Today, while waiting to speak to a professor about my final paper topic, a fellow classmate came up to me in the hall to apologize for a homophobic remark he made in class last week. As I know this classmate to have unbelievable skills at bullshit–once, in another class, he’d just gotten through saying he hadn’t read the book and people told him what it was about, and he turned right back around in class and reworded all that he’d just heard into academic jargon with not a hint of fear or self-doubt–I just looked at him doubtfully, then said “no problem” when it became apparent he wasn’t going to go away otherwise. I resumed holding up the wall waiting on my professor, and he went back to where he had been talking with two other classmates and mumbled something about how he’d tried to apologize to me, but I hadn’t cared. One classmate said that I was a bitch and that she’d tried to be nice to me, but I was always going to be a bitch. The other said to just ignore me, as if I’d regularly bothered her or something. The fact is, I don’t. In fact, I don’t actually like either of them, and I’m not a fan of the classmate who apologized to me, either, because he sits in the back and make sarcastic comments and laughs about people. Are you detecting a level of immaturity yet?

As I sat through our three-hour long class, I found myself only growing angrier at the very idea that my life, or anyone’s life, could be summarized with one single word. Bitch. I thought of my childhood, of hiding in the darkness of the tiny crack between our refrigerator and my dad’s filing cabinet so that my brother couldn’t find me and beat me again, and trying to quiet my terrified breaths so I wouldn’t be found. Bitch. I thought of defending David, the boy with muscular dystrophy that no one in primary school would play with, from a bully that wanted to punch him just because he was in a wheelchair and felt like he could, and the way David’s scared face changed into a smile when I made the bully go away. Bitch. I thought of my granny taking her last rasping breath in the nursing home one January night when I was seventeen, and feeling numb, like my own entire life had drained out of me along with hers. Bitch. I thought of hunting for four-leaf clovers with my granny when I was eight, and finding one, and her laughing and cheering at my great find; I thought of being a teenager and having to coax my granny into eating and taking her medications every day. Bitch. I thought of flying home at the end of last spring semester because my dad was having surgery to remove his cancer, and neither of my other siblings could be bothered to take care of him or our arthritic mother–of flying 1,500 miles to do something so simple as vacuuming floors and buying groceries and making meals because, no matter what, they’re my Momma and Daddy. Bitch. I thought of a lifetime of experiences and laughter and sadness and helping others and, sometimes, being mean because I was sad or angry or jealous or hurt, my entire life wrapped up in a tight little bow and able to only be defined by one single, solitary word: Bitch.

Ordinarily, I embrace the word. Generations of strong women have been labeled bitches, and I am proud to carry the title. This time, however, it strikes me just how much the word is used like other words–like Socialist or crazy–as an end-all word to express displeasure and discredit the other person instead of getting to know the person or their ideas.

Out of curiosity, I checked the urban dictionary definitions of bitch. My favorite is this one: a woman who doesn’t give a flying fuck anymore. Other favorite definitions are as follows: a feminist; a confident, attractive woman that doesn’t take anyone’s shit; a woman who tells everything straight up and bluntly; Babe In Total Control of Herself; someone  you don’t want to piss off because she’ll make your life hell; a person who tells it like it is and doesn’t hold anything back.

So, that considered, hell yes, I’m a bitch, and I always will be. Bitches are strong and independent. Bitches aren’t afraid of you because they’ve seen real hell and you can’t possibly bring it. Bitches believe in the power of themselves.

I’m a bitch. I believe in hope and love for our world and positive change, and I’m not going to sit in the corner and let others treat me badly or boss me around, or treat others around me badly. I’ve risked my job in the past to defend the dignity of fellow coworkers not strong enough to stand up for themselves. I have beliefs and desires and hopes, and I’m not about to keep them to myself. I’ve lived enough to know that if anyone is going to hurt me, I’m taking them down with me when I fall. So, yes, I’m a bitch, and thank god for it because it’s quite possibly the one way I’ve survived this long.