Should we ban Bossy?

I’ll probably catch some slack for writing this but I think it has to be said. Anyone who knows me knows I love and respect the ladies more so than I do my “bros”. While we love to chant, “bros before hoes”, mine remains ‘bros before hoes until the hoes show’. All jokes aside, I admire and even revere women as I have stated in my book, Everything She Wants and Everything He Can Give, and I like to believe that I am ideologically at the forefront of the women’s rights movements, but it is creeping between extremism and borderline insanity in my opinion. I’m particularly referring to the push by some activists for the ban of certain words when referring to women. Words like “bossy” and “bitchy”. While the latter is definitely derogatory it still represents one’s freedom of expression.

Let’s start with ‘bossy’ which has recently been categorized by some as an unacceptable way referring to a woman in charge. Well, it is true that some people, both men and women, have and will continue to use it to unfairly to refer to women who are in control of themselves, their careers, and in a lot of cases the people around them (which is their jobs by the way), it still does describe some people accurately, both men and women, who are just that, bossy. If every adjective that we find offensive is no longer PC (politically correct) there will be ridiculous amounts of lawsuits being filed in the work place pretty soon. Not just by women, but soon men will start defining phrases that we deem offensive too. We’d all be walking on eggshells for fear of expression and people will learn to pretend and hide their genuine selves even more and you may never know that the guy beside you is truly a perv.

I know a few very bossy men and women, and I was talking about someone recently and the person has a way of dictating rather than suggesting. When I was looking for the word to describe the attitude, I found myself being self conscious of using that term bossy to describe the person so as to remain PC. I ended up saying the person is somewhat brash and doesn’t know how to talk to people, which is way worse than what I intended to say which is simply ‘bossy’. For a few days I felt like a gossip because I didn’t agree with what I said. In fact, it is outright false. The person is very loving but cannot help but talk to people with a sense of authority, even when the authority is no longer or was never there to start with.

Now to the word “bitchy”; I don’t know about you but I have met a few people that fall under that category in my lifetime. The same way some guys are ‘dicks’ (some would say I fall under that category at times), some women are bitches. I’m sorry. While we should always try to be cordial to each other and all that, the reality is some people don’t deserve that courtesy because they don’t offer it to others either.

In essence, my point is that while these words and others can be hurtful it depends on the contexts, people and intentions of the user. When we ban these words, new ones will emerge that need banning until we reach a point when saying ‘hello’ might be considered a form of harassment.

THE INEVITABLE LOSS OF CYBER CONTROL

I was recently working on my LinkedIn account and as usual, LinkedIn was pushing me to reconnect with people as it always does. Now this usually doesn’t bother me but this time I noticed something that felt very intrusive and begs the question. Are we giving too much access to 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd parties; our personal and professional information?

My uncle, in fact, my favorite uncle, died maybe 10 years ago after being diagnosed with a brain tumor at a very late stage. I never saw him sick or saw him in his final years to be honest and so I never really got closure. My family members have a habit of not seeing each other for years and sometimes decades and so it had never really hit home that I’d lost my uncle. It just feels like we are taking one of our prolonged, live your own life, breaks until we see again. While browsing through the LinkedIn suggestions of who to connect with, I saw my uncle’s name in full and his e-mail address. I was shocked for a split second and then realized that they copied it off my Yahoo! account. And then it occurred to me, I’ve never signed in or given LinkedIn access to my Yahoo! account. How then did they get all this information from it and violate my memory of my late uncle by asking me to add him?

I am sure, they and their conglomerate of lawyers will have a logical explanation and maybe even evidence saying I granted them access and permission to violate my compartmental memories but are we really giving you permission if we don’t know what we are permitting you to do?

In a generation where everything is becoming more and more connected and remotely accessible, with the biggest threats coming from cyber hackers rather than brute old fashioned tangible technology, are we unknowingly selling our souls to those that can harm us and harm us legally? People say they worry about the hackers. While I worry about the hackers as well, I must say I worry more about the corporate world who will use my fears, loves, tragedies, hopes and much more that they gain access to, to plunder me and my loved ones and unlike the hackers, they do it without the threat of reprimand or repercussion because apparently, I gave them permission.