One of my most shameful moments as a person was in the fourth grade. I was fairly invisible within my class, but had a desperate desire to be liked. There was another girl in my class who also was not popular and was picked on fairly often for being a little grubby. One day, in what I guess was an attempt to appear cool and funny to my classmates, I picked on her too. I told her she was dirty and that she reminded me of used toilet paper, whatever that means. Then I told her she was a slut. She cried. I still wasn’t popular after that, so the point was lost, and I’ve clearly spent the last 18 years thinking about how mean I was to her. But the thing is, I had no idea what the word “slut” even meant, I just knew it was a bad thing to call a girl. I still don’t know what a slut is and that’s because I don’t think there’s any definition that everyone can agree on. The debate over what makes a person a “slut” is so…ridiculous. Can’t we just retire it already?
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