Can you believe Benedict Cumberbatch had never been on Ellen before? The two seem like a match made in meme heaven. Instead of silliness, though, Ellen got right down to business during the actor's first appearance on the show. She wanted to talk about Cumberbatch's dedicated legion of fans. Apparently, DeGeneres had a bone to pick with their chosen moniker of "Cumberbitches."
She practically had to squeeze it out of the actor, though. "I kind of squirm a little bit about it," he confessed about having to say the word. He felt that it wasn't doing any favors to the women's movement.
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"I just went, ladies, this is wonderful, I'm very flattered, but has this not set feminism back a little bit? Empower yourselves if you're going to get silly about a guy with maybe a little bit more of a sort of you know a high-regard, self-regard thing. But yeah, they were very sweet. They wrote back and were like well we didn't mean any harm to feminism we're just having a little bit of fun with your name."
Now that Cumberbatch is a household name (something we never thought we'd say), so are the Cumberbitches. They're owning it, though, so we support their choice of appellation. Taking ownership of formerly offensive terms is also part of feminism. Benedict Cumberbatch just needed to be reminded of that by his loyal supporters. Now that's empowering.