Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

by Amanda Montell

“Again and again in the history of the language, one finds that a perfectly innocent term designating a girl or a woman may begin with totally neutral or even positive connotations, but that gradually it acquires negative implications, at first perhaps only slightly disparaging, but after a period of time becoming abusive and ending as a sexual slur.”

“Perhaps when we call each other ‘ho,’ we acknowledge that we are women who have sex and earn our own money too; and when we call each other ‘bitch,’ we acknowledge the realities of this man-made world and affirm our ability to survive in it. Through resistance comes redefinition.”