Bossy, pushy, bolshie, stroppy, mouthy and strident. I keep reading stuff about these words. Apparently they are words used dismissively to describe women but are behaviours applauded in men.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has a particular problem with the word ‘bossy’. It’s a negative way to describe a women but apparently not used for men, who are never described as bossy but as assertive which is a positive description.

I’d just like to say that from a male perspective, this is bullshit.

Nobody likes pushie, bossy or assertive in anyone: man, woman or child. Men don’t admire other men who are bossy, we think bossy men are ‘wankers’, which they are. They may be rich. They may be successful. But they’re still ‘wankers’. The thing is that men (in my experience at least) tend to prefer the general insult rather than the specific, so when we come across a man who exhibits the above characteristics (bossy, bolshie, strident), we tend to use more sweeping adjectives: dick-head, bell-end, twat or douche nozzle.

So ladies, if you don’t like bossy ( and I can see why you wouldn’t ) don’t feel picked on or discriminated against. She’s a ‘bossy cow’ still sounds much better to me than he’s a ‘gobby twat’ and yet they mean much the same thing.

If we really want equality by all means drop ‘bossy’, that’s fine with me, and then we can all get on with being a unisex bunch of ‘strident wankers’.