Powerful

So I've been thinking lately, what is it that makes some one a whore? If you look it up in the dictionary it's a promiscuous or slovenly woman, usually a prostitute...but we use the term so loosely. Skank, whore, slut, sometimes they're even terms we lovingly call our friends. But how is insinuating that your friend sells her self for money a term of endearment exactly? I mean these words were once the lowest of the low in terms of insults, and now we throw them around like as if they were a common greeting. And the tricky thing about them is that sometimes, these words have a double meaning; it can be hard to tell if someone is joking.

So the question is, how do we define what makes someone a slut/skank/whore? Obviously, the dictionary definition is outdated at this point. I had this conversation with my mom the other day and she made the rather astute point that a skank is just someone of low moral/social class, a slut is someone who goes "sluttin' around" with a lot of people, and a whore is someone who "sluts around" only as it is beneficial to them. But then when I proposed the question as to how far one must go to deem these terms, it became difficult to receive and answer. (Partially because I think she began to get really suspicious that I had much more personal association with what she thought was an abstract conversation than she had realized at first.)

The reason I've been so curious is because I have been quite the victim of such name calling recently. It started with my friends joking around. Yeah I made out with Barbosa a lot and kind of publicly, haha, I'm a whore, very funny. But then someone wrote "So I hear you're slutty now" on my formspring, and I began to question my actions. Is that really what some people think of me? I mean I understand that I am a very sexualized person and I present a certain image, but by dictionary terms, I'm not a slovenly woman. And it's not so much worry what other people think of me as it is what this means for my own self perception.

I grew up with this rather male-modeled perception in my head of sex as power. Some one who sleeps with a lot of people is cool and powerful. My childhood cinematic role models taught me that being a sexy woman gives you this kind of power over men, and as I grew up and it became more real I learned just how intoxicating such power can be. (And you really can't factor love into any of this argument, because as far as I was, and somewhat still am concerned, sex and love are two different things. Though I believe they sometimes intermingle, let's just say they're oil and water for the sake of this post.)

So where is the line between being sexy and powerful and being a whore? Does "putting out" surrender ones power? Because the way I see it, if I want to hook up with so and so, it's my life and I have a right to do that, but at the same time, it's incredibly complicated to make these choices on a situational basis. Hooking up with random guys is a slutty thing to do; it cannot be justified because one "wanted to". I think the differentiation (or at least the conclusion I've made) is who holds the power. It's different in a relationship, but in terms of hooking up, the difference between the powerful woman and the slut is that sluts get taken advantage of. I can live with someone calling me a whore as long as I know I was in control of the situation - you don't get emotionally attached; you do things on your terms; you don't let any boy use you; and mostly, you own every choice that you make.

Having been on the receiving end though, I think I for one am going to be a lot more sensitive of the use of this term and try to be a lot less judgmental of the girls I might use it with. I don't have a question for you, the reader, or an answer really; it was just a little food for thought.