No No No...I am not a Philly Jawn...

I was enlightened by one of my fellow classmates today.
One of my favorite things to do is listen to my male friends talk and they are forever schoolin me to how the male mind ticks. So today, a friend of mine was describing a few of his clubbing adventures in Illadelph with two other guys in my group and the exchange went a little something like him calling every girl he has ever danced with in life a JAWN. For all of you that don't know, Jawn is a retarded a$$ term Philly made up to describe everything under the sun including females. Anyway, this NY cat turns and asks me why the hell "Philly niggas" always use Jawn. My friend says "I could say bitch." Why that was an option, I don't know. He continued to say "I'm just using the words ya'll use to describe yourselves. If a female calls another female a bitch or a jawn, then I'm going to, too."
.... Now whether I like it or not, he made a valid point. Personally, I don't like the word jawn at all even though I'm from Philly....I just dont bang with the term. And the word bitch... just say its not part of my everyday vocab. The problem here, however, is that we define ourselves by the words we use to describe eachother be it intentional or unintentional. Just because we are referring to another female as such doesn't mean you immune to the repercussions of it. It doesn't matter how different you think you are from the female you're talking you both are still women. So no, No, NO I am not a Philly Jawn. I'm not a jawn period. And my Sistas, if we want others to respect us we have to respect each other and ourselves. Sounds elementary, maybe a little whack but sometimes its about the basics. Or we can just watch who we say the words around. It's up to you.