Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart died on Thursday. The firebrand rarely pulled punches, and some obituarists are following his lead. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, for example, titled his Breitbart post Death of a Douche. When did douche become an insult?
The insults douche and douchebag, however, seem to have something to do with gender. Obviously, the physical item to which the word refers is associated with female genitalia. And many of the early epithetical uses refer either to women or to men who behave as women. In Plexus (1953), the second book in Henry Millers Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, the characters discuss a male transvestite named Minnie Douchebag, a crazy fairy who sings and plays the piano at a restaurant in Sheridan square. In Hubert Selbys 1964 cult hit Last Exit to Brooklyn, the prostitute Tralala tells a man shed fuckim blind not like that fuckin douchebag he was with. The journal American Speech defined douchebag in 1967 as an unattractive coed, or, by extension, any individual whom the speaker desires to denigrate.
Eventually, the epithets douche and douchebag came to apply to men. Lexicographer and Slate contributor Ben Zimmer points to a 1987 taping of The Morton Downey Jr. Show, during which an audience member taunted Lyndon Larouche with the phrase Larouche is a douche. The 1991 Anthrax song Startin Up a Posse includes the lyrics Youre a douche, youre a douche, youre a douche, in apparent reference to record executives and/or government censors. Brooklyn hipsters adopted the epithet to describe men with gelled hair, fitted baseball cap, multiple pastel polo shirts with popped collars layered one atop another (PDF). Eventually, the insult turned back on them, as outsiders proposed calling a collection of skinny-jeans-wearing Brooklynites a douchebag of hipsters. On modern TV shows, the word is almost never applied to women.
Douche and douchebag are hardly the first epithets to cross the gender barrier. Both bitch and faggot were first applied to women before becoming emasculating insults to men. Those examples suggest that douche once referred, in some way, to a failure to conform to gender stereotypes.
