According to the Oxford dictionary, a slut is a person, usually a woman, who is sexually promiscuous. A woman who has many sexual partners. A woman who is considered a tramp. Who is a skank. A whore. 

In today’s day and age, it’s impossible to avoid the stigma of the word slut. You can be with 100 partners and earn the label. Or you can be with zero and still be referred to as one. You can be of any age or any race. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, you can’t escape it. Something all women have in common is the non-avoidance of being called a slut. 

While the term slut is another insult added to the lists of 100s, it usually doesn’t mean you just sleep around. It means you’re a dirty, nasty woman. It means you upset someone, and it’s their sexist way of responding. It means you looked at the wrong person or talked to the wrong boy. The scary truth behind the world slut, is the deeply rooted sexist language behind it. It’s a man’s or another woman, way of putting someone else down. It’s sexist in the way that if she wears something slutty that shows “too much skin,” she’s asking for it. By allowing the word slut to be unclean and unowned, it’s offensive to women in a way that they are only viewed as sexual objects. It’s a term only used for women. Have you ever heard a male be called a slut without the word man in front of it? 

This is why the word slut needs to be reclaimed. As long as we let it be used as an insult, we only encourage more inequality and harassment against women. We need to change the narrative- and let women be themselves. This isn’t about encouraging women to sleep around or do anything except what they choose to do. It’s about the word and the mentality behind it, where people feel the need to slut-shame a woman for what she wears, what she does, or even what she believes in. While the word slut might never have a positive meaning, it’s getting rid of the negativity behind it that needs to happen. By doing this we can finally live in a world where boys can be boys, and girls can be girls without a sexist double standard.