Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

by Amanda Montell

“It’s clearly empowering for people to discover that they’re not the only ones having an experience and that the experience can be named,”

“Language is not always about making an argument or conveying information in the cleanest, simplest way possible. It’s often about building relationships. It’s about making yourself understood and trying to understand someone else.”

In her book, Tannen claims that from early childhood, women and men are socialized to live in two opposing cultures with two opposing sets of values, so they grow up to understand things differently. Not better or worse, just different. As a result, men’s goals when they talk are to communicate information, while women’s are to form connections.

As Cameron puts it, “When you objectify and dehumanize a class of people”—whether that’s women or a racial minority or both or anyone—“it becomes easier to mistreat them without guilt.”