bad guy

bad actor/news, villain. There are few good alternatives because virtually all the "bad guy" words in our language are perceived as referring to men, even those that are not sexist per se. Although in theory the following words could be used of a woman, in practice they rarely are: bounder, brigand, bully, cad, cheat, creep, crook, deviate, double-crosser/-dealer, evildoer, four-flusher, gangster, goon, heel, hoodlum, hooligan, jerk, louse, lowlife, mobster, mountebank, mugger, outcast, outlaw, punk, racketeer, rascal, rat, ratfink, renegade, reprobate, rogue, rotter, ruffian, scalawag, scoundrel, scum/scumbag/scuzzbag/scuzzbucket, sleaze/sleazebag/sleazeball, slimebag/slimeball/slime bucket, suspect, thug, turkey, two-timer, ugly customer. In addition, the gender default for words like hoodlum, jailbird, and murderer, which are technically inclusive, is male because the majority of hoodlums, jailbirds, and murderers are men. Why this is so (classism, racism, poverty, and the cult of masculinity are big factors) and what we can do about it cannot be solved at the level of language, but recognizing male-tagged and female-tagged words can raise our consciousness of the issues—and consciousness precedes action. Negative words for women focus on sexual promiscuity (Julia Penelope Stanley, in Papers in Language Variation says there are 10 times as many words for sexually promiscuous women in our language as there are for men); negative words for men focus on moral vileness—almost all such terms are for men, and we traditionally personalize both "enemy" and "devil" as male. See also animal names for people, bastard, devil/he, jackass, perpetrator, Satan/he, schmuck.