Kakashi on crack said:
So I have a question...
We call someone a liar if they lie, especially if they lie a lot.
We call someone a cheater if they cheat, especially if they cheat a lot (Whether we speak from a videogame sense or a marriage-breaking stance)
We call someone a gamer if they play a lot of games... I could go on, you get the point.
So then why is it "wrong" to call someone a player/slut if they sleep around a lot? It seems to me like you're just stating the obvious with this, you know?
Lots of problems with this line of thought. Not going to go through all 9 pages (even if it does occupy my mind while my Tigers implode in New York) to see my points have been brought up already or not, just going to make my own post.
1) Liar, Cheater and Gamer are fairly value-neutral in North America. People don't care about people lying or cheating anymore unless they are personally being taken advantage of. Just look at politics; people will accept most lies from the people they support, but will jump on every little potential lie from their opponents. They will accept their own side cheating to gain an advantage over the other side, but if their opponents act with anything less that absolute perfect neutrality and honour they scream about it.
In fact quite often we reward people for lying and cheating. Marketing is all about lying to consumers to get them to buy products without actually being able to be legally charged; look at the previews and professional reviews for movies, music, TV and games, or electronics, or books, or damn near anything. When was the last time you got a Bacon Mushroom Melt at Wendy's that looked like the burgers on the commercial? Or what about the favourite stereotype of liars and cheaters - Used Car Salesmen?
Gamer is a badge of honour to our sub-culture. And it's not used as a derogative in wider culture - calling someone a gamer is more likely to elicit looks of confusion than understanding. It doesn't belong on this list in any way, shape or form - it's like saying "Baseball, Basketball, Football or Noodling."
But Slut is entirely derogative. It's entirely value-based - and that value is the Judeo-Christian value of chastity. In our Judeo-Christian culture women are expected to have a single sexual partner in her life: her husband. To have more than one partner is to be either a failure as a woman or as a tragedy, since it means she is a widow so her husband has died. Beyond being a widow, there is no situation in which a woman would be allowed to have multiple sexual partners and still be considered virtuous.
You can have a situation where you cheat or lie to a heathen, a pagan, and infidel or someone who isn't of the same Judeo-Christian sect as your own. Lying to them, or cheating them, isn't a sin except to the most honest and stringent of believers. But there is no situation where a woman can screw two guys and get away with it. That is where the word slut comes from in our culture.
Maybe in another generation, Slut will be the same as Liar or Cheat. People will look back on it as a relic of a simpler time, a rather cute little way of dating oneself. "Did you call her a slut? Far out Daddy-O, that's a rad cuss!" It won't have an impact on people as people will more likely to accept that women will enjoy sex as much as men, and will want as much variety as men tend to enjoy. But until then, using the term is going to cause a stir.
