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Quote by Amanda Montell

“At the time I am writing this, one of the definitions of vagina from TheFreeDictionary.com’s medical glossary reads, “An organ of copulation that receives the penis during sexual intercourse.” This is not a political view of the vagina, it’s a medical one. And yet, I would invite a doctor to try telling a lesbian that her vagina is “an organ that receives the penis.” See how well that goes. (258)”

Quote by Amanda Montell

Book:Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
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Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

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Amanda Montell

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“Perhaps you’ve heard this feminist riddle: “A young boy was rushed to the hospital from the scene of an accident, where his father was killed, and prepped for emergency surgery. The surgeon walked in, took one look, and said, ‘I can’t operate on him – he’s my son.’ How is this possible?” This scenario trips people up because if the boy’s father is dead, how could he be operating on him? Few come to the conclusion that surgeon was in fact his mother. The rare and exotic lady surgeon.”

LanguageFeminism
Book:Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
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“[Janet] Holmes’s numbers demonstrated that the total number of you knows collected were almost identical between genders, but women used the phrase with a flat pitch, communicating confidence, over 20 percent more than men. And yet, most people don’t hear it that way – at the first sign of a woman hedging, they automatically assume insecurity.”

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Book:Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
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“…what these metaphors of women as nature, territories, and technologies do is place feminine gender in that same distant category of “other.” According to [Suzanne] Romaine, by comparing her to things like storms and seas, “woman is symbolic of the conflict between nature and civilization, tempting men with her beauty, attracting men with her charms, but dangerous and therefore in need of conquest.” Woman is a continent to colonize, a fortress to siege. These sentiments are reflected not only in English; in languages all over the world, from Italian to Thai, a nation’s government is labelled as having “founding fathers,” while the land itself (“Mother Nature,” “virgin territory”) is perceived as a feminine entity. In grammar as in allegory as in life, women are considered reckless places outside the civilized male world – wild things meant to be tamed into the weak, delicate flowers we’ve traditionally wanted women to be.”

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Book:Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
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“Just think of some of the most common verbs used to illustrate sex: bone, drill, screw. In the world of these words, the person with the erection is both the star and the narrator. If one were to describe sex from the vagina’s standpoint – to say something like, “We enveloped all night,” or “I sheathed the living daylights out of him,” or “we clitsmashed” – it would be such an exceptional rebellion against mainstream sex talk that to many listeners, it would be a real head-scratcher.”

LanguageSexFeminismEuphemisms
Book:Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
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