Design by Yosef Phelan

“Listen here you mullet,” begins one of the greatest quotes in cinematic history. “Why don't you just light your tampon, and blow your box apart? Because it's the only bang you're ever gonna get, sweetheart!" The iconic line is delivered by the late Terence Stamp in the 1994 queer roadtrip cult classic The Adventures of Priscilla! Queen of the Desert. Playing trans woman Bernadette as she and her drag cabaret travel across the unwelcoming Australian outback, they encounter a queerphobic redneck woman in a dive bar ready to fight. Instead, Bernadette’s biting, bitchy wit causes her antagonist to be stunned into silence, while the entire bar erupts into laughter. The woman scuttles off and the tension withers away. 

"Bitchy" is an insult that innately implies at femininity and at the same time, in calling out aggression, a perceived lack of it. Not to sound like a Taylor Swift track but two masc-presenting men saying unkind words about others are unlikely to be accused of bitchiness. It is a term reserved for the femmes. And yet, from this insult, the oppressed have found an unlikely source of power – even an art form. A way to silence their opponent who struggles for a comeback that can be as witty and delivered as eloquently.

“You’re a shining example of why euthanasia should be legalised.”

Whether they admit it or not, people love a bitch. Much of Ryan Murphy’s success comes from his ability to write the most catty monologues from characters like Santana Lopez in Glee, Chanel Oberlin in Scream Queens and Jessica Lange in American Horror Story. It’s certainly not for his ability to write an ending. I’d argue one of the greatest lines of script ever written is: “You’re a shining example of why euthanasia should be legalised.”

No matter what you think of Gwyneth Paltrow and her politics, there’s no denying she ate with the line “I wish you well” at her ski trial court case – it’s since become the inspiration for two musicals and many memes. Some of the most enduring, fan favourite characters on TV are the meanest people you’ve ever seen: Regina George, Miranda Priestly, Blair Waldorf.

There’s also historical precedent for the love of a bitch. Oscar Wilde’s offending, witty tongue allowed him to become an orator in America and promote aesthetics before he had even written anything. His most famed character, OG demon twink Dorian Gray, is welcomed into queer male community through making catty comments with Lord Henry and Basil about their peers. In Brideshead Revisited, a 1945 queer campus novel that inspired Saltburn, camp gay Anthony Blanche is dismissed as bitchy by the main character but in truth is the only one with clarity on the rich boy they’re orbiting at Oxford. In the bestselling LGBTQIA+ memoir, The Naked Civil Servant, style icon Quentin Crisp refuses to hold back. He argues that he despises everybody. He refers to yoga, vegetarianism and nudism as “diseases of the soul” of middle aged gays. The things he says about Our Di would be considered treasonous to some. He also recognises that this biting tongue grew from a need to defend himself if he was going to be so outwardly flamboyant.