Dear reader,
I’m not a third-wave feminist (although I certainly am a feminist in the traditional sense), nor do I hate all nicknames under all circumstances; but there’s nothing I hate more than being called “liefie,” “skat,” “poppie,” or even “Aims,” by men who are not my fiancé or father.
I’ve never been able to quite articulate why being called “skattebol” by a man with whom I do not have a close relationship, made my skin crawl – and make no mistake, it does.
The mere sound of the word “liefie,” spilling out from the lips of all of those ‘ooms’ (uncles) and ‘vriende’ (male friends) made me feel exposed – as if the word had somehow snuck into my bedroom in the middle of the night and physically violated me.
For the longest time I thought I was the only woman who felt this way, that perhaps I had been wired incorrectly in that these nicknames that other women supposedly enjoyed, made me feel physically ill.
“Some business colleagues still call me ‘poppie’ (doll) over the phone,” my mother sighed.
She is a 47-year-old woman who had run her own successful business for many years, and yet to some of these men (many of them below her, in my opinion) she was a “poppie.”
Why?
Because she is a woman?
Because she is physically petite? Because she is pretty?
Or is it because reducing us to 1920s-style pet names somehow makes men feel that they’ve got the upper hand.
After all, he’s fighting with a “poppie.”
These pet names are essentially a socially acceptable way of saying “Aw, look at you, you cute little female thing.”
“I hate being called ‘sweetheart,’” my best friend lamented. That word reminded her of her rapist. A close friend who had forced his intimacy on her physically, as well as verbally.
“People didn’t believe me after what happened… Everyone said he had always been so nice to me. He called me his ‘sweetheart.’”
To refer to me or any other woman who is not your blood relation or wife as “sweetheart” says that you believe you have the automatic right to familiarise yourself with us.
When said by a man who knows us and cares about us — a boyfriend, or a father — such a nickname speaks to the relationship we have already established.
But when we hear these comments from people who don’t know us well enough, it suggests that that man believes he has the right to be intimate — whether mentally, emotionally, or physically — with us, regardless of our own level of participation.
I don’t believe every man who calls my best friend “sweetheart,” means to remind her of her rapist – neither do I believe all men who call my mother “poppie,” are trying to be patronizing.
Men likely assume we would be flattered by these nicknames.
That because we are women, we would aspire to catch male attention in this way.
That we want to be seen as sweet, sugary, and soft.
That being female directly correlates with a desire to be applauded by men for exhibiting traditionally girlish behaviour.
But we don’t like it, and we don’t care what you think about us, and we don’t want to be made to feel small, or patronized. So please, would you just stop?
Anxiously yours, Aimee
