Gendered Slurs

Publication Title

Social Theory and Practice

Document Type

Article

Department or Program

Philosophy

Publication Date

2016

Keywords

slurs; pejoratives; gender; slut-shaming; normative language; semantics; pragmatics

Abstract

Slurring language has had a lot of recent interest, but the focus has been almost exclusively on racial slurs. Gendered pejoratives, on the other hand—terms like “slut,” “bitch,” or “sissy”—do not fit into existing accounts of slurring terms, as these accounts require the existence of neutral correlates, which, I argue, these gendered pejoratives lack. Rather than showing that these terms are not slurs, I argue that this challenges the assumption that slurs must have neutral correlates, and so that a new approach to thinking about the meaning of slurring terms is required.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract201642213

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS