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From: <>
Subject: @#&*#$
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 19:18:44 -0600
As many of you remember I am interested in the profane as well as the sacred. A word that troubled me today was the word for the child of an unwed mother. As I have understood it, when you call someone a Bastard, you are impugning the morals of this person's mother. However the term also implies a certain temperament. Someone who is a bastard has few feelings for the welfare of his fellow man. He is callous and thoroughly unlovable. This was explained to me once to be related to the way bastard children were treated by society in days past. Societys callous treatment of illegitimacy, bred individuals who were very heartless and were therefore by nurture and definition bastards. My confusion comes in trying to understand why this pejorative term is applied solely to males? Certainly there are female bastards but what are they called?
I know that a parallel term for females relates to the morals of a female dog. The word bitch implies a moral laxity and as it is used today it also references a simlar mindset as that of the bastard. Heartless, ruthless, dangerous. I own two female dogs and they couldn't have sweeter dispositions. They are more full of love and are more caring than most people I know. The explanation that bitch refers solely to female dogs has no basis in my experience. So the second part of my question is that I wonder if at sometime the mothers of illegitimate children may not have been referred to as bitches. It still doesn't explain what female fatherless children were called.
Bill (I apologise if this offends anyone)
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