The origins of the word lie in the Old English “bicche,” referring to a female dog, and its earliest use as an insult was to refer to a promiscuous woman (the insult “son of a bitch” makes sense with this in mind). The term started being used as a gendered insult in the eighteenth century—when new terms had to be found for actual bitches, meaning female dogs. The generalization of the word has always been tied to culture and politics. There was a dramatic rise in the use of the word after some women got the right to vote in 1920 (the use of the word in newspapers and American literature
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