What did you call me? Bitch, please...

About 10 years ago, I went on a weird press trip to Slovakia with a bunch of random European journalists. One was a highly camp German blogger, whose favourite greeting to me and my fellow women was: “Hey, what’s up, bitch?”

Maybe he also identified as a bitch and imagined he was girlishly connecting with us, but I found it both irritating and demeaning. “Bitch” has long been considered an insult to women, and it’s not a word for men, camp or otherwise, to deploy.

For women, however, it’s come to indicate a certain take-no-prisoners attitude.

From Britney’s “It’s Britney, bitch” intro to “Gimme More”, her comeback after the wilderness years, followed by “Bitch I’m Madonna” by, er, Madonna, to Kate Moss’s scathing dismissal of a disgruntled female pilot as a “basic bitch”, the word has an undeniable power – although all of these, along with the infamous line from Shirley Conran’s Lace (“Which one of you bitches is my mother?”), are examples of women addressing other women with the unsayable word – which isn’t necessarily much better than if it were coming from a man.

This week, however, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, reclaimed the insult from her detractors after the male, left-wing governor of Campania was recorded referring to her in private as “a bitch”. She greeted him with: “President de Luca? That bitch Meloni – how are you?”

The video of the encounter was played at a rally in Rome last week, to wild applause.

When used by women about themselves, rather than as a demeaning slur, clearly the B-word can be a statement of intent – one that says “Don’t mess with me.” “Bitch” is not a lighthearted greeting, but when it is used well, it has come to mean a woman who takes no nonsense, values herself, and is prepared to be considered “difficult” to get what she wants.

Men have always proudly owned that kind of self-description, with “power player” being just one admiring phrase within Wall Street jargon that translates as “unrepentant sociopath”. The male B-word equivalent, “b*****d”, is almost a term of endearment for certain successful men – a question such as “How’s the French chateau, you rich b*****d?” would never be interpreted as offensive.

For women, though, “bitch” has long been considered a vicious insult – and it’s been around since the 1400s. According to researchers at James Madison University in Virginia, “A woman being called a bitch was being accused of being worse than a prostitute, because at least a prostitute stood to gain financially from her sexual favours.” It was also originally associated with Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, who was often portrayed with dogs, and as a result, it came to suggest a feral, sexual quality. Maybe it’s no wonder that Madonna’s happy to reclaim it.

“Bitch” is an unrepentantly challenging word that’s still often used to crush and debase women who aren’t playing by the accepted social rules. “Being a little bitch”, “bitchy” and even the self-named “stitch ’n’ bitch” groups of chatty crafters all suggest a gossipy spitefulness, in an insult that is only ever levelled at women and gay men.

Of course, gossip and secrecy have for millennia been a simple solution to a lack of social power – what other way did women have of protecting ourselves? A bitch may not be nice, but she often suffers less as a result.

Yet despite the ongoing reclamation of “bitch”, it will never, as far as I can see, be acceptable to use it about other women. It’s fine for supermodel Emily Ratajkowski, when speaking about Hollywood’s fetishisation of female pain, to declare that she was entering her “bitch era”. But it’s only ever valid to say it about ourselves, when “I’m a bitch” can mean: “I won’t be ripped off, I won’t be patronised, I won’t be demeaned and insulted by men.”

And on that basis, I’m all in.