I'm a slut, too!

This is largely copy-pasted from my post in a thread on Informed Consent:

Chaucer used "sluttish" to refer to slovenly men.

I like the word "slut" because I love the sound of it. To me, the word can be a celebration of a person's highly sexual state and it has a sound that I feel encompasses that. For me the word has acquired the meaning of "one who takes great pleasure in the totality of sexual behaviour" (i.e. not totally focussed on genital fucking but enjoying everything sexual about their and their partner's bodies).

However, that's not a meaning that I expect to be understood by many people outside of a fairly limited community (i.e. the BDSM/fetish communities) so in general it's a meaning that I only use with people who I know will understand it in a similar way.

"Slut" I do think "slut" is a real candidate for a campaign to "reclaim our name" in this sense.
And, in this sense, I am proud to call myself a slut.

The word slut originally meant someone who was lax in their cleanliness, and acquired the sexual dirtiness meaning later, although apart from Chaucer's application as an adjective to men, it has largely been only applied to women.

I think it is a word that needs to be reclaimed and made into something positive, because I think the way I understand it, and the way it is understood in the BDSM community, as a celebration of sexuality, is a positive one, and one that really I don't see another word that suits so well. In particular, there is a real sense that any word applying to sexual women is an insult, and that needs to stop. So, my call is this:

Men and women alike, go forth and announce your sluttishness to the world, for it is something to be celebrated!

It also has the benefit of being a good old-fashioned word, which tend to be words I like more anyway - they have a wonderful earthy sound to them!

I suppose I should add that I found the concept of "claiming our names" in a book of songs put together in the early seventies by a radical leftwing group (including, it seems, several feminists) as a musical expression of their politics. One song was called "Claiming our Names" and the introduction text explained what the theory was. I am fairly sure that even back then, those radical seventies feminists wanted to claim the name "slut".

And now it's my turn to claim it too!