Apparently, the negative connotation attributed to the word has been around much longer than one might expect, and didn’t originate with the English language.
Here’s a small article you might find interesting. I think what the article is trying to say is that while the word bitch became derogatory to women in Europe, due to certain beliefs and physcial depictions thereof, it can probably be traced back to much older cultures.
In a lot of places, a woman being independent, even if through something like prostitution, or if she was rebellious and otherwise didn’t apply to her role, was relegated to the status of something else that said society didn’t have a much high esteem of. Like for some people, stray dogs, as the article suggests. There’s also that some cultures had deities taking the shape of wolves or dogs, and bestowing upon women some unfavorable profession.
Obviously there must be a high turning point somewhere that made this meaning stick, but with so many cultures having treated women like shit, it might be a little hard to determine when. Although today it’s purely derogatory and usually something that has to do with some sexual element, in older times/places, a ’‘bitch’’ was either evil, an agent of some antagonistic deity, and was labeled on women who didn’t fit their role properly. Or so I’m guessing, from what I read in that article.
Words can be a bitch though. lol I’ve time and time again tried to find the origin of the word fuck, and I’ve seen so many variations, the equivalents thereof of so many languages, from so many different places…but it more or less means the same thing. Which is really sad for the word bitch, to see how universal it frighteningly seems to be in applying it to women in a negative way. :/ But to actually answer this, I guess, as we know it in the most common way today, it’s some Medieval Europe thing? Chivalry my ass.