Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

In today's high school culture, there may be a somewhat higher degree of tolerance for gay students, but hatred of pussies continues unabated. In Holdenville, Ontario, the school rugby team caused a controversy a few years ago by recruiting players with taunting posters that said, "Don't be a pussy. Play Rugby!" And "Don't be a pussy" continues to

be a very effective way of encouraging people (especially men) to take sometimes dangerous risks. Pussy, with its variants wuss and wussy, means something like 'a person who is weak and ineffectual', 'a coward', or 'one who is unwilling to take a risk'.

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For most English speakers, the first meaning of pussy that now comes to mind refers to the female genitals. We sometimes have to take a minute to recall that pussy originally referred to a cat. In trying to figure out why pussy means 'coward', there are two hypotheses that deserve consideration. Does pussy in the sense of 'coward' come from an association with cats or with cunts?

The first attested instance of puss to refer to a cat in English is from 1530. Pussy is a longer form of puss, and words like puss or pussy are used in many Germanic languages as a way to call a cat (e.g. 'Here puss, puss!') In Dutch it is poes, in Low German puus, and in Norwegian puse. Since puss(y) can mean 'cat' and domestic cats are not particularly known for bravery, the terms fraidy-cat and scaredy-cat can also refer to cowards.

Pussy referring to genitals is much newer in English and takes a more complicated historical path. Around 1600, people began to use puss as a reproachful or contemptuous term for a woman, as in a 1663 quote from Pepys' diary, "His wife, an ugly pusse, but brought him money." The idea may have been that such women were catty in the sense of being sly, ungenerous, and ill-tempered.

By the 19th century, the negative connotations of pussy had begun to fade away, and it was being used as a rather affectionate word. It surprises us now to read in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) a line like "'What do you think, pussy?' said her father to Eva."

Pussy for genitals probably arises late in the 19th century. The earliest clear instance is1879, and probably is related to the affectionate use of pussy for 'woman', rather than to the idea of some similarity between cats and genitalia.

Pussy in the sense of 'coward' is too recent to even show up in the Oxford English Dictionary, but there is an intriguing note that one 1942 slang dictionary gave 'effeminate boy' as a meaning for pussy. That sounds like it might be the source of the 'coward' meaning that we now find. So perhaps one sequence of changes in meaning is cat ­> catty woman ­> woman ­> effeminate man ­> coward. And parallel to this sequence is another one: cat ­> catty woman ­> woman ­> genitals.

The association between women, homosexuality, and cowardice is a very old one in our culture. A number of other words show a similar conflation of ideas. Sissy was originally a familiar term for sister, then a name for effeminate men, and can now be used of cowardly people, even if they are women.

Wimp has a similar history. In its earliest use, dated to about 1920, wimp was slang for 'woman', and within a few years was being used for men who were 'ineffectual, spineless, or feeble'. To wimp out carries the idea of failing to take some risk and is pretty much the same as being a pussy.

Of course, Miss Poubelle probably does not need to point out to readers of The Guide that there are a lot of sexist and homophobic assumptions behind these words. The idea that women and gay men are cowards relative to straight men is obnoxious. Taunting someone by calling them a pussy, wuss, wimp, or sissy always ultimately involves comparing them to a stereotypical frightened woman and generally plays on insecurity about masculinity.

In this light, it's enlightening to learn that within the Bush family, wimp was apparently one of the gravest insults possible. Various columnists have speculated that Bush Senior's motivation for invading Iraq the first time was at least partially the desire to avoid being perceived as a wimp. That suggests that the getting past insecurity about masculine roles is not only important to creating better conditions for women and gay men, but is part of making a more peaceful world for everyone.