A slut is a person who has taken control of their sexuality and has sex with whomever they choose, regardless of religious or social pressures or conventions to conform to a strait-laced monogamous lifestyle committed to one partner for life.

Montell effortlessly moves between history, science, and popular culture to explore these questions—and how we can use the answers to affect real social change.

Most of the SlutWalks were coordinated by white women, and some black women felt uncomfortable when joining. When women speak, it's a lot more "collaborative" and about building connection and driving consensus across the group. 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). Connection also has been suggested with Old English (West Saxon) *sliet, *slyt, "sleet, slush," and comparison made to Norwegian dialectal slutr"snow mixed with rain" (see sleet). 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.

Today, the term slut has a pervasive presence in popular culture and pornography, but is almost exclusively used to describe women. To give an example of what it might be like if we built language around women and female pleasure instead of man's, we might say "envelopment" instead.I so wanted to like this, but this "intro to feminist sociolinguistics" was imbued with far too much white girlboss feminism for my taste (though maybe pop science lit is just not for me). When really there are so many groups (not just women, but POC, the queer community, etc) that get berated on for how they speak when in actuality the way these marginalized groups speak have their own goals, needs, and functions. 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.

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. Women in particular get harped on for using "filler" words like "like" and "you know," but not only do men also use these filler words (and get less flack for it when they do), when women use these words it's for very distinct functions.

v.), which also first appears there, and both might suggest "lewd, lascivious woman" but this is uncertain. Indeed, given how many things slut has meant over the centuries, and how many ways it is still being defined, it’s hardly a word at all.