Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

by Amanda Montell

Why, when aiming to make a disparaging comment about a woman, do speakers often choose to use the word female? Cameron postulates that it might have something to do with the desire to point out that women are flawed by biological design.

No one ever posed a semantic distinction between sex and gender until the 1960s, when folks began to realize that our bodies and social behaviors might not be intrinsically linked.

when you analyze it closely, gossip serves three main purposes: 1) to circulate personal information in order to keep members of a social group in the know; 2) to bond with one another by establishing the gossipers as an in-group; and 3) to affirm the group’s commitment to certain values or norms.

Jewish women tend to build linguistic solidarity through “opposition” (aka grumpily bickering like siblings). “Oppositional discussion itself creates intimacy because it signals that the relationship is strong enough to withstand serious differences of opinion,”

There are two huge flaws in their logic: The first is that using a plural pronoun for a singular meaning is nothing new for English speakers. A few hundred years ago, the second-person you was exclusively a plural; thou was the singular version (e.g., “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not lie”). Eventually, you extended to the singular meaning and pushed out thou entirely. Who’s to say the same thing couldn’t happen with they?

The underlying problem with all of these forms of sexual trespassing is that they rely on the assumption that a man has an automatic right to a woman’s body. It’s a display of social control, signaling to women