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Quote by Amanda Montell

“[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.”

Quote by Amanda Montell

Work

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

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Amanda Montell

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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.”

“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.”

“They have to find inspiration in the people who make it out, not necessarily out of the hood itself but out of the cycle of trauma brought by poverty and oppression. The hood is still home. But they have to look beyond the troubled streets they are on every day and see themselves as worthy of saving.”

“There are armies of women who kill men in battles so fierce the moon itself hides from the ribbons of shed blood. They cut off their right breasts to ease the arrow shots of their long bows to lethal precision. For this they are called No-Breast or A-Mazon and must remain virgins until after the first time they kill a man. With male blood they stain their hair and with his bone they sharpen their arrowheads. Whole regiments fall before them. They rule wooded nations and desert kingdoms. Waters and precious stones have their names. I have seen them and marveled at their war skills.”