Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

by Amanda Montell

But when he says this stuff, he’s really just playing dumb. Because research shows that when sexual harassers are asked to switch places with their targets, they are able to grasp quite quickly that what they’ve done is wrong. It’s not that their intentions have been misunderstood—these dudes realize the harm they’ve caused. It’s simply that they aren’t motivated to care. They lack empathy. And this, underneath it all, has to do with a problem of how our culture teaches men to be men.

As Beth A. Quinn wrote in 2002, “Men fail to exhibit empathy with women because masculinity precludes them from taking the position of the feminine other, and men’s moral stance vis-à-vis women is attenuated by this lack of empathy.”

What’s more is that thanks to centuries of steeping in messages that women are delicate, overly emotional, and unfit to hold power, many women have an internalized belief that it’s natural for them not to have a voice. It’s an unconscious feeling that speechlessness is just part of being a woman and that to be too loud or assertive would mean losing female identity, which is precious, because it’s a huge part of who they are.

Stapleton also asked her subjects why they might avoid certain curse words—specifically the more “obscene” ones, which participants agreed were the words that made reference to the vagina (cunt, fanny*). The top three reasons women gave were that they found these terms sexist because they gave a negative impression, and because they made them feel uncomfortable. For men, the top reasons were that they found them inappropriate in certain company, that they were sexist, and finally that they made them appear sexist. This last reason is particularly interesting, because there was not a single woman in the study who gave that as a response. For twice the number of women as men, sexism itself, as opposed to the motivation not to seem sexist, was reason enough to avoid certain swears.

Many of our language’s most potent phrases—from pussy to motherfucker—paint a picture of women, men, and sex from a cisgender dude’s perspective. They portray the act of sex as inherently penetrative, the penis as violent and powerful, and the vagina as weak and passive.

This tricky negotiation of traditional femininity, which has historically been backdropped by a private setting, and confident leadership, which is a public enterprise, is one that social scientists have termed the “double bind.”

But Thatcher’s pitch, like Clinton’s “shrillness,” was not really the main issue: that she was a woman in charge in the first place was significantly more of a problem.

Our conflicted attitudes toward powerful women sprout from many sources. Obviously, there is no one simple explanation, but Deborah Cameron suggests that our resistance to women in positions of authority, and the reason the double bind itself exists, is in part related to the messy clash of feelings we have about our own mothers. “Our main historical model for female authority is the maternal variety,” she explains, “and it’s a form of power most people are at least somewhat ambivalent about, because we’ve all experienced the powerlessness of the child and the rebellion against maternal power which is part of growing up.”

While we’re hiring a bunch of women to run the world, I recommend hiring a bunch of gay people too. Because if our whack ideas about how women speak are keeping us from living our best lives, you don’t even want to know what we’re missing when it comes to the mind-blowing world of queer language.

The answer is simple: it’s not that lesbians don’t speak in a masculine way; it’s just that it’s not as abhorrent for women to talk like men as it is for men to talk like women. “Because who wants to be female?” our NYU linguist Louise O. Vasvári asked me facetiously over the phone. “A male who wants to be female is the ultimate downgrade.”

The narratives of male and female desire that most of us grow up with say that it isn’t possible for a woman to want sex without also wanting some sort of commitment. That’s relevant because as CKW point out, it could be part of the reason why in casual sex scenarios, a dude so often fails to connect with what the woman wants. With her humanity. Sometimes he does, but that’s the exception. “Men seem to feel an obligation for commitment if they relate to their female partner as a person,” CKW determine. “She may be content with a one-night stand, but would prefer it to be with someone to whom she can relate person-to-person as well as body-to-body.” (Which seems fairly reasonable to me? Again, is this why lesbian sex is better?) Yet, it appears that on the whole, men often relate to women person-to-person only within ongoing relationships, not casual sex. Whether it be because the culture has taught him that all women are stage-four clingers or that his orgasm is the only real goal, a dude in a hookup scenario might unconsciously feel he must treat the woman like an object, or else he’ll trap himself into a serious dating situation instead of simply, I don’t know, becoming better at sex.

Lal Zimman has devoted a great deal of research to observing how self-identifying your own junk on your terms can be sexually empowering.

principle known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which was proposed in the early twentieth century to explain the effects that a language has on its speakers’ worldview. There are two versions of this principle: the lighter (more widely accepted) one says that language merely influences thought, while the strong one (with which Spender’s theory aligns) says that language determines thought. By Spender’s account, the grammar and vocabulary of your native tongue inherently shape your perception of reality—if there isn’t a word to describe a certain concept in your language, then you can’t conceive of that thing at all.

But I don’t think misogynistic language will become any less common,” she wrote to me from Oxford. “This is a time when unfortunately misogyny is on the rise, and in this area, usage typically reflects the overall cultural mood. Misogyny won’t go unopposed but will continue.”

“I think the culture is changing in a way that will result in more good things for people who need good things.”