[Marxism] Language of Contempt

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

kersplebedeb wrote:
>
> no idea what a better term than "whore" would be, but while thinking
> about this it occurred to me that the objection people have to real
> non-metaphorical whoring is usually that somebody (normally a woman) is
> doing something for money which many people would prefer she do for
> "loftier" reasons like love.
>
> A male parallel which springs to mind (which would have few of the same
> derogatory connotations as "academic whore" but for what i can only
> assume are gendered reasons) would be "mercenary", the latter being a
> profession of (mainly male) soldiers who are doing something for money
> which many people think should be done for "loftier" reasons like
> patriotism or idealism.

When I was still teaching, I would occasionally ask my students to
propose a male equivalent of "slut" -- i.e., a word that had all the
polemical force of "slut" but that clearly and unambiguously applied to
males only. No one  ever came up with a really persuasive candidate. The
brighter women in the class would often fall back on "asshole,"
acknowledging that while it wasn't specific to males, it was the best
epithet that didn't focus on females. It is really amazing how much of
the available language of contempt is gendered, in origin and usually in
current usage. "Son of a bitch" is classic: aimed at men, but focusing
on their mother, as though the worst thing you can say about a man is
that he has a sexually erring mother.

Carrol

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