Kulturella Perspektiv (Dec 1996)
Den omanlige mannen och den liderliga kvinnan — två urgamla stereotyper
Abstract
The unmanly man and the lewd woman are two stereotypes distinct in verbal insults already in the old Norse poetry and in the old Swedish laws. In the Icelandic (folk-)tales we meet them in nidet, and in legal texts in invectives. Unmanliness is expressed by, among other things, men being compared to women, being called other words for woman, as well as through expressions for deviant sexuality. Women are branded, or called, harlot and whore. The language of the old peasant culture, partially extant in the dialect archives, contained a great many terms of abuse. Here too, the most insulted characteristic for men is unmanliness and for women lewdness. Of the material that I have gone through approximately one third of the invectives for men are terms for unmanliness, and a quarter of the words for women are terms for lewdness. In the current taunts of today, these stereotypes are still the most prominent. Unmanliness is actually also still partly expressed the same way as in the old Norse days. One can still insult a man's manliness with terms for homosexual. Terms for "woman" are also of use. In addition, words that express impotence are also favourably used. The most scorned characteristic attribute to women is expressed mainly through words for prostitute, through words which tell of a woman having many sex partners, and through (sexual) four-letter words. A cultural construction of sex (gender) is mirrored in derogatory words. Those expectations of manliness and womanliness that a society has at a certain point in time are the basis for the ideal man and ideal woman. The opposite of the ideals emerges in the invectives, which show what behaviour is unacceptable. That men behave like real men and that women behave morally are thus ideals that seem to have lasted at least a thousand years.
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