Leora Tanenbaum first wrote about the misogynistic insult ‘slut’ in 1999, and in her book I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet she argues that, as long as the term is used by men to demean women, it should not be employed by women to describe themselves.
I Am Not a Slut was published in 2015, partly as a response to the feminist SlutWalk movement. Since then, at least three books have called for the reclamation of ‘slut’: This Is What a Feminist Slut Looks Like, Wordslut, and Sluts.
Tanenbaum, on the other hand, calls for eradication rather than reappropriation: “Reclaiming “slut” as a positive term... nearly always backfires. If we want to truly help young women, we need to get rid of the word entirely.” In I Am Not a Slut, she devotes an entire chapter to the issue, titled Can “Slut” Be Reclaimed?: “Is the time ripe to reclaim “slut”? Forgive me, sisters; I don’t think so.”
I Am Not a Slut was published in 2015, partly as a response to the feminist SlutWalk movement. Since then, at least three books have called for the reclamation of ‘slut’: This Is What a Feminist Slut Looks Like, Wordslut, and Sluts.
Tanenbaum, on the other hand, calls for eradication rather than reappropriation: “Reclaiming “slut” as a positive term... nearly always backfires. If we want to truly help young women, we need to get rid of the word entirely.” In I Am Not a Slut, she devotes an entire chapter to the issue, titled Can “Slut” Be Reclaimed?: “Is the time ripe to reclaim “slut”? Forgive me, sisters; I don’t think so.”