Thank HECK someone has finally come out and said it – calling Benedict Cumberbatch's fans 'Cumberbitches' really sucks.

The man himself has admitted to squirming about the word, saying it sets back women's rights. Although, true to form, he said it in the nicest, sweetest, most totally adorbs way only Cumberbatch could.

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Speaking on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show, he said, "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-regarding name!'' 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.'" Check out this Graham Norton interview – you can *see* his agony.

As a person who feels physical pain at every single mention of the word and has spent hours wondering if I've strayed into offended-by-everything territory because of it, I'm over the freakin' moon he's said something. It must've been pretty awful to hear such a degrading word used in his honour – especially for someone who has spoken up about being a feminist before. Sadly, his only effort to date seems to be the 'Cumber Collective' (womp womp) so I guess that's down to us. Cumberlovers? Cutecumbers? Cumberpatch kids? Huh. This is harder than I thought...

From the editors of Cosmopolitan.co.uk

From: Cosmopolitan UK