In society individuals tend to be segregated based on their personal characteristics, including gender. Some of these segregation's are indicated clearly, such as bathrooms that visibly show male and female images, while others aren't directly indicated, such as clothing stores. One thing that is considered as a form of gender polarization, yet we usually fail to consider is insults. Insult words are usually used to directly attack a person's gender. Society has distinct perceptions about males and females and insults target these attributes as a form of sanctions.
A great example of this is a recent incident that happened with me last week with Haifa Wehbe. Haifa Wehbe is an Arab, and sometimes international superstar. She supposedly sings, acts and models, but that is debatable. Basically, she is the Kim Kardashian of the Arab world; talentless and exposes her body and sexuality for fame. I recently found her twitter account and was looking through her timeline, so I just had to say something. Considering she is a famous celebrity with tens of thousands of followers, I never thought she would even bother or have the time to reply back to me, so I called her a dumbass. Big mistake. Only a minute later I got a direct reply back from her saying "did you look at your face? Coz it sure does look like a donkey a$$." I was in disbelief and for many reasons. I couldn't believe she even had the time to reply back to me, I couldn't believe what she said to me, I couldn’t believe she would be so immature and I couldn't believe she used dollar signs to spell out ass. Keep in mind, we are speaking about a 35 year old woman, who also happens to be a "mother." I replied back to her immediately by calling her wh*re and once again, a dumbass.
It was a only a matter of time before I got a wave of insults flooding my timeline, all from her crazy and psychotic fans. Looking back at the insults I realized that the majority of them were gender polarized and were meant to directly affect me, specifically as a female. I got called all sorts of names, both in Arabic and English. Words such as b*tch, sl*t, wh*re, ugly and sharmouta were thrown out at me. Haifa also got her share of insults from her haters. Most of which were prostitute, ugly, fake and plastic.Once again, words that affected her image and her sexual behavior. It was so funny seeing everyone getting excited over such a petty "cat fight". Some random person even said "bring out your claws kitties. Meow." I found this reference quite hilarious because any fight involving women is usually called a cat fight and if you were to call a fight between men that, it would be demeaning to their masculinity.
Aside from insults we also received compliments. They were pretty much the opposite of the offensive slurs. Remarks such as queen, gorgeous and beautiful. While these insults and compliments that both Haifa and I received were different, they had one thing in common- they attacked our femininity. We can see that the things females value the most are related to their physical image, sexual patterns and emotional traits. I didn't take anything personally and I had a really good laugh from all this, even though some of the stuff was intense. Basically as someone put it, I "gave Haifa a 'Wa-Wa' that she couldn't handle."
