Women reflect on sexist slur that often goes unpunished

Ask a woman if she’s been called the B-word by a man — perhaps modified by the F-adjective — and chances are she’ll say, “You mean ever, or how many times?”

Because most women will tell you it’s a pretty universal experience, especially if they've held a position of power in the workplace. “I’d say, maybe 25 times?” estimates Ellen Gerstein, who spent years in technology publishing, a fairly male-dominated field, before becoming a pharmaceutical executive. “And that’s just to my face.”

In fact, Gerstein says, use of the word as a slur against women has come to feel so unfortunately routine that her own memories of it tend to blur together — unlike, say, the time 20 years ago when a male colleague asked her who she'd “lap danced” to push a project ahead. But she says she was filled with admiration when she heard Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez take to the floor of the House and call out a male colleague for vulgar words.

“I thought, listening to her, ‘Wow, you're 100% right,'” says Gerstein, now 52. “Why didn’t I apply those same standards to myself?”

Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Thursday, widely shared online, amounted to a stunning indictment not only of the words of Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Florida, who she said called her a “f—————g bitch” in front of reporters, but a culture of abusive language against women that can lead to violence. Her speech resonated with many women — in politics and out, supportive of her politics or not — who said the language had been tacitly accepted for far too long.

The moment was extraordinary, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, not because the language was new — as Ocasio-Cortez herself said, it was nothing she hadn't heard waiting tables or riding the subway — but...