Sunday, March 4, 2012

What are words worth?

Tom Tom Club said it best: Words are stupid, words are fun, words can put you on the run.

Rush Limbaugh used the word "slut" to describe a young woman who had the audacity to speak up about the healthcare needs of women with gynecological conditions requiring hormone therapy, and the walls came tumbling down.

Consider it a clarion call, I say. Words have power, but human beings have more power. Isn't it high time women reclaimed and re-appropriated this word? The LGBT community has successfully re-appropriated "dyke," "queer," and, to an extent, "fag." Feminists took back "spinster." Why can't American women do the same with "Slut"? How about we start owning the word, and not shy away from it? How about we take it on as our own, so it can never be used against us? How about a million of us wear t-shirts that say "SLUT" and show up outside of Rush Limbaugh's workplace? Or maybe just wear them around our own corners of the world to make a statement.




1 comment:

shirley said...

Right on. And Tom Tom Club!