Review of “The BITCH Manifesto” (1969)
Jo Freeman (writer).
Read in 2020.
By definition Bitches are marginal beings in this society. They have no proper place and wouldn’t stay in it if they did. They are women but not true women. They are human but they are not male. Some don’t even know they are women because they cannot relate to other women.
A valiant effort at purposeful language reclamation, but the thought seems half-formed, as if Joreen was having trouble separating her personal experience as an outsider “not like the other girls” from the typology she observed.
References here: Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), “Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation” (2015).