Twenty years ago the term “Slut” denoted a woman of low standards of cleanliness. “Do come in, I’m ever so sorry but I negated to dust my skirting boards in anticipation of your arrival. I’m such a slut.” Still a mildly derogatory but who doesn’t revel in their daily skirting board cleanse?

These days the word “Slut” has very different connotations. Connotations that spit perfunctorily in the ever evolving face of feminism, and the ongoing battle for equality

So what are the ingredients for a twenty-first century slut? I feel like we should look into this since the word is being banded around like malevolent confetti.

Someone who wears revealing clothes. In my eyes wearing revealing clothes takes body-confidence, remember that? That thing we all had before magazines started telling us what is and what is not aesthetically acceptable to society. Well apparently some girls managed to circumnavigate the central narrative that we essentially “look shit” unless we measure X, Y or Z, and just carried on wearing whatever the fuck they wanted to. But that’s a bad thing and we aren’t supposed to celebrate that? Apparently dressing however the fuck we want to is the green light to verbally abuse us or to rape us or to sexually assault us?

It’s someone who enjoys sex. You mean some women actually enjoy sex? Apparently so. Not someone who just lies back and thinks of England like the rest of you vestal beings. Someone who actively seeks out appreciates getting their rocks off. “Someone with the morals of a man,” is one description. Because it’s absolutely A-OK for a man to seek sexual gratification with multiple sexual partners but it’s not for the likes of us who only attained the right to vote in the last 100 years. Seem fair to you?

It’s someone who has multiple sexual partners. I hate to break it to you but gone are the days where we all get married at 12, have babies at 14, and die by 17 of Rickets or the Black Death. These days you can pop into a bar after work (where you probably get paid less than the men but I won’t get into the GPG on this one) pick up a willing victim, take him back to your own house for some coitus, possibly even breakfast if he did good job, and then wave him off in the morning, croissant in hand, to enjoy the rest of his life. How disgustingly awful.

The word slut is the epitome of the double-standard.

Throw the word “Slut” at a women and it stings like a bitch, it hits us right in the pride that you assume we don’t possess because we happen to be wearing a mini-skirt.

Throw the same phrase at a man and he’s the lucky recipient of a pat on the back, a pint, he may even be carried off into the sunset atop a crowd of similarly sexually virile young men. Presumably to kill a wild boar or to participate in some sort of team sporting activity. Interestingly enough one of the first recorded uses of the word slut in the English Language was recorded in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Cantebury Tales and ironically, it was aimed at a man. But again this term pertained to a poor standard of personal cleanliness rather than any carnal aspersions

So let’s examine the evidence.

I dress however I want to, sometimes I’ll even have my legs out or my cleavage on show. Sometimes I’ll go against the “Legs or Boobs rule” entirely if it’s above 23 degrees Centigrade outside or if I’m feeling extra sassy that day. I enjoy sex (admittedly with just one sexual partner these days) but it’s great and I’ll happily talk about sex and penises and vaginas and orgasms to anybody and everybody. Despite the fact that most of my friends probably wish I would shut-up about it after my third glass of Pinot at their mum’s retirement party. Sex just doesn’t faze me, sorry (not sorry in the slightest patriarchy).

And finally, in a nod to its historical roots, I leave filthy coffee cups lying around, I wear items out of the dirty laundry, and my skirting boards leave a lot to be desired by society’s tendentious code.

I am to all intents and purposes, a slut.

Which is fine because I said it myself, just then. It wasn’t spat at me as an insult in a bar by a Neanderthal with a beer gut or typed out in sly condescension in the comments section of a social media platform. So here’s an idea. How about we just stop using that word to shame women because it’s all just a little bit outdated. Like the racist “N word” or the homophobic “Q word.” In fact, contrary to what you might believe, one day I hope that the “S word” stops being hurled at women who are simply enjoying their lives, celebrating their bodies, and enjoying all the splendid orgasms they can cram in between evening Pilates and the 9 AM board meeting.

Regardless of what anyone thinks and regardless of the state of their skirting boards.