Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

Product Information

That said, I found most of the book to be uninspiring and not introducing very new ideas. Ideas were not developed in-depth, and instead felt like a spattering of study-findings and simple assertions that won't stir any new conversations. I stress to even write a review for fear of disappointing the recommender (a word??) of this book— one of my most beloved friends and esteemed colleagues, Sydney Arvanitas. However, I must be true to myself!!! I enjoyed every second of this book and had a problem putting down the audiobook. It was both thought-provoking and entertaining. I love that the author included a lot of historical contexts to words and their meanings. For spending a good amount of time on the un/gendering of language and even dedicating a full chapter to queer linguistics, the author reduces people to men and women only far too many times to be excusable. And, sorry for the token "queer friend named Molly" (inexplicably one of the only informal sources named?) used as a sole source of knowledge about the lesbian experience.

Another early meaning was 'kitchen maid or drudge' ( c. 1450), a meaning retained as late as the 18th century, when hard knots of dough found in bread were referred to as slut's pennies. [10] An example of this use is Samuel Pepys's diary description of his servant girl as "an admirable slut" who "pleases us mightily, doing more service than both the others and deserves wages better" (February 1664). [15] Slut and slutishness occur in Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It, written in 1599 or 1600. [16] In the nineteenth century, the word was used as a euphemism in place of bitch in the sense of a female dog. [10] [17] At its heart, this work reflects a tenet of sociolinguistic study: language is not divorced from culture; it both reflects and creates beliefs about identity and power.’––Meagan Storey, Kirkus Review a b Reger, Jo (2015). "The Story of a Slut Walk: Sexuality, Race, and Generational Divisions in Contemporary Feminist Activism". Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. 44 (1): 84–112. doi: 10.1177/0891241614526434. More or less entirely written about white US people/language. If you're going to talk about 'reclaiming the English language' it's a bit, oh, American-imperialist barely to notice that American English is but one dialect of many. (There are various mentions of AAVE but no sustained look or chapter on non-white, still less non-US, English.) If you're going to do a section on sexual swearing that basically implies women who use 'cunt' are letting the side down by using misogynist terms in an unexamined way, how about talking to some English, Scots, Australians? Or romance / erotica writers, come to that? To sum things up, over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, women began speaking with increasingly lower-pitched voices, attempting to convey more dominance and expressing more boredom--all things that middle-aged men have historically not been in favor of women doing."The word bitch conjures many images for many people, but it is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean a female canine, bitch didn’t refer to gender at all—it originated as a gender-neutral word meaning genitalia. A perfectly innocuous word devolving into a female insult is the case for tons more terms, including hussy—which simply meant housewife—or slut, which meant an untidy person and was also used to describe men. These words are just a few among history’s many English slurs hurled at women.

so well done - well researched, well written. This was thought provoking, educational, and entertaining. Everyone should read this book.

Ultimately, I believe Wordslut to be a thought-provoking introductory jumping-off point for those interested in feminist sociolinguistics, but it is certainly not comprehensive, intersectional, or conclusive. Slutty Skanks and Nasty Dykes: A Comprehensive List of Gendered Insults I Hate (but Also Kind of Love?)

English–Arabic English–Bengali English–Catalan English–Czech English–Danish English–Hindi English–Korean English–Malay English–Marathi English–Russian English–Tamil English–Telugu English–Thai English–Turkish English–Ukrainian English–Vietnamese Tanenbaum, Leora (2 February 2015). "A Brief History Of 'Slut' ". HuffPost . Retrieved 17 January 2020. The OED’s first definition for slut is “a woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern.” The earliest citation for such usage is 1402, predating citations for either the F word or the C word. But again, slut then had no sexual connotation, so using it in print carried no onus. Gendered language has bothered me since I was a child; maybe because I was a voracious reader and noticed it in some books and not in others, or maybe I was sensitive to it because I have four brothers. I still bristle at the use of certain words, such as “mistress” to mean a female partner of an illicit love affair: Don’t get me started. Chaucer uses sluttish (late 14c.) in reference to the appearance of an untidy man. Slut also came to mean "a kitchen maid, a scullery drudge" (mid-15c.); in 18c. hard pieces in a bread loaf from imperfect kneading were called slut's pennies; dust left to gather on a floor was slut's wool).Kudos, Amanda Montell (for I learned not to call you, Madam), for this insightful book that forced me to open my eyes and brain to new ways of comprehending language. The word slut is commonly interchanged with the words tramp, whore, hoe, nympho, and hooker. All of these words have a very negative connotation. Additional meanings and connotations of the term are negative and identify a slut as being a slovenly and ugly person, for example, as in these quotations from OED2: the feminist theory here was... surprisingly third wave for a book published squarely during the midst of 4th wave feminism. the discussion rarely talks about the intersection of identities when evaluating word chloice, and broadly prescribed behaviors for all women which just seems too naive at best and ignorant and arrogant at worst. The selection of examples (ex, for choosing famous modern women leaders, the author selected only white women war criminals(or dubiously close to war crimes; margaret thatcher, Hilary Clinton what a #girlboss move there)) further reiterated what seemed like a criminally unaware perspective on modern feminism from the author. As a queer person, the chapter on gay voice and lesbian history was particularly difficult to read. the author presents a quote that there was no lesbian culture pre sexual revolution bc it was hard for lesbians to exist, when any queer historian knows this is provably untrue. Finally, the constant quips about wanting a men free world were crimgey at best. I truly do not understand how you can be aware of the gender spectrum and still make comments about hating all men when gender is so complicated you have to put 400 qualifiers on the type of man (cis/straight/abled) and it should really serve to show you hate types of behaviors/toxic masculinity and not just men.