Kate Lister - A Curious History of Sex

A note on the use of language. As far as offensive language goes, you are now entering a hard hat area. This is a book that uncovers historical attitudes to sex and gender. Our ancestors had little understanding of gender fluidity and understood gender as binary and biologically determined. As a result, much of the historical material in this book defines women as having vulvas and men as having penises. For example, in the chapter on the history of the word ‘cunt’, ‘cunt’ is understood to be the genitals of a woman. Today, we know that some women have cunts and some do not, just as some men do and some do not. But our ancestors did not view gender or biology in such terms – they understood ‘cunt’ as being a woman’s genitals. While this may be offensive to modern ears, understanding historical attitudes to gender identity and sexual morphology is essential if we are to fully appreciate how heteronormativity and constructs of the binary of masculine and feminine came to dominate cultural narratives today.

The slang used throughout this book is all genuine historical slang and is followed by the date it was first recorded. My primary source for the historical slang is Jonathon Green’s Dictionary of Slang , which I cannot recommend enough if you want to learn more.

Language is an important battleground in the fight for social equality. As the linguist Daniel Chandler succinctly put it, ‘language constitutes our world, it doesn’t just record it or label it’. {1} 1 Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics , 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 25. Language is fluid and malleable; it drives social attitudes, rather than simply expressing them. To see the evolution of language we only have to look at what was once everyday terminology to describe people of colour: ‘half caste’ was once perfectly acceptable for a person of mixed race, just as ‘coloured’ was an accepted term for a black person. Such words were not thought of as offensive, merely descriptive, and can occasionally still be heard in usage, though thankfully less often. But when we break down the power structures implicit in such phrases, we can begin to understand how words do reinforce and create our reality. A person who is ‘half caste’ is, by definition, half of something; they are half formed, half made, half a person rather than a whole person in their own right. A person who is ‘coloured’ has been metaphorically coloured in, which suggests an original state of not being coloured in (or, white); it reinforces difference and tacitly suggests racial hierarchy. We might not immediately recognise the implications of such phrases, but describing someone as half formed simply reinforces racial attitudes; as Chandler argued, it makes our reality, it does not record it.

Language that reflects the humanity of the person or people being described is a constantly evolving process, and while political correctness frequently comes in for scorn, we cannot and will not achieve social equality if the language we use to describe marginalised groups only reinforces stigma. Language informs much of the debate around LGBTQ rights, body issues, ageism and, of course, gender.

The reclamation of terms of abuse is a linguistic minefield where no one has written down the rules, but we all know there are rules. ‘Fag’, ‘ho’, ‘bitch’, etc., can function as terms of inclusion and even affection when used within specific groups. As a straight, white woman, I cannot call a gay man a ‘queer’, but I can call my female friend a ‘bitch’, whereas a straight man cannot – though a gay man might be able to (minefield, indeed). When a term of abuse is reclaimed and owned by the people it once stigmatised, it is a defiant action, one that takes the power away from the oppressor, galvanises an identity within the formerly oppressed, and sticks two politically incorrect fingers up at the establishment. Of course, many argue that such words, used in any context, only serve to reinforce a prejudice as such words are never shaken free of historical baggage; they create reality, rather than recording it. The word ‘whore’ is also in a state of reclamation among certain groups of the sex work community (others reject it entirely).

The truth is that I should not have used ‘whore’ in the Whores of Yore website; it’s not my word, and if you’re not a sex worker, it’s not yours either. It’s a term of abuse that sex workers hear every day by those seeking to devalue and shame them, and I had not fully appreciated that. I used ‘whore’ to refer to transgressive sexuality, like ‘slut’ or ‘slag’, rather than a woman who sells sex. I’ve always considered the word to be far bigger than that. I have had feedback from many sex workers questioning my use of the term, and for a while I gave serious consideration to changing it. But the history of that word is an important one, and one that I want to emphasise. Debate around what ‘whore’ actually means is a conversation worth having.

The German dramatist Georg Büchner (1813–1837) once wrote that ‘freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun’. {2} 2 Georg Büchner, ‘Danton’s Death’, in Danton’s Death; Leonce and Lena; Woyzeck , trans. and ed. by Victor Price (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 65. But what does the word ‘whore’ actually mean? Where has it come from, and what does someone have to do to earn that particular title? Why was Joan of Arc, who died a virgin, called the ‘French Whore’? And why was Elizabeth I, the ‘Virgin Queen’, attacked as the ‘English Whore’ by her Catholic enemies? French revolutionaries called Marie Antoinette the ‘Austrian Whore’; Anne Boleyn was the ‘Great Whore’, and in the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton was repeatedly attacked by Trump supporters as a ‘whore’. {3} 3 ‘Bernie Sanders Quickly Condemns Rally Speaker Who Called Hillary Clinton a “Corporate Democratic Whore”’, RealClearPolitics , 2016 < https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/14/speaker_at_sanders_rally_calls_hillary_clinton_a_corporate_democratic_whore.html > [Accessed 9 August 2018]. Perhaps we think we know perfectly well what we mean should we ever choose to drop the W-bomb, but the word is historically and culturally complex. This simple monosyllable is loaded with over a thousand years of attempting to control and shame women by stigmatising their sexuality.

The word is so old that its precise origins are lost in the mists of time, but it can be traced to the Old Norse hora (adulteress). Hora has multiple derivatives, such as the Danish hore , the Swedish hora , the Dutch hoer , and the Old High German huora . Going back even further to the Proto-Indo-European language (the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages), whore has roots in qār , meaning ‘to like, desire.’ Qār is a base that has produced words in other languages for ‘lover’, such as the Latin carus , the Old Irish cara and the Old Persian kama (meaning ‘to desire’). {4} 4 ‘Oxford English Dictionary’, Oed.Com , 2018 < http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/228780?rskey=PMdb56&result=1#eid > [Accessed 9 August 2018]. ‘Whore’ is not a universal word; the indigenous Aborigines, First Nation people and native Hawaiians have no word for ‘whore’, or indeed for prostitution.