If I really hate my ex girlfriend and think she is a horrible evil woman, what would be a good biting derogatory word to use that would connotate "awful female" without other women seeing it as an attack on the entire gender?
Same thing.
Regardless of what you think you mean, it's a statistical certainty that someone, somewhere is going to regard words like "bitch" as inappropriate, or will feel uncomfortable, or will think poorly of you for making that choice.
It's not like I'm this lone, eccentric weirdo suggesting that it is not necessary to use the word "bitch" to describe a person whose behavior displeases you.
What realms of human experience and observation are we ignoring? I suggest the opposite: Slurs like "bitch" are lazy, they ignore the myriad of subtle colours and shades of human behavior and replace them with a catch-all that means roughly "we disapprove of you."
I am certain that a man can damn his ex with far more wounding intent by expanding his vocabulary and unleashing his inner poet. Such insults would hardly be sterile, they would be fecund.
Back on topic, the ideology I was thinking of is the idea that men and women aren't statistically different (or if they are, that mentioning such things is impolite). I would argue that "bitch" captures a characteristically female way of hurting a man with whom she's had a relationship. (See Carmen for the high-culture version, or Louis CK for the pop-culture version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpW3orlfp7E) It's true that the word also carries other connotations, but I don't think that was the intent.
I agree that it may be "lazy", but from a purely practical perspective, it would be tough to find a similarly short word (short enough to fit on the bobble-head) that conveys the meaning. "Evil" might work and is gender-neutral, but the class of actions that make one "evil" are broader than the class that make one a "bitch".
Somehow we got sidetracked onto the issue of whether it's ever ok to use a gendered description of someone's bad behavior.
The easiest way for you to avoid having other women see your comment as an attack on the entire gender is to make sure that the comment is appropriate to the context.
And, I think that it's okay to insult people, for example it's okay to call someone who assigns "femininity" to character flaws a male chauvinistic pig.
Do you really believe that there are no linkages between sex and certain character flaws? Or is it just that this is one of those things that people should know better than to talk about when being polite? [I'd probably agree with the latter, FWIW]
Because in my life, the character flaws that I've seen in people absolutely tend to cluster based on sex. The stereotypes of the violent alcoholic boyfriend and capricious hypersensitive girlfriend come to mind as patterns that I've seen played out way too many times for the correlation to be a statistical anomaly, given that the inverse situations are very rare. I'd never say that women can't be abusive drunks that cheat on their SOs with 20 year olds and pay more attention to their jobs than their kids, but if you heard that a person of unknown sex was described that way, where would you put your money? Is it really so unfair to make that assumption?
In the end it doesn't really matter w.r.t. the current debacle - it's flat out wrong to refer to people as "bitch", and even more wrong to do so at a professional conference, and I just won't stand up for that. I do, however, think that it's fine and proper to consider certain personality traits to be more prevalent in women than men and vice versa, as long as the correlations are real (whether or not they're to blame on genetics or culture); to do otherwise is to pretend to live in a world that only exists in our imaginations.
When it's justified, "I think my ex was abusive," for example. That's quite biting, as far as I am concerned.
Edit: oh, I didn't relate to the "female" part. That's because you can't do that without being a horrible person yourself.
Or is your problem based on the fact that "abusive" relates to an actual character trait, and not the gender of your ex?
Calling someone a bitch is an insult.
Thus, my new Guide to Insulting People as a Decent Human Being: Don't.
It is also more detailed, which might be even worse to spill in public than just generic insults.