I’m guilty of calling my friends (regardless of gender) “slut” and “whore”. I partially blame it on the fact that I go to a school where that is the norm. The girls go around calling each other “ho bags”, the girls call the guys “man-hoes”, and the guys call the girls “sluts”. It’s just a cycle. We know it’s wrong – if we’re caught saying anything like that on school property, we have to apologize and serve a detention… And we still do it! Why?
I have no clue as to why others started in on it, but I know I did because *gasp* I gave in to peer pressure. Yeah, it was my choice to continue it, and I did, but that’s how I ultimately began.
It’s not that we’re trying to “own” the words… It’s just that it’s a word. It has negative connotations behind it, which we use to flat-out insult both enemies and friends. The only difference is, we usually have smiles on our faces when we’re talking to our friends, and some form of “Just Kidding!” manages to squeak out of our mouths.
It’s still an insult, no matter how you slice it. It’s just dulled immensely by the addition of physical and verbal cues towards a joking manner… And just because I know that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop, because it’s a part of my casual vocabulary. I know it sounds ridiculous, and it really is, but I just don’t care. I have two separate “mental dictionaries”, if you will, and one is for formal, and the other is for casual settings… And the casual vocabulary has the tendency to offend people. I’m over that. People offend me with their word choices, and I don’t get up in their faces about it.
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