Reply #39: Hi, bloom. I'm sorry to say that I saw several people use the term... [View All]

again last night in the Lounge. I have to say that when I see a poster use it, I lose whatever respect I have for him. (I haven't heard a woman say it; I don't think that it would be applicable for a woman to say it, actually.)

One thing that recently hit me is that I've gone to "visit" Free Republic a few times in the past to see what's going on over there. A couple of times, I saw our picture threads being critiqued by them. They very explicitly made it clear which women in the thread they'd "hit". They were insulting the woman to say that they wouldn't "hit it". Now we as women have something else that we need to be aiming for in society's eyes -- women should want to be "hittable". Actually, Free Republic was the first place that I saw the term, and I thought that it was par for the course because, of course, they'd see women that way. I was appalled to see it starting to be acceptable here at DU and it was people like us who needed to "lighten up". :(

The interesting thing is that I'm not against people talking about sex in posts; I just don't want women to be insulted in said posts. To me, that phrase is totally insulting, and I don't see that ever changing. A man who uses this term will lose my respect -- end of story. It's now a deal breaker for me in terms of whether I can see him as someone who is on the side of women -- if he uses this phrase, in my eyes, he's equivalent to a Freeper at least in this respect.

I also want to thank you for putting so much energy into this thread. To me and, obviously, to you, this is a distressing development in terms of language that's deemed acceptable in our society at large and here at DU.