Imagine if the word bitch was banned. Hunters would be unable to gender their dogs, Lizzo would be 100% That Incarcerated™ and actor Aaron Paul would be given a life sentence for the mind-numbing number of times Jesse Pinkman says it in Breaking Bad.
Could this become reality? Perhaps in Massachusetts, where a number of news outlets are reporting that a Democratic state representative is trying to ban the word.
Many are denouncing the “bitch bill” as a sincere example of the left gone too far in its bid to curtail free speech. For example, columnist Katherine Kimpf of the National Review, who writes a column on “PC culture”, argued that the proposal was an example of how her niche interest is more than a waste of time – because this bill proves that there is a real threat to free speech. And local news outlets in Massachusetts, have called it “a push from the ‘word police’”.
But, if you look closer, you’ll find out that not everything is as it seems. As Representative Daniel Hunt, who proposed the bill, explained in a statement on Twitter on Tuesday, the “bitch bill” was taken forward in keeping with a legal quirk in Massachusetts, rather than his own will to criminalize people for singing along to their favorite rap songs.
The constitutional “right of free petition” is unique to Bay Staters, as Hunt explained in his statement:
As reported by the Boston Herald, after a concerned, anonymous constituent raised the petition with Hunt, he simply went through with the prescribed legislative process as he normally does.
Six thousand such bills are filed in Massachusetts each year, according to the Massachusetts Bar Association. As Hunt points out in his statement, reports about the bill may not be a legitimate source of outrage. “While this specific instance may amuse some and alarm others, it remains an important process for self-representation,” he said.
What will happen next? Well, no one is coming to take away your right to call your best friends “bitch” – yet. Instead, what to expect is fairly mundane: the bill has already been publicly heard by a house committee, who will now advise on whether the bill should be passed or not.
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The other more likely option, considering that a member of the public raised the petition, is that the committee will advise that the bill should be studied further – a tactic often used to quietly kill a bill.
Life will go on and in Massachusetts hopefully 90% of women won’t be criminalized for affectionately abusing their friends. The state might have 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one.