negatively with things like being a coward. Males will criticize each other by questioning their masculinity and calling each other pussies. When they do this, they are referring to males in a negative way by saying they display female traits. As we can see in society, slang terms are gendered and we associate different qualities with these gender terms. We consider having balls and being manly a good thing, but we consider being a pussy as being cowardly and feminine. It is not right that we associate male traits as positive traits and female traits as negative ones, but it is clear that society believes otherwise.
It is almost disappointing how the slang our generation uses is so gender based. The greatest insults these days are about your gender. But since when was it bad to be a boy, or bad to be a girl? Just because one is male doesn't mean they have to be extremely brave and unemotional, that is just the stereotype of how most men are. It is a shame that society is so focused on how other people act and spends so much time and energy criticizing others rather than focusing on ways to improve our world.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Urban dictionary bothered to define balls in the context of an object used for play like in sports or if it only talked about the body part and the associated semantic meaning of manliness and courage. Same goes for pussy, did they even bother to define it as a cat? Our language is so bizarre. Who's idea was it to use those words that way? I wonder if we could change the connotations of these words to not make feminine words negative or if we would just have to erase the meaning of the word to not have it related negatively to females. Do you think that "society" really thinks that way or that they just go along with it because it is a learned habit?
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point with the way our society uses these different phrases in both a positive and negative light. Some of these words have two differing definitions and urban dictionary and even our society fail to recognize that and even respect that at all. This puts a negative light on our society and our people who have proven to show their ignorance on this topic.
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